Google's Rap Sheet

Compare Google's law enforcement record here with Google's public representations below to determine for yourself if they match up.

  • "We're a law abiding company." Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, June 28, 2011, in The Daily Mail.
  • "Google respects the law. We do not steal." Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, December 16, 2011, in the French paper Libération.
  • "We have always wanted Google to be a company that is deserving of great love." Google CEO Larry Page, in his 2012 Update from the CEO.
  • Google's Corporate Credo: "Don't be evil. ...This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company." per Larry Page and Sergey Brin in Google's Founders IPO letter in 2004.

 

Google's PR Strategy in Advance of the EU's Monopoly Charges -- A Satire

Confidential Memorandum:

To: All 11,342 Google PR/Spokespeople

From: Brandi Sparkles, Google PR Chief & Googlerati Whisperer

Subject: PR Statement/Strategy in Advance of EU's Monopoly Charges

We expect the European Union's antitrust authority to issue a Statement of Objections against Google shortly, which will charge Google with being a monopoly that anti-competitively ranks its own content #1 while ranking its competitors' content where few will find them.

So you can help rally the Googlerati in the media to Google's side and organize a chorus of Google adoration among the masses to make this problem blow over, we are sharing an advance copy of our public statement for public dissemination and also a copy of our confidential PR strategy for this event so you can be in the know, but remember this PR strategy is not for public distribution.

I. GooglePRBlog

Posted 4-20-12 by Brandi Sparkles, Google PR Chief

AAI's Analysis of Verizon-Cable Is Industrial Policy Not Antitrust

Reading through The American Antitrust Institute's white paper on Verizon-Cable, it is striking how little analysis is relevant to antitrust/market-competition and how it is basically a thinly-veiled tacit pitch for the DOJ and the FCC to pursue an aggressive industrial policy for the wireless industry.

The white paper presumes that because the DOJ blocked the AT&T/T-Mobile merger to preserve T-Mobile as a disruptive fourth wireless competitor, and because T-Mobile now claims it needs more spectrum, that the government should intervene somehow to effectively redirect the spectrum to T-Mobile and away from Verizon.

The huge flaw in the AAI's analysis is its central presumption, which is contrary to longstanding spectrum auction law, that the government, not market forces, should allocate spectrum. The analysis ignores that the law of the land allocates spectrum via property rights and auctions enabling the spectrum to find the party that most economically values it and has the most economic incentive to put it to productive use. The AAI's analysis appears biased against existing law in assuming that the only or primary reason that the largest wireless providers would want more spectrum would be to anti-competitively keep it from its smaller competitors, and not the obvious and real reason that they want to provide better, faster, more reliable mobile broadband service to more people in more of the country to make more money.

Objecting to Obsolete Obligations

The Washington Post's lead story today, "Landline Rules Frustrate Telecoms," puts a needed spotlight on obsolete communications law that: falsely assumes the telecom marketplace is still a monopoly with no consumer choice; and still mandates telecom companies subsidize below-cost, copper-line telephone service to households as if it were still a government-sanctioned monopoly.

A bit of history is warranted here. This century-old political arrangement -- the 1913 Kingsbury Commitment between the Federal Government and AT&T -- effectively established a government-sanctioned monopoly in return for universal telephone service to all Americans and utility rate of return regulation. In 1996, Congress reformed Federal communications policy by ending monopoly and promoting competition. Today, despite copper telephone networks losing half of their customer base to cable, wireless, VoIP, broadband and other Internet competitors (and losing most of their most profitable landline customers) many legacy telecom legal requirements, like subsidized below-cost telephone service, live on despite being obsolete. This means that in today's fiercely competitive voice service marketplace, mandating that only one provider must provide subsidized below-cost, copper-line service to potentially millions of households, is a classic un-funded mandate and a hidden, unfair, investment-distorting business tax on only one competitor.

T-Mobile to FCC: Give us a Do-Over and Verizon's Cable Spectrum Too

T-Mobile demanded last week that the FCC deny the Verizon-Cable spectrum license transfer, apparently so Deutsche Telecom/T-Mobile could get it at a deep FCC managed-market discount.

The FCC is not Deutsche Telecom/T-Mobile's personal do-over button that they can push and magically reset the marketplace to an earlier time more to their liking. All other players have made market-driven decisions and have to live with them, and so should Deutsche Telecom/T-Mobile. That's the essence of free-market competition, companies move forward or backward based on their own market-driven choices. It's not competition or a market, if those who don't like the outcome of their own market decisions, run to government for a do over and quasi-international bail-out.

Let's review how T-Mobile got to this point.

For years T-Mobile has been a seller of its spectrum; because its parent Deutsche Telecom has long wanted to exit the U.S. market because it requires more capital investment than they are willing or financially able to expend.

FreePress' Latest Net Neutrality Folly -- Pushing for Shareholder Votes

FreePress' latest net neutrality folly and political agitation is pushing the SEC to make shareholders from AT&T, Verizon and Sprint vote on inappropriate, ill-advised, and unwarranted proposed shareholder resolutions in favor of wireless net neutrality in the weeks ahead.

Let me count the ways this is a waste of time and abuse of process.

First, it inappropriately and destructively attempts to politicize non-political entities, by trying to force a public political position from non-political corporate entities, whose contractual and fiduciary responsibility to shareholders is to economically/financially grow the value and profitability of the corporation.

Second, the appropriate place to have political votes is in legitimate political processes, elections or representative votes or decisions by elected officials at the appropriate local, state, and Federal level, which enjoy the constitutional, political, and relevant authority and legitimacy to decide political issues in a meaningful, substantive and productive way.

Third, the operative authority here for shareholders, the companies' shareholder agreements, corporate charter, and bylaws, are legally grounded on a contractual agreement between the company and shareholder to protect and grow the shareholders investment in the company, not to promote extra-political positions that actually could endanger the underlying purpose of the shareholders agreements.

Evidence Google Doesn't Take Antitrust Enforcement Seriously

Two top Google executives responsible for Google's corporate acquisitions unwittingly made it clear recently that Google, as a corporate entity, does not take the risk of antitrust enforcement very seriously.

First, Marcella Butler, Google's Senior Director, Corporate Development, M&A Operations and Integration, ”who manages how new firms are integrated into Google" recently told Slate.com: “We do not slow down our integration efforts at all during that time” i.e. during a DOJ antitrust review of a major transaction.

Such a surprisingly blanket absolute statement from a Google insider who is intimately familiar with how Google actually operates during DOJ merger antitrust reviews, at a minimum raises concerns with antitrust authorities about Google's respect for, and compliance with, antitrust law.