Google's imaginary spokesmodel Brandi Sparkles explained the logic and thinking behind Google considering branding its new Social media effort and "Facebook Killer" service -- "Circles" -- in the following statement.

"After analyzing everything that everyone has ever said privately or publicly about the word "circles" in digital recorded history, Google's skynet computer decided that Google should name its secret "Facebook-killer" social media service -- drum roll please -- "Circles!!!" (Cue: The digital crowd and the media Googlerati should now roar with approval and delirium at witnessing branding perfection by artificial intelligence. Pretty cool! Pretty cool!)

Google's skynet computer liked the many connotations that spring to mind when one hears the words: "Google Circles."

Google's deep aversion to securing the permission of others before doing something that affects them is central to Google's famed "innovation without permission" ethos. Sadly, it is also the wellspring of Google's infamous privacy and security problems.

Where does Google's deep aversion to permission come from? From Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, according to their mentor Terry Winograd, in Ken Auletta's book "Googled."

• "Winograd describes his former students as impatient: 'Larry and Sergey believe if you try and get everybody on board, it will prevent things from happening. If you just do it, others will come around to realize they were attached to the old ways that were not as good.' The attitude, he said 'is a form of arrogance.'"

This week we witnessed the latest high profile example of Google's deep aversion to getting the permission of others.

A few days ago, Google announced that it remotely disabled malware-infected Android applications without the permission of 260,000 Android users who bought or downloaded infected applications from Google's app store.

Brandy Sparkles, Google's roving PR crisis manager parachuted into London last night to snuff out any dissent or questions about Google's purchase of BeatThatQuote.com, a UK price comparison site Google is buying for a reported $37m.

• Google's Brandy Sparkles, known in Google circles as the "Red Adair" of corporate PR crisis management, was called in to snuff out coverage of an impertinent, "little" SEO Book blogpost:  "Google buys BeatThatQuote, A UK comparison site violating Google's rules."
• That post chronicles how Google bought a site that employs lots of the "low quality" "cheating" SEO tactics that Google ruled are unacceptable SEO practices just last month.

After sizing up the SEOBook's charge that Google was being hypocritical in not following its own rules, Brandy Sparkles released the following statement:

"We are the Goog. We make the rules for others on the Internet and we can change them any time we want. That's the way this world works. Life is not fair and Google does not try to be.

Network World hosts a techdebate: "Net Neutrality: Needed or Not?" with dueling op-eds from NetCompetition and FreePress. Click here for the op-eds.

• I argue for NetCompetition.org that: "net neutrality regulation is unnecessary, unjustified, unwarranted, unproductive, unwise, unpopular, and unlawful."
• FreePress' Chris Riley argues that: "Net neutrality, a founding principle of the Internet, guarantees that no ISP can dictate where you go and what you do online. Without net neutrality, AT&T, Comcast and Verizon would be free to favor Hulu, but block Netflix. Or prioritize YouTube over Vimeo."

In a fit of hypocrisy and total lack of self awareness, the New York Times ran an editorial today that criticized the fairness and appropriateness of the very Internet business model, a "walled garden," that the New York Times is adopting "very shortly" in order to survive.

• Today, the New York Times editorial board expressed support for the FCC's net neutrality economic regulations, and against "a walled garden somewhat like cable TV, where providers can decide what we can see, and at what price."
• Last week, Bloomberg reported that the Chairman and Publisher of the New York Times, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., said: the NY Times would "start charging readers for online access 'very shortly.'''
  • Mr. Sulzberger went on to say: "We can no longer afford to have iPhone and iPad apps for free..."

Simply, the New York Times hypocritical editorial position is that the New York Times Co., which owns newspaper and broadcast distribution infrastructure, has the business freedom to erect pay walls and adopt a walled garden business model in order to earn a profit off their property and to fund their expensive business infrastructure, but competitive broadband providers should be banned by the FCC from having the same business freedom as the New York Times.

Google's biggest-ever reordering of its search results this past week to reward what Google believes is high quality content and punish low quality content prompted an public epiphany this week that Google has the market power to effectively pick winners and losers in the online content market.

• See WSJ's "Google Reorders Web Winners," "Google Search Cleanup Has Big Impact; see AP's "Google Tries to Bury Low Quality with Major Search Algorithm Changes;" and WebProNews' "Google Update Costs Mahalo Employees Their Jobs."

There are two big takeaways from this public epiphany that "Google is the de facto web content market:"

• First, Google's "algorithmic hand" largely has supplanted Adam Smith's "invisible hand" market mechanism to pick web content winners and losers; and
• Second, Google has proven to be a highly unstable, unpredictable and capricious economic platform/mechanism for online content entrepreneurs and businesses to try and build a successful and sustainable business on top of.

It will be telling to see if the FCC's proposed rule making Thursday on retransmission consent addresses the glaring issue of why prices ONLY go up in this obviously dysfunctional regulated, and out-of-date retrans marketplace, because the FCC's rules have never been updated to reflect the competitive entry, and great success of, strong DBS and telco competitors into the pay TV market.

• Embarrassingly, the FCC's current retrans rules are fossilized in a 1992 cable monopoly era that is long extinct.
• The pay TV market is obviously competitive, and the FCC's current retrans rules are obviously based on an out-of-date cable monopoly market assumption.
• It also will be telling to learn if the FCC is open to updating their retrans rules for the 21st century competitive Internet era.

In most every other FCC proceeding involving competition matters over the last fifteen years, the FCC has examined where industry pricing trends have gone directionally over time as a proxy for how competitive the market is and/or to learn if market power is at work.

It will be telling to learn if the FCC cares about competition policy and the state of competition in the pay TV market that the FCC has the direct statutory authority to oversee... given how focused the FCC has been over the last year to impose preemptive restrictions on broadband providers to address speculative harms to competition in the Open Internet Order based on questionable ancillary authority.

"The Net Neutrality Debate in Europe is Over" per an excellent commentary by Ben Rooney in WSJ TechEurope.

• Mr. Rooney chronicles the evolving public position of EU Digital Commissioner Neelie Kroes from an original pro net neutrality regulation mindset, to now the opposite -- a more pro-competition mindset where "the commissoner's position now [is] that a competitive market should be able to deliver an Internet to which everyone has access."

For those who follow history, it is truly ironic, surprising, and just plain bizarre that Europe is more pro-competition on Internet policy than the U.S. FCC.

How can this be? To understand this wierdness, look at this remarkable development through the lens of industrial policy.

I posit the reason for this European policy outcome is the fact that Europe does not have a Silicon Valley lobby -- with an aggressive corporate welfare agenda seeking government special treatment, regulation of their competitors, and implicit bandwidth subsidies -- like the U.S. does. 

Media and antitrust scrutiny of Google's public representations -- that its search rankings are unbiased and objective -- will increase greatly for two reasons:

• First, Google's search dominance does make Google the Internet's content "kingmaker" and it does empower Google to de facto pick winners and losers on the Internet just by subjectively adjusting its ranking algorithm; and
• Second, the more people look into Google's search ranking algorithm, the more obvious it becomes that it is highly subjective, and not objective and unbiased as Google represents.

As the glare of public and investigative scrutiny focuses on Google's "black box" search ranking algorithm, its mystery and mystique fade away, because people come to understand that a search algorithm is just mass automation of the application of subjective variables/biases, subjective judgements of "quality" content and "quality links," subjective judgements of intent, and subjective human ratings of websites and content.

Expect privacy concerns to be the eventual catalyst that ultimately bursts the Internet investment Bubble 2.0. It is rare when there is a profound disconnect and suspension of reality between industry behavior/investment expectations and customer wants, needs and expectations, but that is precisely what is at work in Bubble 2.0.

• Almost by definition, investment bubbles are unsustainable; what goes up must come down, it is only a matter of how and when -- not if.
• Simply what fuels Bubble 2.0  is the patently false core assumption that the current unfettered, widespread, and largely clandestine data mining of individuals private information in order to target specific individuals with personalized online advertising:
  • Is aligned with real user interests;
  • Is a forthright business practice consumers are aware of and have meaningfully consented to;
  • Will not be legally constrained in the future; and
  • Will become the accepted norm -- meaning that the populace and governments will adapt to the wishes and desires of the online-ad- industry and not the other way around.
• In a word, is online tracking, profiling and data mining a consumer-driven model? -- or a consumer-dragged model?

This is deja vu for me. I've seen this movie before when I had a front row seat as the original dotcom Bubble 1.0 wiped away $4 trillion in market valuation in a few weeks.