March 2010

Click here to read The Onion's latest satire about  Google's privacy invasion problems. Its hilarious just like the Onion's other satire video on Google's "Opt-out Villiage."  

• Why it is so poignant and funny scary is that Google has all this private information on everyone and is increasingly integrating it for real, just as this recent article from the Register shows. 

If you enjoy these satires, please check out more at the GoogleMonitor.com humor section. Enjoy! 

The discussion at the Federalist Society about former U.S. Solicitor General Greg Garre's excellent legal analysis  (that the FCC does not have the legal authority to promulgate Internet traffic rules), surfaced what I believe to be yet another insurmountable barrier for the FCC to overcome -- beyond the litany of legal barriers outlined by Mr. Garre.

• FCC reclassification of broadband as Title II common carriage would practically force the FCC to redefine competition in a way that would be arbitrary and capricious. 

Let me explain. 

Public Knowledge's Gigi Sohn laid out  the counter argument to Mr. Garre's analysis that the FCC could reclassify broadband as Title II by simply revisiting the basis for the FCC's 2002 decision and overturning it as wrong on three counts:

1. Information services and telecommunications services are no longer necessarily intertwined;
2. Facilities based competition has not arrived;
3. Consumers are no longer protected. 

Ms. Sohn added this about what the FCC could do: "They just have to give a reasoned explanation. They don't actually have to show that the new decision was better than the old decision." -- per Washington Internet Daily.

"Google does not reap the benefits of significant network effects because its search algorithms are centered on the analysis of links, and operate essentially the same way whether one person or six billion are using it." -- said Randall Stross in his Digital Domain column today in the New York Times. 

• While I enjoy Mr. Stross' weekly column and also enjoyed reading his book "Planet Google," the characterization above on "network effects" appears to be another significant antitrust misrepresentation coming from Google.
• May I apologize upfront to Mr. Stross, if I am incorrectly assuming that he got fed this preposterous characterization of "network effects" from Google's antitrust Pinocchio squad that has given us:
  • "Competition is just one click away;"
  • "Its too new to dominate;" and
  • "We want to be Santa Claus;" 

Given that Mr. Stross' article is trying to make the case that Facebook has lots of network effects and "Google does not reap the benefits of significant network effects," it appears that Google is trying to spin a new antitrust defense tall tale that Google faces lots of competition from the likes of Facebook... to create some "reasonable doubt" for upcoming antitrust jury trials that Google is not a monopoly.

Today's New York Times front page story "Google's computing power betters translation tool" by Miguel Helft spotlights that Google arguably owns and operates "the world's largest computer." The article quotes a Google  engineering VP explaining that Google's unparalleled computing power enables Google to "take approaches others can't even dream of."

Combine the world's largest computer, with the best automated translation capability for most all of the world's top languages, with reports from the front page of the Washington Post that Google proactively sought help from America's top spy agency, the NSA, for its cyber-security vulnerabilities, and it is not surprising that foreigners would be growing increasingly wary of Google and the extraordinary potential power that Google holds over them. 

So what do foreigners increasingly see Google doing?

First, they increasingly see "The United States of Google," a term Jeff Jarvis coined in his book on Google. Shortly after Google publicly accused the Chinese Government of being behind or complicit in the cyber-attacks on Google: