Conflict of Interest

The FTC is centering its Google antitrust investigation on Google's predatory search practices that anti-competitively abuse Google's dominant market power to thwart competition.

• As the dominant online information access gatekeeper, Google has unique market power over the one place online where every business needs to be able to compete in order to be found by potential customers.
• At core, Google's predatory search practices manipulate search results to anti-competitively advantage some Google content and disadvantage some competitors' content, all while misrepresenting to the public that Google's search business is unbiased and never manipulates search results.

Google's Predatory Search Practices

The FTC would not have launched this investigation if it did not believe Google has dominant market power in search advertising, and as such, has special legal obligations to not abuse its market dominance to impede competition -- market obligations that non-dominant firms do not have.

• Gaining or enjoying dominant market power or a monopoly is not illegal, but it is illegal to anti-competitively gain, maintain or extend dominant market or monopoly power.

Find an FTC-Google Antitrust Primer here that asks and answers the Top Ten Questions about:

• Google's admission it has received a subpoena and is under formal investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for antitrust violations; and
• What the FTC is likely investigating and thinking, given that the FTC cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.

This primer is based on a combination of new analysis and an update of the best of four years of Google antitrust research, which can be found at: www.Googleopoly.net.

The Top Ten Q&A are:

While the big Google antitrust news is that the FTC is about to launch a formal sweeping antitrust investigation of Google, which will play out over time almost entirely behind the scenes, the big public-facing news for Google antitrust is that Google's current CEO Larry Page and former CEO Eric Schmidt are refusing to publicly testify before the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee per reports.

There are several reasons this refusal to publicly testify is exceptionally problematic for Google.

First, Google loudly proclaims that they have done nothing wrong, that everything they do benefits users and promotes innovation, that competition is one click away, and that they have free speech rights to edit their search results as they see fit.

FreePress co-founder and collectivist ideologue, Robert McChesney, wrote his latest Internet manifesto: "The Internet's Unholy Marriage to Capitalism," in the Monthly Review - An Independent Socialist Magazine."

McChesney's collectivist and elitist manifesto warrants attention because it is widely disseminated to:

Evidence continues to mount that Google's management and supervision of its Android operating system is out-of-control when it comes to protecting privacy and security.

• Google's corporate ethos that it is better to "ask for forgiveness than permission" increasingly means Android has no privacy by design and hence less security for users by default.
• Requiring and respecting the need for permission and authorization is a bedrock truism of IT security -- and the evidence below increasingly indicates that Google has a deep aversion to that IT security truism.

Consider the growing pattern of Google's default design and behavior that maximizes collection of private information, which inherently puts users at greater security risk.

First, and profoundly disturbing, is a new TechRepublic revelation in a post by security blogger Donovan Colbert.

In setting up his new Android-based tablet, Mr. Colbert discovered that the Android operating system by default, i.e. without permission, automatically collected and implemented encrytion key passcodes to automatically gain access to private networks without the permission of the user. In Mr. Colbert's own words:

My new op-ed, "Google's Pirate Side" in the Daily Caller, about the Department of Justice's reported criminal investigation of Google's longstanding promotion of rogue pharmacy sales, despite repeated warnings from law enforcement, tells the story of how this Google scofflaw behavior is consistent with Google's pirate escapades in other areas.

• The Daily Caller op-ed is here.

Google's serial disrespect for people, privacy, property, and the rule of law are core themes of my new book: Search & Destroy Why You Can't Trust Google Inc.

• See www.SearchAndDestroyBook.com for the different ways you can buy the book.

Google's deep aversion to accountability was in full view in its blog response to the latest gmail security breach, in which Google placed most all of the blame on users and others, while largely trying to absolve Google of its responsibility and accountability in the matter as the world's largest source of private, sensitive and secret information.

Top 10 Reasons Google Has Culpability & Needs More Accountability:

My new Huffington Post op-ed: Big Brother Inc., tells the story of how Google has become a more intrusive and effective "Big Brother" than even George Orwell imagined in "Nineteen Eighty-Four."

• My Huff Post Tech post on the world's #1 blog shows how Google's 24-7-365 omni-tracking enables Google to know what you want, think, believe, say, read, write, watch, and intend to do.

Google's serial disrespect of privacy is a central theme of my new book: "Search & Destroy Why You Can't Trust Google Inc."

• See www.SearchAndDestroyBook.com for the different ways you can buy the book.

The widely reported DOJ criminal investigation into Google for promoting illegal pharmacy sales may be Google's most serious clash with Federal law enforcement to date; (even compared to Google's many previous run-ins with law enforcement chronicled in my recent Forbes op-ed.)

Why is this case is so serious?

First, this is a bonafide criminal probe involving Google promoting illegal drug sales, which could have put hundreds of thousands of U.S. consumers at serious risk of injury or death from counterfeit, harmful, or inappropriate-use drugs.

• This case involves more than fraudulent business behavior, it appears to involve criminal disregard for the health and safety of consumers for monetary gain.

Second, if reports are correct that this case also involved an official Google business decision in 2004 that Google, unlike other online advertisers, would continue to promote Canadian pharmacies that they and others knew sold drugs illegally to U.S. customers, then Google may have made a deliberate business decision to disregard the law.

With reports of the FTC's looming antitrust investigation of Google, it is highly-relevant that Google now has ~93.7% of U.S. revenue share of search advertising and that Google has taken ~26% of the search advertising revenue share that it did not have a year ago.

• Google continues to relentlessly gobble up massive search advertising revenue share from its only significant competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft (which have combined forces in search in the last year), in part because:
  • Google's relevant search revenues are 24x bigger than Yahoo's and 39x bigger that Microsoft's; and
  • Google is growing its huge search revenue base so much faster -- +27% to Yahoo's -19% and Microsoft's +14%.
    • (These revenue share calculations are relatively easy to do -- they are explained in detail at the end of this post.)

Many do not realize that antitrust authorities already believe that Google is a monopoly, because the most commonly cited market share numbers in the media are from ComScore, which tracks share of searches not search advertising revenue share.