My Network World interview with Ms. Smith, the Privacy and Security Fanatic, about: Search & Destroy Why you can't Trust Google, is here. The link to my book site is here.

The Washington Times published my op-ed on why you can't trust Google Inc., which highlights two of the main themes, privacy and property rights, of my new book: "Search & Destroy Why You Can't Trust Google Inc."

• Please see the op-ed here.
• Please see my book site here.

I've long thought there was a big untold story about Google, essentially a book all about Google, but told from a user's perspective, rather than the well-worn path of Google books told largely from Google's own paternal perspective.

• (You can buy the book, Search & Destroy Why You Can't Trust Google Inc. at www.SearchAndDestroyBook.com, Telescope Books, Amazon, Kindle, Kindle Apps, Barnes & Noble, The Nook, and The Nook Apps.)

Given that Google is the most ubiquitous, powerful and disruptive company in the world, it seemed logical to me that users, and people affected by Google, had a lot of important and fundamental questions about Google that no book had ever tried to answer in a straightforward and well-defended manner.

Like pro-regulation forces did everything they could to undermine competition policy to justify FCC net neutrality regulation last year, those same FreePress-led pro-regulation forces are focused in 2011 on trying to characterize the AT&T/T-Mobile combination as a threat to competition -- so that they can impose new regulations on AT&T that they can then try and force on the rest of the industry.

The problem is that the FreePress-led pro-regulation forces are trying to convince people of the preposterous claim that the AT&T/T-Mobile merger will reconstitute the Ma Bell Monopoly when the obvious facts are that AT&T is no longer dominant 27 years after the Bell-break-up.

The Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee hearing on the AT&T-T-Mobile merger is entitled: "The AT&T/T-Mobile Merger: Is Humpty Dumpty Being Put Back Together Again?"

Just like it was preposterous last year that the U.S. was falling behind on broadband because of insufficient competition, it is preposterous that the AT&T/T-Mobile merger will reconstitute the the Ma Bell monopoly.

How business models are aligned or not with users' privacy interests, will be spotlighted at the Senate Judiciary hearing Tuesday on "Protecting Mobile Privacy" featuring Google and Apple officials as witnesses.

• Expect the term "privacy conflict of interest" to become more common and important as companies who don't work for users, hurtle into the future increasingly tracking, analyzing and using users' private information and behavior without users' meaningful consent.

While the Senate Subcommittee on Privacy will hear from both Google and Apple witnesses on how their companies handle users' WiFi location data, their testimony will provide stark contrast in the companies' privacy conflicts of interests.

Google vs Apple concerning alignment with users' interests:

First, 97% of Google's ~$30b in annual revenues comes from advertisers, whereas ~99% of Apple's ~$87b in annual revenue comes directly from customers who buy and use Apple's products and services.

The latest debate over net neutrality regulation in the House Judiciary Committee today spotlighted for me three big fundamental questions that the FCC has still not answered.

1. If the alleged net neutrality problem the FCC claims to be trying to solve in the Open Internet Order was so incredibly urgent to put in place in December, that everyone's holiday plans at the FCC had to be disrupted, why is the publishing of the rules in the Federal Register happening at such a leisurely, anything-but-urgent, pace?
2. When the law of the land has a clear national policy bias "to promote competition and reduce regulation," how does the FCC legally justify an FCC Open Internet policy bias to promote regulation and reduce competition?
3. How can the FCC use an obviously de-regulatory, pro-competition provision of law, Section 706, to legally justify an obviously regulatory de-competition Open Internet Order?

In a remarkable admission for a senior public company executive, Google Chairman and longtime former CEO Eric Schmidt told Gigaom: "At Google, we give the impression of not managing the company, because we don't really. It sort of has its own borg-like quality if you will. It sort of just moves forward."

If the executives ultimately responsible for "managing the company" to ensure it proactively respects users' privacy, vigilantly guards against security and data breaches or property infringement, is not really "managing the company," it now makes sense why Google has so many privacy scandals, and security and property infringement problems.

Generally protecting privacy, security and property rights are not engineering goals unless company management and managers have internal control and management focus, systems, processes, and procedures to ensure they are a priority to engineering teams.

Google's lack of interest in management execution is evident in Google's:

New "smoking gun" incriminating and damaging evidence from court documents in the Skyhook vs. Google court case, likely increases Google's antitrust and privacy risk on multiple fronts. (For background on the Skyhook case see here, here.)

A must-read piece by Mike Swift of The Mercury News, details how, in May 2010 just after the WiSpy scandal broke, Google's Larry Page (who is now CEO), had an email exchange with senior executives that made clear how strategically important building a WiFi location database was to Google's Android and mobile strategy.

• This new "smoking gun" evidence has very broad and serious implications for many different antitrust and privacy investigations into Google because it shows Google's senior leadership were fully aware of what the company was trying to accomplish in its WiFi location database efforts, and more importantly, it confirms Google's strong business motive and intent to more aggressively to dominate WiFi location services.

Implications of the new evidence:

Antitrust:

The current media and Congressional interest in the new revelation that Google and Apple have collected WiFi location information has largely missed an exceptionally salient point -- Google and Apple have very different privacy track records stemming from their very different attitudes toward privacy.

Google Privacy Scandal #11:

As the DOJ and FCC research and sort through the competitive facts of the AT&T-T-Mobile acquisition for themselves in the months ahead, it will become clear that opponents' current rhetoric and assertions are over-the-top, exaggerated and simply not credible.

• FreePress and others' claims that this transaction will enable AT&T to "monopolize everything" and reconstitute the "Ma Bell Monopoly," are political demonization arguments devoid of evidence; they are designed to discredit U.S. competition policy, demonize free markets, and justify new FCC interventionist regulation like net neutrality, special access etc.

I.   The Relevant Facts: