It appears as if privacy is the common casualty of Facebook and Google's competition to outdo each other in forcefeeding a change in society's privacy norms.

The WSJ reported: "Facebook glitch sends email to wrong recipients." 

• If that isn't people's worst email nightmare, what is?  

  This just happens on the day that Google for the first time "has indexed content from the world's largest social network [Facebook] in its real time results" per Digital Beat.

  • Now if you/or Facebook make a mistake with Facebook settings, the world will know it.  

  Newsweek Daniel Lyons got it right in his excellent column this week: "Google's Orwell Moment: On the web, privacy has a price."

  • His conclusion is on the mark and disturbing:
    • "But what is the value of your list of friends? If it's not worth much, your membership on Facebook may be the deal of a lifetime. If it's incredibly valuable, you're getting massively ripped off. Only the techies know how much your info is worth, and they're not telling. But the fact that they'd rather get your data than your dollars tells you all you need to know."

  The takeaway here is that there is a big publicacy stampede to monetize social media web 2.0 and people's privacy is getting trampled in the process.

  ***

   

  Publicacy vs Privacy Series:

Foundem, a UK vertical search competitor to Google, documents serial anticompetitive discrimination on Google's search network, in a data-driven filing to the FCC in the FCC's Open Internet regulation proceeding.

• It is logical that the data-driven analysis in Foundem's public FCC filing is an integral part of Foundem's antitrust case against Google, which Foundem recently submitted to the EU, but which has not been released yet.
• Therefore, Foundem's FCC filing may be the best publicly available window into what the EU investigation of Google's anticompetitive practices entails.   

In essence, the Foundem filing accuses Google of monopolistic self-dealing and bundling.

Kudos to Mike Swift of the Mercury News for his important article about how Google "says the race and gender of its workforce is a trade secret that cannot be released." 

• Google and four other Silicon Valley companies opposed the paper's FOIA request for summary equal employment opportunity data, while most other companies like Cisco, Intel, and eBay complied.

This raises some relevant questions for Google.

Google's antitrust liabilities continue to grow and proliferate, even if many have not yet connected the dots to recognize this ominous and increasingly obvious pattern facing Google. 

In one of the best, most strongly-worded and serious letters to the FCC that I have read in my 18 years following FCC issues closely, the united broadband industry's letter to FCC Chairman Genachowski is simply a must-read; it explains why the FCC's serious interest in reclassifying unregulated broadband information services as regulated telecom services is among the worst and most destructive ideas the FCC has ever seriously considered.

The letter characterized Title II reclassification as:

• "a radical new direction,"
• "regulating the Internet,"
• "a profound mistake,"
• "betraying decades of bipartisan support for keeping the Internet unregulated,"
• "misguided regulatory overreach," and a
• "Pandora's Box."

A particularly strong summary statement was:

GoogleMonitor.com

For Immediate Release

February 22, 2010

Contact: Scott Cleland

703-217-2407

Media@GoogleMonitor.com

Will Google Stop Censoring Search Results in China per its Pledge?

GoogleMonitor.com Announces Google China Censorship Pledge Accountability Ticker

It appears Google Buzz' privacy fiasco has generated a different kind of "buzz" than Google had hoped for.

• Two different groups, Comedy.com and WSJ.com have created hilarious videos on Google Buzz.
  1. Don't miss Comedy.com's video "Google Threatens to kill users".  
     • (2 min 3 seconds and don't miss the ending) 
  2. Also don't miss the WSJ.com's video "You're a Bossy Pants, Google" by Peter Jeffrey.
     • (1 min 41 seconds)

If you enjoy these, there are other links to more short humorous videos on Google at the humor page of my watchdog site www.GoogleMonitor.com from The Onion, The Big Honkin, and The Vacationers among others.

Of the dozen or so humor entries at http://googlemonitor.com/content/sections/humor/ my personal favorites are:

• "Google Roommates Episode I" from the Big Honkin (3 min 3 seconds); and
• "The Google Opt-out Village" from The Onion Network (2 min 9 seconds).

  Enjoy and pass them along.

   

   

   

"U.S. energy regulators approved a request by Google Inc. to become an electricity marketer, allowing the Internet giant to buy and sell bulk power like a utility" per the WSJ.

My www.GoogleMonitor.com site will keep watch over Google on Google Energy's trading in energy derivatives because it is ripe for abuse, as I explained in my earlier post: "Google's Energy trading proposal sounds eerily like Enron's disastrous derivative scheme".

Per the WSJ: "A spokeswoman for the company has said Google has no plans to sell its energy management service or speculate in energy markets. But she acknowledged the company isn't completely sure how it will proceed."

The concern here is that Google publicly has given itself wide latitutde here to speculate in energy markets in the future... because of their statement above... and because the FERC approved in its order Feb 18th  "blanket authorization... to issue securities and assume obligations or liabilities as guarantor, indorser, surety, or otherwise in respect of any security of a another person..."

Unfortunately I have to respectfully challenge Mr. Masnick of Techdirt for his reflexive apologia of Google in blaming Google's victims for exerising their legal rights to protect themselves and to get their day in court -- in filing a class action privacy suit over Google Buzz.

• See Mr. Masnick's post: "And of course, class action lawsuit filed against Google Buzz"  

  Mr. Masnick appears to be ignoring some extremely relevant Google facts, history and serial patterns of misbehavior.

  First, Google has NO customer service!

  • Everyone knows there is no way for a Google user with a problem/concern to connect with a human being by phone or email in order to be heard.
  • Google believes personal interaction and common human courtesy is inefficient and does not scale.

  Second, Google routinely represents itself to the public as highly valuing privacy, security and users. When the record clearly shows it does not.

  •  
    • (Note: Please see my Watchdog site www.GoogleMonitor.com for copious evidence/proof of how Google does not live up to its representations and how many complaints/lawsuits there are against Google on many of the same subjects: privacy, IP, security, and antitrust.)
  • What are people supposed to do when they feel wronged or injured by Google and they can't reach Google for personal resolution? Comment on Techdirt?

  Third, Techdirt is aware, much better than most, that Google is a serial offender on privacy issues.

Kudos to Matt Turk of Digital Society for his very insightful post spotlighting how NARUC understands the need for reasonable discrimination in the real world that the FCC apparently does not understand in its proposed Open Internet regulations.

Matt Turk: "By urging a move from non-discrimination to unreasonable discrimination, they recognize that “big dumb pipes” are a model for the Internet that was abandoned years ago.  They also realize you cannot have a neutral internet if only one side of the content/access equation has to abide by those rules."

It is very important that NARUC only opposes "unreasonable discrimination."

• NARUC is closer to the real world than the FCC in understanding that there is such a thing as "reasonable" discrimination, and that despite the politically perjorative meaning of "discrimination" constantly spotlighted by net neutrality proponents, reasonable discrimination can also have many very legitimate, beneficial and worthy results that must be acknowledged, respected and even promoted.