In a strategically important development, three antitrust complaints were filed against Google in Germany per Bloomberg. 

The big takeaway here is Google's antitrust liabilities are clearly proliferating globally.

Since U.S. antitrust authorities already determined Google has a monopoly in search advertising and search advertising syndication as a result of the ill-fated proposed Google-Yahoo ad agreement, and since Google's market shares are higher in Europe than they are in the U.S., it was only a matter of time before antitrust cases were filed against Google in Europe.

The strategic significance of this Germany/EU development is that now both sides of the Atlantic will be focusing on Google's monopoly power and limitless ambitions to organize the world's information.

The big missing part of the policy debate over how to best ensure continuation of an open Internet, i.e. through existing policy or the FCC's proposed preemptive regulations, is what makes the Internet universal? 

The Internet is near universal because it is entirely voluntary. All of the Internet's signature elements are voluntary, not mandated by government(s).

The theft of Google's source code is the under-appreciated and under-reported new development in Google's big announcement of Google's "new approach to China" and its apparent decision to withdraw its business from China if China continues to insist that Google censor search results for in-country Chinese.  

• Google: "In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google." [Bold emphasis added]

As the first expert witness to testify before Congress on what went wrong with Enron, the worst U.S. fraud/bankruptcy ever at that time, Google's announcement that it has applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for "blanket authorization...  to make sales of electric energy, capacity and ancillary services," and for "certain exemptions" from reporting and accountability... is eerily reminiscent of Enron Broadband's disastrous efforts to bring swash-buckling, gee-whiz technology to the energy futures market over a decade ago. 

• The hair standing up on the back of my neck tells me this latest scheme by Google to become an unregulated market maker in energy services could end very badly.

What's different between Enron and Google is that Enron was an energy company that entered into the tech and energy auction businesses, whereas Google is a tech and ad-auction business entering the energy business.

Deja Vu: What's eerily similar?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:  Scott Cleland

January 12, 2010

703-217-2407

NetCompetition.org Submits Comments on FCC Open Internet NPRM

“Preserving, not reversing, competition policy, best preserves the open Internet.”

Facebook's about face on its respect for the privacy of its users is the latest evidence that there is indeed a "publicacy" movement/schoolof-thought that does not believe in user privacy because it stands in the way of their business, technology, or political model/agenda. 

Kudos to Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb who in an important-to-read NYTimes piece, "FaceBook's Zuckerberg says the age of privacy is over," took Mr. Zuckerberg to task for his "classic bait and switch" privacy policy change.

• Essentially Facebook built a ~350 million user following by representing themselves to users as respectful of users privacy, only to change their whole privacy philosophy recently to making transparency more the default.
  • Mr. Zuckerberg: "we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it." 
  • The operative statement here is that Facebook "decided" what the new privacy social norm would be, not users.

Mr. Kirkpatrick is dead on to spotlight that Facebook is claiming that users have changed their views on privacy when the reality is that Facebook wants/needs users to change their core views on privacy so that Facebook can morph its business model. 

Google unwisely chose to trumpet Apple's purchase of Quattro as evidence that the mobile advertising market is competitive -- and by implication that the Google acquisition of Admob therefore should be approved.  

First, the FTC surely remembers that Google CEO Eric Schmidt indignantly said only last year that Google and Apple were not competitors, so there was no reason for Mr. Schmidt to have to step down from Apple's board, despite an FTC antitrust investigation into potentially illegal Google-Apple inter-lockiing directorates.

News reports that the DOJ, and not the FTC, will conduct the antitrust review of the Comcast-NBCU deal is a very good development for the companies. 

First, DOJ's filing to the FCC on the National Broadband Plan just this week showed that the DOJ clearly understands that the cable industry is competitive and that DBS competition has improved innovation, content choice, and customer service in the market, and that telecom competitive entry has provided pricing pressure to the cable market as well. (See pages 15 & 16 of the DOJ filing.) 

Second, that same DOJ filing shows that DOJ rejects the radical thinking of FreePress that competition must be commodity-like to be competition and that pricing should be based on incremental costs. If the DOJ does not agree with FreePress' approach to analyzing competition in the National Broadband Plan they are unlikely to agree with FreePress' approach to analyzing competition in this Comcast-NBCU merger review. Simply, DOJ does not analyze competition and antitrust like FreePress does. DOJ is professional and driven by the facts and the law -- not politics. 

Third, the DOJ merger review process, because it is overseen by a single antitrust enforcer/prosecutor and not a commission with additional consumer protection responsibilities, is a much harder process for FreePress to politically influence/manipulate than the FTC. 

In a filing to the FCC on the National Broadband Plan, the DOJ Antitrust Division, the U.S Government's leading expert in assessing the state of competition in communications markets, implicitly rejected net neutrality proponents' core thesis of broadband market failure.

• This DOJ filing, which represents the most recent U.S. Government expert assessment of broadband competition, could make it extremely difficult for the FCC to legitimately conclude in the coming months the factual opposite --  broadband market failure.
• Without a sound factual finding of broadband market failure, it also could be extremely difficult for the FCC to legally justify preemptively mandating common-carrier like regulations on un-regulated broadband information service providers in the FCC's pending open Internet proceeding.

Only Google would think it was a good idea to have a Director of Security for Google Apps, Eran Feigenbaum, who is also a professional magician/mentalist. A ValleyWag post first spotlighted this frightening irony/bad joke. 

Let's review what a magician and mentalist does:

• Per Dictionary.com:
  • A "magician" is: "an entertainer who is skilled in producing illusion by sleight of hand, deceptive devices." 
  • A "mentalist" is: "a mind reader, psychic, or fortuneteller." 

Security is very serious business. Given that Google arguably has collected and stored more recent private information... on more people without their meaningful permission... than any entity in the world... one would think that Google would treat security as very serious business too.    

People want real security, not the illusion of security. Security is deadly serious; its not for show.

What is most disturbing about Google's judgment here is that this is not an isolated issue undermining confidence in Google's committment to security; see the other parts of the series on "Why Security is Google's Achilles Heel," to learn how this is part of a broader disturbing pattern of Google not taking security seriously.