Fraud

The SEC/CFTC report on the May 6th "Flash Crash" helps confirm that automated index trading technology was a contributing cause of the 2008 Financial Crisis and why recent financial reforms are not enough to address the ongoing destructive systemic vulnerability that automated index trading technology increasingly poses for financial markets going forward.

Ever wonder why the net neutrality issue can't be resolved, despite all the many earnest efforts, negotiations, and compromises to resolve it over the last four years?

• The simple reason is that FreePress -- the head net neutrality activist -- does not want to resolve net neutrality; every time there is a real effort to resolve the issue, FreePress does everything in their power to blow up any prospect for resolution.
• The one constant in the Net neutrality debate over the last four years has been FreePress’ fierce opposition to any real resolution, because FreePress wants the opposite -- revolution.

Before I recount FreePress’ ignominious longstanding record of opposing resolution of net neutrality, it is important to understand why FreePress is such a singularly destructive, and not a constructive, force in the net neutrality debate.

In another Google fit of no-self-awareness, Google has launched a new web tool that they call the "transparency report" in order to promote transparency as "a deterrent to censorship," per a Google spokeswoman in the NYT's Bits Blog.

While I applaud the tool and Google's effort to promote transparency as a deterrent to censorship, the effort appears disingenuous because of Google's double standard that others must submit to transparency, but not Google.

Google's tool will have "a map that shows every time a government has asked Google to take down or hand over information, and what percentage of the time Google has complied," per the NYT's Bits Blog."

If transparency is good:

(Don't miss the eye-opening numbers at the end of this post.)

I am testifying tomorrow before the House Judiciary Competition Subcommittee hearing on "Competition in the Evolving Digital Marketplace."

• My written testimony, with a one-page summary, is here.
• In addition, to talking generally about the evolving digital marketplace, I focus specifically on "The Main Antitrust Event -- Googleopoly."
  • My testimony includes my most recent Google antitrust research released Monday as an attachment: Googleopoly VI Seeing the Big Picture -- How Google Monopolizes Consumer Internet Media.

The other witnesses I have heard that are testifying are: Ed Black of CCIA, Morgan Reed of ACT, Mark Cooper of Consumer Federation, and Geoff Mannes of Lewis and Clarke Law School.

It is a particularly timely hearing given Google's pending acquisition of ITA Software, which is under review at the DOJ, and which is a quintessential example of how Google exploits the soft underbelly of antitrust enforcement to buy its way to monopoly power in vertical markets like travel. My testimony attachment explains how Google already bought its way to a Internet video monopoly via its acquisitions and integration of YouTube, DoubleClick, and AdMob.

The link is here to: "Googleopoly VI -- How Google is Monopolizing Consumer Internet Media and Threatening a Price Deflationary Spiral and Major Job Losses in a Trillion Dollar Sector" -- It is a 41 page PowerPoint presentation with 18 pages of pictorial analysis.

Below is the Executive Summary: (The PDF link is here.)

Executive Summary

Googleopoly VI – Seeing the Big Picture: How Google is Monopolizing Consumer Internet Media

And Threatening a Price Deflationary Spiral & Major Job Losses in a $Trillion Sector

By Scott Cleland* President of Precursor LLC, September 13, 2010

Could Google Instant turn out to be like Coca Cola's huge "New Coke" fiasco when Coke presumed they knew better what people wanted than people did?

To follow up my previous post... how does the eye-blurring screen flashing of Google Instant square with Google's signature pledge of screen simplicity and spartan-ness?

It will be interesting to see if anyone does the equivalent of a Google Instant "taste test" to poll people to see if they find Google Instant search better? simple? distracting?

After New Coke came out, the press had a field day doing taste tests showing that most people liked classic coke better...

Seems like trying to tell people that Google knows better what they are searching for -- than they do -- is a new level of goobris...

Seems Google thinks people are all alike and sheep who will go where they are steered.

Google's claim that presenting search results faster with Google Instant -- does not affect advertising, user search behavior or user-click-throughs -- does not ring true.

First, how is Google Instant not push-advertising?

In one of Google's worst misrepresentations about privacy to date, Google's Head of Product Development for Google Enterprise, Matt Glotzbach, told the FT that Google did not believe that its new gmail feature -- that ranks emails automatically based on what Google's algorithm judges are the most important emails to be read first -- would raise any privacy concerns. "We're not creating any new information, we're leveraging information that is already there."

Unbelievable. This is grossly deceptive and untrue.

• Google is claiming that new Google-created information analysis with sophisticated conclusions about importance and urgency, is "not creating any new information?"
• How can Google claim this additional feature as an innovation or as new, if it is not substantially "new information" that Google is providing and using? Their logic is circular.
• And under what warped sense of privacy does the notion of opening, reading, analyzing, and judging the importance of people's private electronic mail without their permission -- not raise "any privacy concerns!?"

By any measure this is what I would call Google's "Deep Tracking Inspection."

Google has purged Google Places of all Yelp local business reviews in Google Places -- per TechCrunch: "It is confirmed, Google has changed the classification of Yelp's reviews, according to a Google spokesperson. Until further notice, don't expect to find Yelp in the "reviews" section..."

To help you better picture how Google leverages its search advertising monopoly via anti-competitive search discrimination in favor of Google information, products and services... and to better connect Google's monopolization strategy with the myriad of current Google actions to embrace and extend its monopoly... please see this one-page chart/PDF: "Google-opolization Through Anti-competitive Search Discrimination." 

For those who really want to understand Google's strategy and how it all fits together, please read and study this one-page chart/PDF, because much valuable work and insight has gone into providing everyone with a big picture conceptualization of Google's monopolization of digital information distribution and the Internet itself.

• The purpose of the one-page chart is to flesh out the skeletal understanding that many have about Google and its anti-competitive actions.
• While the chart is visually packed with information that many may find difficult to unpack or digest, the chart itself is an apt metaphor for both how extensive and powerful Google's monopolization strategy is,  and also how difficult it is for all of us to get our head around all the Google information, products and services Google uses to reinforce and extend its un-precedented market power over much of the world's digital information economy.

Please contact me with any ideas of how to make this more clear or if there is anything I have missed -- this is a work in progress.

***