Google

eBay was just found guilty, again, of being a "fence" for counterfeit goods, but nevertheless remains unrepentant vowing to fight against "uncompetitive commercial practices at the expense of consumer choice."

Kudos to Danny Dover's tremendous seomoz.org post: "The evil side of Google? Exploring Google's user data collection" where he comprehensively assembles all the types of personally-sensitive-information that Google routinely collects on Internet and Google users.

• Mr. Dover also exhibits exceptional clarity of thought in describing Google as "first and foremost a data company" despite conventional wisdom that describes Google as a search engine company or despite Google's description of themselves...as a technology company. 

Why is J. Edgar Hoover/J. Edgar Google an apt analogy? 

Kudos to Jim Harper of Tech Liberation Front for eliciting a comment from Google's Vint Cerf on Mr. Cerf's public ruminations in favor of 'nationalizing the Internet'  which was reported first on TechCrunch and which prompted me to post why nationalizing the Internet was such a horrible idea. 

While claiming his comment:  "Should the Internet be owned and maintained by the government, just like the highways?" -- was taken out of context -- Google's Mr. Cerf essentially repeats in his comment to Jim Harper's post -- the thrust of the thinking that has created the bruhaha:

• "What I was getting at is that the Internet is in some ways more like the road system..."
• "What I was speculating about in the Personal Democracy Forum was whether incentives could be provided that would render the Internet more like the public road system which is open to everyone." 

I think it is pretty clear that while Mr. Cerf may not have liked the "nationalized" term TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld used in his headline to describe and denounce Mr. Cerf's thinking -- it was indeed accurate -- given how Mr. Cerf reiterated in his comment his desire for the Internet to be more like the "public road system."

Google's Internet Evangelist, Vint Cerf recently asked publicly: "Should the Internet be owned and maintained by the government, just like the highways?" according to a post by Erick Schonfeld on TechCrunch. 

• Since the Government neither owns or maintains the Internet today, Google may have much grander plans for 'nationalizing the Internet' than anybody appreciated.
• Maybe we should take Google's CEO Eric Schmidt much more seriously when he declares: "The goal of the company is not to monetize anything," "The goal is to change the world -- and monetization is a technique to do that."  

Let's dissect how radical and destructive Google's notions for nationalizing the Internet are.

First, the Government privatized the Internet from 1992-1995 in recognition that the government was totally incapable of enabling the social and commercial potential of the Internet. 

It's taken the Google-led neutralism movement two years to learn, and get on board with, what the broadband industry has been saying all along -- that Americans want broadband deployed soonest, and they want competitive broadband choice.

• That's the real problem that the broadband industry and market forces have been steadily and successfully resolving in the marketplace over the last several years. 

It seems the neutralism movement may have learned that focusing on their manufactured net neutrality problem, and fear-mongering on threats to free speech -- could only take them so far politically.

Google unfairly represents that it competitively conducts 'auctions' for keywords in AdWords; Google even has an "auction policy." However, if you look up the definition of "auction" one finds it is the public sale of property to the highest bidder. 

• The big problem here is that Google's auction does not sell property to the highest bidder.

If Google were interested in fair representation and truth in advertising, Google would represent Adwords as Google's algorithmic secret selection process or GASSP.

• That's because Adwords is a really a mysterious 'Black Box' system, that is secret, non-neutral, non-transparent, non-auditable, and non-appealable.
• Google probably thinks its "unfair" to expect the world's leading Internet advertiser to respect fair representation and truth in advertising laws...

In entering the web measurement business for free, Google is literally killing many birds with one stone -- ComScore, Nielsen, Google's third party accountability, and any notion that Google does not have a badly conflicted business model. 

The Wall Street Journal article by Emily Steel: "Google to offer tool to measure web hits" is a solid and illuminating article that starts to get at the serious conflicts of interest at work here.

First, did any of you connect the dots that Google's press leak crushed ComScore's stock today (which is down over 20% at this writing) ... the same ComScore that investors used to drive Google's stock down in 1Q08 out of fear that click rates were down with the economy?

Drake Bennett of Boston Globe did a great job of highlighting some fresh new concerns about Google's extraordinary influence that I had not heard before -- see "Stopping Google."

• Here's the conclusion of the piece in order to encourage you to read the whole article:
  • "But there is a reason "Google" has become a verb: Google has so outpaced its rivals that it has begun to look like a monopoly, a necessity where users have only one real option. And the more we come to rely on Google, the more Google may have to listen to the rest of us."

In thinking about my recent post about how Google Adwords now formally discriminate against slower-loading sites by raising their minimum bidding price, I realized that small businesses and the "long tail" are probably most hurt the most by Google's new "quality score" policy.

• As I previously explained, Google has a subjective, non-transparent, non-auditable, or non-appealable "quality score" variable whose purpose is to maximize Google's revenue -- not to award the keyword to the highest bidder.

This new Google policy discriminates most heavily against small businesses because they:

• Have relatively the least resources, time and ability to technologically redesign their website to adapt to Google's arbitrary changes; and
• Are least able to afford adapting their business model to Google's favor -- away from slower-loading display ads -- to faster-loading search ads.

Bottom line: Google is well aware that small or "long tail" businesses, for all practical purposes, have no other comparable choice for online advertising, so they believe they can safely exert their market power here with impunity. 

Pablo Palatnik, an online marketing expert, recently launched his own blog, the Palatnik Factor which I recommend; Pablo is also a contributing writer for the Search Engine Journal -- which is where I came accross his work when he wrote a dead on piece questioning "Google Adword's Quality score: affilitates worst nightmare." 

• Because of that post, I reached out to Pablo with my post: "Why a lack of openness sullies the integrity of Google's ad auctions," and he posted it with a comment.  

A couple of my recent pieces are particularly relevant to online marketers:

http://www.precursorblog.com/content/why-not-a-marketer-bill-rights-google-yahoo-cartel

http://www.precursorblog.com/content/google-adwords-not-neutral-charging-more-slow-loading-sites