YouTube

Yet again, Google has violated the first rule of holes; when in a hole, stop digging.

Google is unwisely keeping the story alive that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said this to Charlie Rose on air: [Google] “took our stuff and … that was wrong. This really bothers me. I don’t see how [Larry Page] thinks you can just copy someone else’s stuff.” 

In a Google+ post to his followers, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt responded: “We typically try to avoid getting dragged into public battles with other companies. But I’ve gotten a lot of questions about Larry Ellison’s claims that Google “took [Oracle’s] stuff”.  It’s simply untrue -- and that’s not just my opinion, but the judgment of a U.S. District Court.” 

Does Google really want to engage in a broader public conversation about the truth and facts of Google’s serial disrespect for the property of others?

Please click -- here for the powerpoint presentation: "The public evidence Google violated the DOJ-Google criminal non-prosecution agreement."

Summary

In August of 2011, Google admitted criminal liability for knowingly advertising for rogue pharmacies dispensing drugs without a prescription for seven years despite repeated Government warnings to stop doing so.

To settle this criminal matter in advance of a Grand Jury proceeding, Google agreed in the DOJ-Google Criminal Non-Prosecution Agreement (NPA ) to disgorge $500m in ill-gotten revenues and to obey a two-year remediation requirement designed to deter more Google criminal activity. 

Please click here for Google-YouTube's Internet Video Distribution Dominance -- Part XII of my seven-year, Googleopoly research series. 

• This is must read for anyone interested in: Google antitrust; Google's liability for willful blindness to piracy and copyright infringement, and the legal implications of Google trying to solve its access-to-quality-video content-problem by acquisition of Dish, DirecTV or a major studio/TV network.

Google-YouTube’s Internet Video Distribution Dominance -- Part XII of Googleopoly Research Series

• Why Internet video distribution competition is substantially lessened;

• How Google-YouTube anti-competitively gained Internet video distribution dominance; &

Google is the spy tool of choice, the one stop-shop for spying, and the spymaster’s dream.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s famously quipped: “if you have something you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.” Given recent spying revelations, what Mr. Schmidt apparently means is: “if you don’t want to be spied upon, don’t use Google’s products and services.”

Why is that true? Let’s examine the top ten reasons.  

Summary

Google Inc. has a rap sheet longer than any Googler’s arm. See it here. It shows:

• 142 incidents in 13 countries and the EU, involving 6 continents;
• 34 official actions against Google: 1 criminal, 7 fraud, 4 theft, 11 antitrust, and 11 privacy;
• 6 near-record fines in 3 countries;
• 11 nations and the EU have Google under antitrust investigation;
• 11 official privacy sanctions in multiple countries;
• 12 different industries have sued Google for theft; and
• 20+ cyber-security lapses have surfaced in the last 2 years.

This evidence shows Google to be the worst corporate scofflaw in modern American history.

It is timely and relevant given that America’s Attorneys General are meeting in Boston June 18^th to discuss Google’s alleged aiding and abetting of criminal activity broadly. Google CEO Larry Page and General Counsel Kent Walker have been invited to the closed meeting to discuss the matter.

Google is the only company with a mission to organize the world’s public and private information, and it is also unique in having developed more ways, to monitor more people’s behavior, more intimately than any entity ever.

Please see this one page graphic summary to get a big picture view of the almost unimaginable scale and scope of the intimate private information that Google routinely records and analyzes. 

Since all other companies have much more narrow and focused businesses and missions than Google’s unbounded ambitions, they represent a fraction or slice of the whole public and private data pie that Google collects, stores, and analyzes.

Other than Google, only an Orwellian “Big Brother” state would aspire to collect and store indefinitely all private, intimate information on everyone online like Google is doing.

We know information is power.

The problem with Google becoming Big Brother Inc., is that if a state were to combine its state powers with Google’s unique information monopoly, unaccountability, and surveillance powers, it creates huge natural temptations for corruption and abuse in the absence of meaningful competition, strong checks and balances, and real public accountability.

Every system has a most vulnerable point, an Achilles heel. The overwhelming evidence below indicates that Google is America’s cybersecurity Achilles heel.

While America faces a plethora of serious cybersecurity vulnerabilities, Google’s unique scale, scope, tracking, and centralization puts Google alone at the pinnacle of America’s cybersecurity vulnerabilities, in a class all by itself.

Simply, hackers understand Google is by far the world’s single most-comprehensive source of intimate surveillance information on people and their behaviors, while also being the major entity that is least-committed culturally to protecting people’s security, privacy, and property.

Sometimes something is so off-base that a straight analysis is wholly insufficient and warrants satire.

Google's 60-page proposed remedy document -- or "Commitments to address the EU's antitrust concerns of search bias -- warrants satire and ridicule. 

Google’s proposed search bias remedy is no remedy. It would be worse than the status quo.

If accepted by the EU, it would legitimize and entrench Google’s 90+% dominance of search and search advertising in Europe, and make it much harder for any semblance of competition to ever take root.  

Google’s proposed search bias remedies are so preposterous one has to use metaphors, imagery and analogies to understand what is really going on and what Google is really proposing.

Please see my latest Daily Caller op-ed: "America's private video market success" here.

• It debunks Free Press' diatribe against cable to try and promote net neutrality regulation and a ban on usage-based broadband pricing.
• It is Part 16 of my broadband Internet pricing freedom research series.  

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Broadband Internet Pricing Freedom Research Series

Part 1:    Netflix' Glass House Temper Tantrum Over Broadband Usage Fees

The EU blinked. It's obvious the EU does not want a high-profile political confrontation with Google over a search monopoly abuse enforcement action.

Last May, when the Competition authorities announced they had a preliminary Statement of Objections for four monopoly abuses against Google, the EU competition authority trumpeted their preference for a settlement over enforcement action in this case, i.e. ruling Google a search monopoly guilty of monopoly abuse that warranted a material fine. In extending their public deadlines for Google three times, and then tentatively accepting the immaterial search concessions Google proposed, it is obvious the EU bent over backwards to avoid politically confronting Google.