Online Privacy

Google's oft-stated goal to "change the world" and its famed mission to centralize all of the world's information to make it universally accessible, self-appoints Google to be the world's omni-information gatekeeper, distributor, librarian, publisher, editor, programmer, and broadcaster.

In building its Googleopoly, Google represented itself to everyone as unbiased and neutral in order to gain everyone's trust.

A core concern with Google's centralized information power and opaque black box system is that Google has the unaccountable power and constant opportunity to decide what information people around the world access, and also to decide what information Google does not want them to find.

Today in Politico's top story "Tech War: Google vs Microsoft" by Elizabeth Wasserman, I was quoted saying: "It's scary that the monopoly information access point of the world is going after voices of dissent."

• What do I mean about going after dissenters?
  • Read Brian Deagon's Investors Business Daily 12-10 piece "When Analysts Look Over Their Shoulders," which chronicles how the Google Dissent Police bullies the press to not talk with, or quote, Google critics they don't like.

If ever there was a prime example of "regulatory dissonance" it would be:

• An Administration engaging in a high-profile campaign to promote regulatory restraint to avoid and fix "burdensome regulations" (in an Executive Order, in the State of the Union, and in a Presidential Speech at the Chamber of Commerce in the span of two weeks), and
• The recent hiring of FreePress Chairman Tim Wu as a senior policy advisor at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
  • (FreePress is well-known as the single most radical anti-capitalist, anti-property, hyper-regulatory activist group in D.C., and
  • Tim Wu is well known for proposing sweeping preemptive regulation of competitive industries with no proof of a regulatory problem -- in pushing for preemptive net neutrality regulations that culminated in the FCC's Open Internet Order, and for preemptive "Carterfone" wireless regulations of the FCC's 700 MHz auctions.)

Has Google shifted its legal strategy from its scorched earth legal tactics to more brand-friendly 'Settlements 'R' Us' political tactics?

• And is Google politically ramping up its lobbying against "search regulation" to try and minimize the restrictions it has to abide by in order to settle the phalanx of serious law enforcement investigations and lawsuits it is facing on antitrust, privacy and intellectual property?

I. There is emerging evidence that Google may be in settlement court-regulation-submission mode.

The company that has copied all the world's information on its servers without permission and has a mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," ironically has decided to be publicly indignant about the alleged copying of its public search information.

• It is the supreme irony that "glass-house Google" has accused Microsoft of copying Google's public search results.
  • In a blog post Google shared its purpose behind its stone-throwing accusation: "...to those who have asked what we want out of this, the answer is simple: we'd like for this practice to stop."

It pathetically ironic that Google can comprehend that it does not like to have its own claimed private or proprietary information copied and made accessible to the world for free, but Google cannot comprehend why anyone else would not like Google to copy their private or proprietary information without permission and make it available to the world for free.

Let's review all of the other entities who like Google would "like for this practice to stop" -- by Google.

Could Google now possibly better understand why:

Skyhook Wireless' anticompetitive complaints are to Google's antitrust problems what Netscape's complaints were to DOJ's anti-monopolization case against Microsoft -- i.e. the most blatant, understandable, and strategically-important example of abusing monopoly power to monopolize a linchpin technology in order to extend the monopoly into other strategic markets.

• Simply, Skyhook Wireless is the poster child victim of Google monopoly abuse.

I.  Why is Skyhook-Google analogous to  Netscape-Microsoft ?

Of all the many claims of anti-competitive behavior against Google that I have reviewed over the last four years, I believe the Skyhook complaints are the charges that Google should be most worried about and that the DOJ/EU should be most interested in.

It is stunning that Google's decision to side with Julian Assange's Wikileaks and make all the stolen secret, private and proprietary Wikileaks information universally accessible to the world via Google search, has gotten virtually no media attention, given the:

• International carnage and controversy caused by Wikileaks reprehensible actions;
• Media's broad coverage of Wikileaks;
• Google's serial disrespect for others as evidenced by its serial privacy, IP, cybersecurity, and antitrust problems around the world that have been broadly covered by the media; and
• Google is the world's leading source for accessing Wikileaks secret, private and proprietary information.

When Google's Acting CEO Eric Schmidt told the DLD media conference in Munich (as reported by Reuters):

Larry Page is very different from Eric Schmidt, consequently he will be a completely different Google CEO.

• Mr. Page is the internal hardliner and the main driving force behind Google, providing the uber-ambition, the "open" philosophy/ideology zeal, the passion-for-innovation, and the impatient, aggressive take-no-prisoners approach to most everything Google does.
• Mr. Page has always been the penultimate power, final decision-maker and driving force inside Google behind the scenes.
• Mr. Schmidt has been the co-founders' public face and very able implementer and businessman.

The biggest difference people will notice will be external relations.

First, Schmidt and Page are polar opposites when it comes to external relations.

To promote "America's free market," President Obama today ordered a government-wide review of regulations that "make our economy less competitive," in order to take us "toward a 21st century regulatory system."

Here is the case for why the FCC's December Open Internet order deserves to be atop of the Administration's regulations to review for abolition.

• (This regulatory review analysis is also highly relevant and applicable to Congress' review of the FCC order under the Congressional Review Act.)

First, the FCC's new Internet regulations violate the President's goal of a "21st century regulatory system" by applying "outdated" 19th century common carrier regulatory thinking and approaches to the previously un-regulated, and flourishing 21st century Internet. (Para 68)

Second, the FCC rules violate the President's goal of avoiding "excessive, inconsistent, and redundant regulation."

Julian Assange's reprehensible Wikileaks data breaches of secret, private and proprietary information to the web, endangering lives, diplomacy and peace, has thrust to the forefront of public debate: what are the responsible boundaries of an "Open Internet?"

• It is an especially timely debate given that the FCC is proposing an "Open Internet Order" for FCC decision on December 21st, and given that the FCC is trying to officially define what an "open Internet" is for the first time, in order to restrict what competitive broadband Internet providers can and cannot do.

It is instructive that the term "open Internet" is found nowhere in law.