Google

Google's Sr. VP Vint Cerf, took his call for effectively nationalizing America's broadband infrastructure to a new level of freedom-crushing, Big Government expropriation by calling for the forced structural separation of competitive phone and cable companies into wholesale and retail arms, per the CBC News.

Where does one begin in addressing this self-serving, outrageous and clearly socialist proposal?

First, Mr. Cerf is calling for a policy that would treat the country with the most facilities based broadband competition in the world by far... as if it were a proven monopoly guilty of monopoly abuses!

Knol, Google's newly announced online publishing service, is an ominous direct competitive threat to traditional newspaper/magazine/journal publishers, NOT a challenge to Wikipedia as many in content circles naively and wishfully think.

With the 3Q08 earnings releases by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in the last few days, DOJ antitrust investigators of the Google-Yahoo partnership now get their first fresh look at the most recent revenue and profit market shares for this market.

Saul Hansell's New York Times blog post on "The FTC Bully Pulpit on Privacy" discussing the FTC privacy chief's views on privacy, did a public service in flagging an unnecessary and problematic gap in the Federal Trade Commission's protection of Americans' privacy.

Following up on my House testimony on Internet privacy and how Google is by far the biggest threat to people's privacy, let me share some tid bits.

First, John Naughton of the Observer in the UK did a good piece: "Google is watching you. Ready for your close up?"      

In my testimony Thursday on Internet privacy before Chairman Markey's House Internet Subcommittee, I documented for Congress the detailed case of how Google, which is subject to no Federal privacy laws, is the single biggest threat to Americans' privacy today.

• The evidence assembled here shows how Google's mission and culture are hostile to privacy, how Google's unprecedented scale and scope enable a breath-taking collection of intimate "blackmail-able" information, and how Google's track record is not worthy of trust.

From my testimony:

Case Study: How Google Systematically Threatens Americans’ Privacy:

Growth: 39% YoY revenue growth on a ~$20b base, in a slowing global economy is impressive. Hats off to Google. Lots of network effects at work as Google sites revenue grew 42% YoY.

Tone: I did note the slightest whif of humility this quarter that external factors had some effect on Google's business, in stark contrast to last quarter's more bold statement that Google saw no effect of the external market or economy on Google's business.  

DoubleClick: As I suspected, CEO Schmidt said in an answer to a question, that Doubleclick was going well but that he would not break out any information -- in Google's well-established sorry-Charlie-style... no insight or guidance for you... The only thing interesting that was said about DoubleClick was indirect, in that Sergey Brin said that the big problem in display is that it is highly-fragmented." Couple that with CEO Schmidt indicating that Google was only months away fom offering a one-stop advertising solution, one can surmise that Doubleclick will indeed prove to be a material growth kicker to help Google fight off some of the natural drag of the law of large numbers.  

Below is the segment of my House testimony on Internet privacy where I list the exceptional depth and breadth of intimate (potentially blackmail-able) information that Google routinely collects and stores about you with their "unauthorized-web-surveillance" of Internet users - even users who have no idea Google is tracking/stalking them.

"Consider the depth and breadth of intimate information Google collects:

o What you search for;

• (a Ponemon Institute survey of 1,000 Google users found that 89% thought that their searches were private and 77% thought Google searches could not reveal their personal identities – wrong on both accounts.)

o Where you go on the web;

I testified this morning on Internet Privacy issues before Chairman Markey's Internet Subcommittee. My Testimony.

My message was straightforward:

Anyone interested in Google's increasing dominance or the Google-Yahoo partnership should read Andrew Orlowski's great piece in The Register: "Google the mother of antirust battles?"

• It is always helpful to get an insightful and different perspective from "across the pond."