Antitrust

Google’s recent bullying and intimidating behavior in Mississippi looks terrible and smells bad.

Consider for yourself if Google’s corporate behavior in Mississippi is how innocent people or a responsible corporation act, if they have: a clear conscience, done nothing wrong, or nothing to hide?

What is going on in Mississippi that warrants close outside attention?

Google has filed an highly-unusual, and hyper-aggressive lawsuit in federal court to try and quash a Mississippi Attorney General’s subpoena investigating Google’s alleged willful, continued, aiding and abetting of many criminal activities via advertising, given that it has found initial evidence to indicate that the criminal behavior that Google admitted to in a 2011 $500m DOJ Non-Prosecution Agreement may be continuing to this day.

Google quietly signed the U.S. Student Privacy Pledge, which makes its new privacy representations legally enforceable by the FTC and State Attorneys General.

This is a much-under-appreciated, high-risk decision for Google because its new student privacy commitments conflict with Google’s Apps for Education contracts with schools, and it is antithetical to Google’s longstanding business model, practices, and privacy track record.

Google may already be breaking this privacy promise because it is “How Google Works” -- as you will learn below.  

January 21, 2015

Memorandum For: All 2015 Davos Attendees

From: Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Davos Man, & Co-Chair of Davos 2015

Subject: Welcome & Davos 2015 Orientation Information

Google and the World Economic Forum welcome you to the first of many Davos G-1 Summits!

Google is honored to sponsor and co-opt this august event because so many European heads of state, government officials, and elites will be here for the influencing.

Our mission here will be to organize Davos’ information and make it universally accessible and useful.  

Your privacy is our highest priority. Let us reassure you that what happens in Davos, stays in Davos.

Google’s high altitude balloons and drones will provide all Davos’ Internet access. Android and Google+ will be the official Davos operating system and social networking platform respectively. And Google Translate will be the only approved translation service.

As EC law enforcement confronts Google’s uniquely extensive wrongdoing in competition, privacy/security, property, and tax matters, it is critical to examine if Google’s longstanding public promises to consumers to gain their trust are in fact true and trustworthy.

Central to law enforcement’s role in determining the extent of its Google charges, penalties and remedies is determining whether or not the infractions were willful or unintentional.

Google will bully most any entity or anyone, if it thinks it can get away with it.

Google just filed a highly-unusual, and exceptionally-aggressive, lawsuit that asks a Federal Court to issue a restraining order to preemptively shut down a broad and ongoing State Attorney Generals law enforcement investigation into Google’s alleged willful blindness to advertising and profiting from well-known, recurring, illegal activities on Google’s platform.

Below are my fun and satirical lyrics to: “We Will Track You,” which is a political parody/satire of Google’s essence -- sung to the classic tune:  “We Will Rock You,” by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band, Queen, which was written by Frank Holdgren.

• Here is the Amazon link to Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” CD for purchase for those few that are unfamiliar with this classic tune and musical.   

We Will Track You

Nothin’s private you can’t survive it

So long to privacy cause we love our piracy

We put Glass on your face

Google is arguing in the UK’s High Court that it is not subject to UK data protection law, in a privacy lawsuit that alleges Google bypassed users’ Safari privacy settings to secretly track their activity. The UK’s Information Commissioner has petitioned the court to ensure that Google is subject to UK data protection law.

In a nutshell, Google is defending its secret collection of British citizens’ private information without their knowledge or permission, by claiming British citizens have no sovereign right to sue Google for Google’s invasion of their privacy in the UK.

The Goobris here would be remarkable if it was an isolated incident.

Sadly however, this heads-or-tails, Google-wins approach is really How Google Works.

Google has no shame. Google is throwing stones at Europe while living in a glass house.

Summary

In response to a non-binding resolution passed by a 384-174 vote by the European Parliament to urge the European Commission to enforce European law against Google’s search engine >90% dominance of the European digital market, Google has advanced three self-serving, America-harming, PR narratives that the overwhelming evidence shows are untrue.

One American bad apple is spoiling it for the whole American bunch.

First, Google shamelessly plays the victim acting like it hasn’t done anything wrong worthy of European law enforcement when Google knows the evidence proves it is a serial bad actor with the worst antitrust, privacy, and property infringement rap sheet of any American multinational in Europe or the world.

The European Parliament reportedly is scheduled to vote this week on a political non-binding resolution urging the European Commission to “enforce EU competition rules decisively” against search engines, i.e. Google.

What is going on?

In a nutshell, this vote has three big effective implications. It is a political revolt and declaration of Independence from Google’s virtual hegemony. It is a rejection of former EC Vice President Almunia’s gross mishandling of the Google competition case. And it is a vote for a European “single digital market” to promote European economic growth and job creation.  

A Political Revolt & Declaration of Independence

GoogleNet is Google’s vision to leverage its proliferating dominance by offering global, near-free Internet-access, mobile connectivity, and Internet-of-Things connectivity via a global, largely-wireless, Android-based, “GoogleNet,” that is subsidized by Google’s search and search advertising dominance and by “open Internet” zero pricing of downstream Internet traffic.

A near-free global GoogleNet would be much like the Google Playbook which offers Android, Maps, YouTube, and others’ content for free globally, to disrupt and commoditize competitors in order to maintain and extend its search and search advertising dominance throughout the economy.