Google

Just learned that the Senate Judiciary SubCommittee on Antitrust has scheduled a hearing on the Google-Yahoo agreement for Tuesday July 15th, at 10:30 am.

• "The Senate Committee on the Judiciary has scheduled a hearing before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights on “The Google-Yahoo Agreement and the Future of Internet Advertising” for Tuesday, July 15, 2008, at 10:30 a.m. in Room 226 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building. Chairman Kohl will preside. By order of the Chairman."

The House Judiciary Committee is expected to have a hearing that same afternoon on the Google-Yahoo deal, Internet competition and privacy.

This post documents the pile of evidence that Google just gives lip service to privacy matters.

• A few days ago, Google quietly and begrudgingly complied with California privacy law by putting a privacy link on its home page. Kudos to Saul Hansell's New York Times blog which spotlighted Google's privacy intransigence.

I will analyze Google's privacy policies to show why it was no fluke that privacy watchdog, Privacy International ranked Google worst in its world survey on privacy and called Google "hostile to privacy."

First, consider the way that Google finally posted its privacy link on its home page. While it may now be in compliance technically, it sure isn't embracing the letter or the spirit of privacy law. 

We learn from the AP that J.Edgar Google can indeed track what you are individually watching on YouTube.

Where's the free speech outrage when Google, the Internet's Ultimate gatekeeper, blocks free speech on the Internet in clear violation of the FCC's net neutrality principles?

• Many bloggers "received a notice from Google last week saying that their sites had been identified as potential “spam” blogs. “You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog,” the Google e-mail read" per the New York Times Bits blog by Miguel Helft.      

Google's well-known dominant share of the search market makes Google the Internet's primary gatekeeper and self-appointed organizer of the world's information. As I have written repeatedly, Google has more unaccountable power over the world's information than any entity in the world, see here, and here.

A new article/study by Harvard Business School Professor Anita Elberse challenges the validity of the Silicon Valley mantra/theory that the Internet created a new "long tail" of demand for niche products that would ultimately undermine and overwhelm the offline trend towards "big hits."  

eBay was just found guilty, again, of being a "fence" for counterfeit goods, but nevertheless remains unrepentant vowing to fight against "uncompetitive commercial practices at the expense of consumer choice."

Kudos to Danny Dover's tremendous seomoz.org post: "The evil side of Google? Exploring Google's user data collection" where he comprehensively assembles all the types of personally-sensitive-information that Google routinely collects on Internet and Google users.

• Mr. Dover also exhibits exceptional clarity of thought in describing Google as "first and foremost a data company" despite conventional wisdom that describes Google as a search engine company or despite Google's description of themselves...as a technology company. 

Why is J. Edgar Hoover/J. Edgar Google an apt analogy? 

Kudos to Jim Harper of Tech Liberation Front for eliciting a comment from Google's Vint Cerf on Mr. Cerf's public ruminations in favor of 'nationalizing the Internet'  which was reported first on TechCrunch and which prompted me to post why nationalizing the Internet was such a horrible idea. 

While claiming his comment:  "Should the Internet be owned and maintained by the government, just like the highways?" -- was taken out of context -- Google's Mr. Cerf essentially repeats in his comment to Jim Harper's post -- the thrust of the thinking that has created the bruhaha:

Google's Internet Evangelist, Vint Cerf recently asked publicly: "Should the Internet be owned and maintained by the government, just like the highways?" according to a post by Erick Schonfeld on TechCrunch. 

• Since the Government neither owns or maintains the Internet today, Google may have much grander plans for 'nationalizing the Internet' than anybody appreciated.
• Maybe we should take Google's CEO Eric Schmidt much more seriously when he declares: "The goal of the company is not to monetize anything," "The goal is to change the world -- and monetization is a technique to do that."  

Let's dissect how radical and destructive Google's notions for nationalizing the Internet are.

It's taken the Google-led neutralism movement two years to learn, and get on board with, what the broadband industry has been saying all along -- that Americans want broadband deployed soonest, and they want competitive broadband choice.

• That's the real problem that the broadband industry and market forces have been steadily and successfully resolving in the marketplace over the last several years. 

It seems the neutralism movement may have learned that focusing on their manufactured net neutrality problem, and fear-mongering on threats to free speech -- could only take them so far politically.