Google News-ster, Books-ster, YouTube-ster, Android-ster -- Google's Disrespect for Property Part 13

Newspaper and magazine interests in Germany, France, and Brazil are fighting back against Google News' monetization of their headlines and property without compensation by urging lawmakers to pass laws requiring royalties or revenue sharing for ancillary copyright use of their core product news, per AP and NYT reports.

This piece supports three conclusions.

Google Official Praises "Partly Free" Regime's New Privacy Law -- Internet as Oz Series Part 4

Google's Global Privacy Counsel, Peter Fleischer, cheered Singapore in his blog for passing a "modern privacy law" as a way of denouncing the EU's "out of date" privacy law and its recent threat to enforce it against Google.

Fully exhibiting a couple of the most common Google PR traits, a lack of self-awareness and an instinct for political polarization, Mr. Fleischer effectively lectured the world that it should emulate the privacy lawmaking of a hybrid-authoritarian regime, Singapore, as he denounced and belittled the privacy lawmaking of European democracies. How Orwellian this is, to praise the politically authoritarian treatment of the Singaporean people as "modern," and to denounce the democratic concern for the individual liberties of EU citizens as "bizarre" and "out of date."

The Unique Google Privacy Problem -- My Presentation to Korean Privacy Council in Seoul

Please see my new powerpoint presentation here: "The Unique Google Privacy Problem; Why Google's Forced-Integrated Privacy Policy is So Problematic," which I presented to the Korea Council on the Protection of Personal Information in Seoul Korea this week.

Please don't miss slide 4: "Google's Monopoly Power = Unique Global Privacy Problem: Unfathomable Scale, Scope and Centralization of Private Info." It provides the latest eye-popping stats on Google's rapidly spreading dominance into video, mobile and social.

Also important not to miss are slides 9-10, which present my new conclusions about what Google's forced-integration of its privacy policy means for sovereign nations and the world at large, given the EU/CNIL's strong challenge last week to Google's privacy policy changes without user permission or opt-out option.

This analysis should be of great interest to the ~35 privacy authorities around the world which currently oppose Google's forced-integrated privacy policy (and other nations and privacy professionals as well), because it provides strong evidence, supporting rationale and conclusions to help nations address the #1 global privacy problem.

 

"Pro-trust" EU Competition Remedies for Google's Antitrust Violations

Google remains its own worst enemy in trying to resolve EU antitrust charges.

In early 2012, when Google was trying to convince EU antitrust authorities that enforcement action against Google's search practices -- preferring its own content in search ranking over competitors -- would only harm consumers and was unnecessary because competition was but "a click away" for consumers, Google announced it would consolidate 60 privacy policies without user permission or user choice to opt-out, and then did it a month later, over the EU's strong objections.

This was a flagrant strategic mistake because: first the EU prides itself for strong consumer privacy laws and privacy protections; second the EU fully-understands that consumers' privacy is the de facto currency that Google uses to propel its monopoly; and third Google's primary antitrust defense is that they are the ones that are best looking out for consumers interests and that consumers have plenty of choice.

Will Google Become SoftBank-Sprint's Silent Partner?

Like most analysts, I am not persuaded by the stated rationale and synergies SoftBank has put forth to justify its acquisition of Sprint. At bottom the deal is financial engineering: balance sheet and exchange rate arbitrage; and market timing. It appears to be a financial partnership, not the stated strategic partnership.

SoftBank hopes its shareholders will imagine that the 2013 and beyond U.S. experience of a maturing wireless smart-phone market and Sprint's late-iPhone-entrant role will somehow be analogous to SoftBank's iPhone first-mover experience in 2008 Japan. That's like asserting rock-climbing uphill is analogous with sliding downhill because they both involve hills.

Google's Top Ten Anti-Privacy Quotes -- Part 3 In Google's Own Words Series

It's timely to review Google's public attitude towards privacy, given reports that the EU officially has found legal fault with Google's big change in its privacy policy last March, in which Google forced integration of sixty previously-separate privacy policies on users without explicit user consent.

Google: in its own words:

Supreme Court likely to leash FCC to the law

In an ominous development for the FCC, the Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear the legal question of whether a Federal Court must give "Chevron deference" to an administrative agency (FCC) when an agency interprets a law in a way which could determine its own jurisdiction. I believe this presages that the Supreme Court will decide next year that regulatory agencies cannot be the effective final arbiter of their own power and jurisdiction under the law, because that constitutional power rests with Congress and the courts.

"Chevron deference" is a 1984 Supreme Court administrative law precedent that directs courts to defer to a regulatory agency's expertise in interpreting statutes directing regulatory action unless their interpretation is unreasonable.

Google offers to label Google search results to settle antitrust suit -- Don't miss the satirical version

FT just reported that Google has moved to settle antitrust charges with the EU "by offering to label information from its in-house services that are included in its search results pages..."

I am republishing below a satirical June 26th PrecursorBlog post which anticipated this exact offer of a Google labeling antirust remedy to settle antitrust charges.

  • The satirical recommendation memo from Google's lawyers to Google's CEO puts Google's munificent "labeling" offer of cooperation in perspective.

 

Google's Labeling Antitrust Remedy: "One Trick Away" -- A Satire