You are here February 2010
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2010-02-01 09:56
At core the FCC's contemplation of reclassifying, or effectively treating, unregulated broadband info services as regulated telecom services, would be tantamount to the FCC declaring "eminent domain" over private broadband providers, i.e. justifying a government takings of private property for public uses, but doing so "without just compensation" or any statutory authority.
- The U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment requires: "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
A gaping missing element in all the FCC's discussions of all the new "public uses" it envisions for broadband in its pending National Broadband Plan and its proposed preemptive Open Internet regulations is any consideration at all of the potential hundreds of billions of dollars of un-budgeted liability to the U.S. Treasury that could result from the takings of private network property without just compensation -- at a time of skyrocketing trillion dollar Federal budget deficits and rapidly mounting public debt.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2010-02-02 12:34
In the last year, Google has taken almost a third of the search revenue market share that they did not have before -- per recent company reports.
- In other words, Google's search revenue share increased from 90% in 4Q08 to 93% in 4Q09.
- To understand the math, supporting numbers,and links behind this estimate see the end of this post.
Google's 4Q09 earnings release also shows Google is exercising its market pricing power at the expense of web publishers by reducing the revenue share percentage shared with web publishers (i.e. raising prices) because web publishers have no where else to go; please see the illuminating analysis by Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration blog who deserves credit for this important insight.
- Not only does his analysis show that the revenue Google shares with its web publisher "partners" is going down from 75% at the beginning of 2009 to 72.1% at the end of 2009, these percentages actually understate the price increases imposed upon web publishers because the data masks that the total numbers involve more publishers getting relatively smaller pieces of the overall pie.
So what are the takeaways here?
First, Google is indeed a monopoly and only growing more dominant quickly.
Second, Google is abusing that dominance by raising prices on web publishers that have no real competitive alternative.
Third, these facts make it more likely that:
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2010-02-03 13:00
Most have missed that there's a big antitrust showdown happening this week.
- February 4th, the DOJ must file a second round of comments on the Google Book Settlement 2.0 with Federal District Court Judge Chin, after Google almost completely ignored DOJ's substantial legal objections in its Book Settlement 2.0 revision.
The Google-DOJ showdown in a nutshell:
- The DOJ's 9-18-09 Statement or Interest made clear DOJ believes the settlement is likely illegal under three completely different bodies of law (class action, copyright and antitrust), and also may be per se illegal in multiple different ways. (analysis here.)
- Google and the other parties, in their 2.0 revision of the Book Settlement, almost completely ignored the DOJ's stated legal concerns.
- If Google and the parties do not address the DOJ's concerns in advance of the DOJ's second statement of interest filing due February 4th, the DOJ will be thrust into law enforcement mode.
This is a big deal.
- The DOJ has drawn a line in the sand that the Google Book Settlement as configured is illegal and anticompetitive.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2010-02-04 10:45
There's new evidence from Google itself, that Google's search results are not neutral, as Google has long publicly represented them to be, and as Google expects everyone on the Open Internet to be.
- (Kudos to famed trustbuster Gary Reback for unearthing the core information that I spotlight in this post; it is from Mr. Reback's friend-of-the-court brief for the Open Book Alliance, which opposes the Google Book Settlement. Don't miss pages 14-16.)
Google now admits that its search results are not neutral despite longstanding public representations to the contrary.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2010-02-04 12:44
Ellen Nakashima may have a career-making scoop with her front page Washington Post investigative reporting piece: "Google to enlist NSA to help ward off cyberattacks."
- As Publisher of the Google watchdog site, www.GoogleMonitor.com, I can't say I am surprised about a Google-NSA connection, especially given that over the last year my PrecursorBlog has posted:
- An 18-part "Privacy vs. Publicacy" series;
- A 6-part "Security is Google's Achilles Heel" series; and
- A 16-part "The Open Internet's Growing Security Problem" series.
Ms. Nakeshima's revelation that Google sought out NSA's help shortly after it suffered massive cyber-attacks, apparently from China, opens a Pandorra's Box of privacy issues given that Google's aggressive "publicacy" (anti-privacy) business model, policies and practices have shown little respect for people's privacy in practice over the last decade.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2010-02-05 15:24
While Google may be slowly losing the legal battle over the amended Google Book Settlement Agreement, the protracted legal process and Google's political "slow rolling" of the broader process are enabling Google to win the much larger marketplace war for global dominance over digital content and distribution.
- From a big picture perspective, Google is cleverly "playing" and slow rolling both rights holders and the DOJ because Google understands that time is on Google's side, not the side of rights holders or the Government.
- Google's market dominance is only growing and becoming more irreversible, and copyrighted material is only being devalued as long as Google is the only entity that can copy it without permission and currently commercialize it for themselves via search without any compensation to rights holders.
Takeaway #1: DOJ still strongly objects to the proposed amended settlement (ASA).
In the DOJ's latest statement of interest to the court, the DOJ continues to strongly object that the ASA violates three bodies of law: class action, copyright and antitrust. Key opposition quotes:
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2010-02-08 12:44
FreePress continues to make its own case in its own words that it is a radical political group with a radical political agenda, not a mainstream consumer or public interest group like they publicly claim to be.
FreePress' co-founder Mr. Robert McChesney, in a February 4, 2010, radio interview reminds everyone how radical a political group FreePress is.
Robert McChesney: "If we’re going to have journalism in this country, it’s going to require that there be public subsidies to create an independent, uncensored, nonprofit, non-commercial news media sector.”
- Government is the source of an independent media?
- Free enterprise has no role in a free press?
Robert McChesney: "Right now, the phone and cable companies are putting a full court press on in Washington to try and get net neutrality eliminated as a policy meaning they would be able to privatize the Internet.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2010-02-09 19:48
Google[-AdMob] has come up with another "we think everyone is stupid" defense of Google's anticompetitive behavior: "It's too new to be dominated."
- This new Pinocchio antitrust defense nicely complements its previous grand deception that "competition is one click away," and its previous insult to everyone's intelligence that scale is not important to search.
Google Spokesperson Adam Kovacevich [and AdMob's CEO Omar Hamoui set] up a new "straw man" antitrust problem, easily knock it down, and then presto! conclude Google's acquisition of AdMob is not anticompetitive. From James Temple's San Francisco Chronicle piece:
- "Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich stressed that mobile advertising remains highly fragmented, with more than a dozen networks like AdMob. ..."
- [AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui] "did say that ... antitrust critics misunderstand the online search industry, and that he's confident regulators will approve the deal once they grasp the nuances of the nascent sector.
- "We do display advertising on mobile, which is not an area that Google (or) anyone has dominated," he said. "It's too new to be dominated."
The deception here is three fold:
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2010-02-10 11:59
The Wall Street Journal reports that FCC Chairman Genachowski told them:
- “I don’t see any circumstances where we’d take steps to regulate the Internet itself,” Genachowski said Tuesday, during a meeting with Wall Street Journal reporters and editors. “I’ve been clear repeatedly that we’re not going to regulate the Internet.”
The big open question now is what exactly is "the Internet itself" to which the FCC Chairman is referring?
- Is FCC Chairman Genachowski's definition of "the Internet" compatible with Congress' definition of "the Internet" in Section 230(f)(1) of the 1996 Telecom Act?
- "The term 'Internet' means the international computer network of both Federal and non-Federal interoperable packet switched data networks.”
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2010-02-10 15:07
Google announced it plans to enter the competitive broadband market and will build out what it calls an "ultra-fast" fiber broadband network that would be available to 50,000 Americans, 500,000 at most.
Given that the purpose of my new watchdog site www.GoogleMonitor.com is making Google more transparent and accountable -- I offer some pertinent questions people may want to ask Google about its new high-profile broadband plans.
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