Google

The New York Times in it's Sunday editorial: "Joe Lieberman, Would-Be Censor" needs to go back to school on what is "constitutionally protected free speech," because they obviously don't understand the full Constitution or context.  

• The brouhaha here is that Senate Homeland Security Chairman wrote a letter to Google-YouTube requesting that they take down terrorist content "intended to encourage violence against the West." (My first post on this is here.)
• Almost immediately, Google-YouTube essentially stiff-armed the Senate Homeland Security Committee in a blog post that said no to most of their request. (My second post on this is here.)

I suggest the New York Times editorial board and Google-YouTube go back to the Constitution, which importantly protects freedom of speech in the First Amendment, but also makes the Supreme Court in Article III, the essential final arbiter of what the Constitution says and means in everyday life -- not the New York Times or Google-YouTube authority-wannabes.

Please read the brief and to the point editorial in the Las Vegas Review Journal on Net neutrality. They understand its a solution in search of a problem.

Microsoft's resumed interest in Yahoo's search business, suggests that Yahoo is close to outsourcing some of its search to Google. The antitrust implications of the world's #1 and #3 online advertising competitors, Google and Microsoft, fighting over the #2 competitor, Yahoo, has finally attracted serious media attention.

• A Financial Times editorial: "Search for a rival" asks: "How do you spell Googlopoly?" (I spelled it with an 'e' in my www.googleopoly.net Google-Doubleclick analysis and Senate testimony.)
  • The FT: "Any deal that lets Google supply part of Yahoo’s search advertising, however it is dressed up, must be bad for competition." 
• Today the New York Times', Steve Lohr, with contributions from Miguel Helft, produced the most in-depth reporting to date of the antitrust issues surrounding a Google-Yahoo search partnership: "Google Says It Will Defend Competitive Rationale of a Yahoo Deal."  

Now that the antitrust implications of this issue are beginning to get heightened media scrutiny, let me lay out my case of why a new Google-Yahoo search partnership is anti-competitive collusion and not benign collaboration. 

First, one must look at the competitive impact of a Google-Yahoo partnership.

When I blogged yesterday wondering how long it would take Google to fully respond to Senate Homeland Security Chairman Lieberman's request for YouTube to pull down "Internet video content produced by terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda", even I didn't think Google-YouTube would respond so immediately and uncooperatively to Chairman Lieberman.    

Google-YouTube's response is remarkable because the United State's final arbiter of what is constituionally-protected free speech, The United States Supreme Court, just handed down a new ruling on free speech on Monday that further limited harmful free speech in its United States v. Williams decision. That decision concerned free speech limitations involving the pandering and soliciting of child pornography.

Given that Google began offering online personal health records to the public yesterday, I thought it would be timely and helpful to repost in its entirety a previous post of mine from February 21, 2008 on why Google being in the business of storing personal health records is a really bad joke.

• The post has over twenty useful and illuminating links, and many of them contain mainstream documents that underscore why the public should be extremely wary about entrusting Google with its most intimate, private and personal information.

Below is my 2-21-2008 post in its entirety -- if you missed it, or care about this issue, it's a online privacy must-read post: 

AP reports "Google to Store Patient's Health Records." Let's count the reasons why Google storing Americans' private health records is a really bad joke.

Senate Homeland Security Chairman Joe Lieberman "Monday called on Google to remove Internet video content produced by terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. The videos – readily available on YouTube –show assassinations, deaths of U.S. soldiers and civilians, weapons training, incendiary speeches by al-Qaeda leadership, and other material intended to encourage violence against the West."

• This link includes the Chairman's press release and the Committee's Monday letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
  • (An interesting historical sub-text to this letter, that is worth mentioning, is that in 2000, Senator Lieberman was the Vice Presidential running mate of current Google Senior Advisor Al Gore, a former Vice President of the U.S.)

I link to this Senator Lieberman announcement because it will be telling how Google responds to this reasonable request from Homeland Security oversight authorities, given that Google is the funding patron and well recognized corporate leader of the "net neutrality" movement that has branded net neutrality as the "First Amendment of the Internet." (Never mind that the Internet has never had a constitution to amend.)

Remarkably, with all the real and pressing problems in the country, the New York Times Editorial Page wastes ink pushing a special interest potential problem, net neutrality, in its editorial today: "Democracy and the Web."

The new 2008 Internet Advertising Revenue report just came out from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

It has U.S. Internet advertising revenues for 2007 at $21.2b, up an impressive 26% from 2006 revenues of $16.9b, but nowhere near as impressive as Google's 56% overall revenue growth in 2007. 

With the pending Google-Yahoo outsourcing pact reportedly being negotiated, I thought it might be iluminating or instructive to see what share of U.S. Internet advertising revenues Google and Yahoo each have, and what they would have on a combined basis. 

• Given that Google's 2007 U.S. revenues were ~$8.9b that would be about 42% of all U.S. advertising of $21.2b.
• Given that Yahoo's 2007 U.S. revenues were ~$4.7b that would be about 22% of all U.S. advertising revenues of $21.2b.
• That would put Google and Yahoo's combined Internet advertising revenue shares at 64% that the "partnership" would collectively control. 

At a minimum, the domination of these two players in the U.S. Internet advertising market, combined with Google's incredible momentum in taking share from all its competitors signalling powerful network effects, must concern both the DOJ and FTC.

If Google and Yahoo partner to not compete as fully as they did before... where is competition going to come from? 

The 2008 World Competitiveness Yearbook just came out and the U.S. is ranked #1 in world competitiveness again -- for the fourteenth year in a row.

• This ranking by the Swiss IMD is the third major, world-respected, independent ranking that concluded the U.S. is not falling behind the rest of the world in competitiveness.
• These three different independent assessments are in stark contrast to broadband critics' call for abandonment of free-market competition policies in favor of a more regulatory broadband industrial policy. 
  • In November 2007, the U.S. ranked #1 in the World Economic Forum's Global competitiveness Report for 2007-2008.
  • Last year, the Economist Intelligence Unit's latest Global Digital Rankings had the U.S. tied for second in the world.

Bottom line: Pro net neutrality and pro-regulation proponents love to jump on isolated data or studies like the OECD broadband rankings to justify a reversal of free-market competition policies in favor of more command and control government industrial policies.

However, facts are pesky things.

With respect and affection to the memory of the late great Dr. Seuss.... 

Googlehoo mocks all the boo hoos over their ballyhooed Googlehoo coup.

Get a clue.

Googlehoo pooh-poohs a collusive coup between their crews.

It's no glue to screw you.

But, who knew it would be true, that Googlehoo would rue, that Justice could see through, Googlehoo's collusion boo-boo, and eventually sue?

Can we construe Mr. Icahn's Yahoo debut, and shareholder kung fu, as a rejection of the Googlehoo view?

Will Yahoo bid Googlehoo adieu, overcome the Microsoft taboo, and renew the review of the Microsoft view?