Conflict of Interest

Ever wonder why the net neutrality issue can't be resolved, despite all the many earnest efforts, negotiations, and compromises to resolve it over the last four years?

• The simple reason is that FreePress -- the head net neutrality activist -- does not want to resolve net neutrality; every time there is a real effort to resolve the issue, FreePress does everything in their power to blow up any prospect for resolution.
• The one constant in the Net neutrality debate over the last four years has been FreePress’ fierce opposition to any real resolution, because FreePress wants the opposite -- revolution.

Before I recount FreePress’ ignominious longstanding record of opposing resolution of net neutrality, it is important to understand why FreePress is such a singularly destructive, and not a constructive, force in the net neutrality debate.

In another Google fit of no-self-awareness, Google has launched a new web tool that they call the "transparency report" in order to promote transparency as "a deterrent to censorship," per a Google spokeswoman in the NYT's Bits Blog.

While I applaud the tool and Google's effort to promote transparency as a deterrent to censorship, the effort appears disingenuous because of Google's double standard that others must submit to transparency, but not Google.

Google's tool will have "a map that shows every time a government has asked Google to take down or hand over information, and what percentage of the time Google has complied," per the NYT's Bits Blog."

If transparency is good:

In a comical defense of Google, David Balto of the Center for American Progress pleaded for the Government to not regulate Google in his HuffPo Op-ed: "Regulating Google: Searching for a solution without a problem." Let me count the ironies here.

First, Mr. Balto is attempting to shield Google behind the successful defense of the broadband industry against mandated net neutrality regulation that "net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem."

That defense works because it is true. The industry has only one official net neutrality violation that has withstood scrutiny and due process -- Madison River in 2005. Since then, the roughly 2,000 broadband networks in the U.S. have abided by the FCC's 2005 Broadband Principles and remain committed to work constructively to ensure that consumers can neutrally access and use the legal content, applications, and devices of their choice.

The link is here to: "Googleopoly VI -- How Google is Monopolizing Consumer Internet Media and Threatening a Price Deflationary Spiral and Major Job Losses in a Trillion Dollar Sector" -- It is a 41 page PowerPoint presentation with 18 pages of pictorial analysis.

Below is the Executive Summary: (The PDF link is here.)

Executive Summary

Googleopoly VI – Seeing the Big Picture: How Google is Monopolizing Consumer Internet Media

And Threatening a Price Deflationary Spiral & Major Job Losses in a $Trillion Sector

By Scott Cleland* President of Precursor LLC, September 13, 2010

Could Google Instant turn out to be like Coca Cola's huge "New Coke" fiasco when Coke presumed they knew better what people wanted than people did?

To follow up my previous post... how does the eye-blurring screen flashing of Google Instant square with Google's signature pledge of screen simplicity and spartan-ness?

It will be interesting to see if anyone does the equivalent of a Google Instant "taste test" to poll people to see if they find Google Instant search better? simple? distracting?

After New Coke came out, the press had a field day doing taste tests showing that most people liked classic coke better...

Seems like trying to tell people that Google knows better what they are searching for -- than they do -- is a new level of goobris...

Seems Google thinks people are all alike and sheep who will go where they are steered.

Google's claim that presenting search results faster with Google Instant -- does not affect advertising, user search behavior or user-click-throughs -- does not ring true.

First, how is Google Instant not push-advertising?

A spate of recent Google antitrust developments indicate there is more here than meets the eye.

First, Google, just like it cleverly discriminates in its search results to its advantage, cleverly discriminated when it announced antitrust information material to Google investors -- not when it occurred but when the least number of people would see it, according to its web analytics calculations.

In one of Google's worst misrepresentations about privacy to date, Google's Head of Product Development for Google Enterprise, Matt Glotzbach, told the FT that Google did not believe that its new gmail feature -- that ranks emails automatically based on what Google's algorithm judges are the most important emails to be read first -- would raise any privacy concerns. "We're not creating any new information, we're leveraging information that is already there."

Unbelievable. This is grossly deceptive and untrue.

• Google is claiming that new Google-created information analysis with sophisticated conclusions about importance and urgency, is "not creating any new information?"
• How can Google claim this additional feature as an innovation or as new, if it is not substantially "new information" that Google is providing and using? Their logic is circular.
• And under what warped sense of privacy does the notion of opening, reading, analyzing, and judging the importance of people's private electronic mail without their permission -- not raise "any privacy concerns!?"

By any measure this is what I would call Google's "Deep Tracking Inspection."

Google has purged Google Places of all Yelp local business reviews in Google Places -- per TechCrunch: "It is confirmed, Google has changed the classification of Yelp's reviews, according to a Google spokesperson. Until further notice, don't expect to find Yelp in the "reviews" section..."

The top U.S. spy agency for mapping announced a no-bid digital mapping contract with Google on August 19th. However, after media inquiries, the agency modified the contract's no-bid format, but made clear "the agency's intention to award the contract to Google without entertaining competitive bids" -- per a Fox News story by James Rosen.

• Wow. There are large and broad implications of this remarkable new development for: privacy, security, antitrust, Google's international business, and Government oversight.
• The fact that this was announced in late August, when precious few are paying attention, should heighten everyone's Big Brother Inc. antennae.

Has anyone in a position of authority or oversight even begun to think through the irony and stupidity of contracting out the Nation's most sensitive intelligence gathering and analysis function to a company that has: