Microsoft decries "Google-ism" -- Cheating for the masses

Kudos to Microsoft for finally making a high profile challenge to Google's "cavalier" approach to copyright as reported in the lead story of the FT and in the WSJ today. It's about time that Microsoft figured out that a key element of Google's phenomenal success is simply that Google does not play by the same rules as other law-abiding companies.

• Google cheats. And Google justifies cheating by claiming their cheating benefits the masses.  
• Most recognize this twisted morality as "the ends justify the means."
• Google's motto is the double negative "don't be evil."
• Google has adopted an almost messianic mission to liberate all the world's information from the bondages of private ownership for the benefit of the masses.
• Specifically, "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
• Google self-deputized itself for this world mission.

Under what authority does Google operate in carrying out its corporate mission?

• Does Google respect U.S. property law? International law? Common law?
• Or does Google-ism redefine these pedestrian legal restrictions of small-minded people and declare to the world that information is free and should be universally accessible to all people?  

Google cheats. and cheating is core to Google's long term business model. Let's review the evidence of Google's cheating:

• A brilliant New York Times expose called "We're Google. So sue us" explained that there were three different types of propety owners suing Google for three different types of theft of property:
• Newspapers groups suing over use of headlines and excerpts without persmission, a European court has recently busted Google on this; 
• Book publishers and authors are suing over Google's copying of all books -- the subject Microsoft was complaining about today;
• And trademark owners are suing over not getting compesation for Google making money off selling their trademarks as keywords.
• The Wall Street recently reported that Google was alleged to be aiding and abetting the piracy of movies by promoting and profiting from illegal download sites. 
• The Investors Business Daily reported recently that Click Forensics, reported that 14.2 % of all searches were fraudulent.
• Viacom and NBC have demanded that Google remove from YouTube hundreds of thousands of illegal video clips that Viacom and NBC own and are not getting any compensation from by YouTube.
• By leading and bankrolling the fight for net neutrality legislation of broadband providers, Google is cheating again, trying to get the government to prohibit broadband competition to Google based on zero evidence of harm and only unsubstantiated and baseless allegations.
• As Google approaches 50% market share of the search market, their increasing global bottleneck gateway to the Internet, will put under closer scrutiny many of their practices of buying share anti-competitively.

 Google defends its cheating by claiming that the "common good" that they create for the information-starved masses more than compensates for any harm to the property rights of big bad businesses, and people who charge too much for their content.

• Google also justifies its behavior by saying that they are willing to share the ad search spoils of the theft with the victims. So noble. It's not payola if it's for a good cause, is it?

Why does Google cheat? Because to date, cheating has helped make them a $135b company and it offers the best path to maintain its search dominance.

Why does Google try to have more content available (legally or illegally obtained) than any other search engine? Becuase they know the key to maintaining their search share dominance is to search more information than any other search engine. It really is pretty simple.

Bottom line: Google cheats.