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Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2007-07-20 13:03
I highly recommend a great ComputerWorld article: "Google's cookie expiration plan called worthless."
Google has made a big mistake thinking that web users are stupid and won't test and check their blanket assertions. Here are a couple of quotes from the great ComputerWorld article:
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"After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies," [Google's]Fleischer said.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2007-07-20 12:37
The antitrust relevance of yesterday's New York Times reported quote: " ...marketers increasingly want to combine their purchases of search and display advertising." has really quite profound implications for the pending Google-Double-Click deal.
What that quote does is zero in on what really matters to FTC antitrust authorities -- how would the transaction actually change the current competitive dynamic, or more specifically, how would the merger "substantially lessen competition," which is the legal standard for approving/disapproving mergers.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2007-07-18 18:39
Google tries to maintain that search and display advertising are separate markets and not direct competitors.
It appears Yahoo would beg to differ.
Today's New York Times reported:
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"...Yahoo recently shook up its ad sales force, combining into a single unit its search advertising and display advertising."
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"Mr. Barry said that the reorganization would probably help Yahoo in the long term, as marketers increasingly want to combine their purchases of search and display advertising." [bold added]
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2007-07-18 12:28
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2007-07-18 12:21
Please don't miss Holman Jenkin's great Wall Street Journal editorial on Google: "Sort of Evil."
I particularly like his new term for net neutrality/open access regulation: "business model chauvinism." Dead on.
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Google is lobbying for laws and regulations which will advantage their business model and further their dominance of Internet advertising, and also to "block, degrade and impair" any other business model from competing with Google.
He also points the spotlight on what Google is really doing in organizing groups to view broadband companies as the big public enemy for things they might do in the future, and how that conveniently distracts people from scrutinizing Google's own increasing dominance of online advertising and the business model of the Internet.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2007-07-17 19:12
It didn't take long for the Empire to Strike back! Shortly after the release of Googleopoly, Ed Black, President and CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which represents Google, put out a critical press release on my Googleopoly white paper entitled: "Merger Report Unconvincing."
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As I predicted on my blog this morning:"I expect to be attacked personally for my analysis and conclusions here, just like I was attacked by Bernie Ebbers and WorldCom as "the idiot Washington analyst" for having the audacity to be the only analyst in the country willing to predict, and stick to my guns, that the government would block the WorldCom-Sprint merger."
As expected they tried to discredit the messenger because they don't like the message. Standard operating procedure from my debate opponents.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2007-07-17 09:52
My detailed analysis over the last several weeks leads me to believe that the FTC is likely to block the Google-DoubleClick merger because it will enable Google to dominate online advertising and dramatically increase the opportunity for market collusion and price manipulation in the market for consumer click data, ad-performance tools, ad-brokering and ad-exchanges.
Antitrust is fact-specific and evidence-driven. To understand the true antitrust outlook for a merger one needs to become familiar with the core facts of the case. To date, media and investment coverage of this merger has been remarkably superficial.
I see three big takeaways from my white paper.
First, the more people learn about this merger the more concern they will develop.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2007-07-13 11:03
FCC Chairman Martin's surprising proposed open access/net neutrality regulations for the 700 MHz auction, threaten to broadly chill the broadband investment necessary to deliver broadband deployment to all Americans.
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Chairman Martin apparently has chosen to abandon over a decade of bipartisan free-market Internet policy and adopt a new more regulatory "managed competition" broadband policy advocated by new House Chairman Ed Markey, who has strongly praised Chairman Martin for his support for net neutrality regulation/open access.
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The real world effect of this unwarranted core policy flip flop is to introduce new and very substantial policy, legal and investment uncertainty into what had been a very stable economic growth environment.
Chairman Martin has now emphatically embraced the core economic principle of former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt's Frontline Proposal (and Frontline's Google gaggle of investors), which is that market forces will not and cannot promote sufficient "competition" so the government must regulate and "manage competition" (i.e. mandate prices, terms and conditions -- either directly or indirectly) to ensure consumer welfare.
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