Google's Selective Accounting of its Economic Impact

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                       

May 25, 2010

Contact:  Scott Cleland

703-217-2407

Google’s U.S. Economic Impact Analysis is a Misleading Accounting Gimmick:

“Google’s economic analysis includes all the benefits, but not all the costs”

WASHINGTON – Scott Cleland, Chairman of Netcompetition.org, released the following statement regarding Google’s release of “Google’s U.S. Economic Impact” report.  

• “Google employs selective and misleading accounting gimmicks in calculating its “total” U.S. economic impact, by including all the benefits, but not all the costs of its economic impact on the U.S. economy, competition, and American workers.”
• “Google’s PR sleight-of-hand totally ignores the destruction of revenues and jobs Google causes by abusing its market power to force content wholesale prices down to near zero for newspapers via Google News, for programmers via YouTube’s mass copyright infringement, and for authors and publishers via Google Books mass copyright infringement, to name only the most prominent Google value and job destruction examples.”
• “A real useful number would involve honest accounting of Google’s net total economic impact on the U.S. economy, competition, and jobs, all benefits minus all costs. Any honest accounting would be much smaller than the selective and inflated PR number that Google is trumpeting.”   

The link to Google’s U.S. Economic Impact Analysis is here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/googles-us-economic-impact.html

NetCompetition.org is a pro-competition e-forum representing broadband interests.  See www.netcompetition.org.

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