EU

The single most important Google accountability article I have ever read, out of the literally ten thousand plus that I have read in my nine years researching Google in depth, is Dr. Robert Epstein’s article in Politico entitled “How Google could rig the 2016 election.”

Anyone, who has any interest in, or concern about, the integrity of elections in democracies in the digital age, and/or Google’s market power over what information people access, must read this article.

There is more to learn from the Alphabet-Google restructuring than Google’s PR narratives.

First for those paying close attention, this restructuring and Alphabet branding should spotlight Google’s truly amazing accomplishments to date, and Alphabet-Google’s breathtaking ambitions going forward.  

At core this restructuring formalizes Alphabet-Google’s very real transition, from a Gcosytem focus of disintermediating and dominating much of the Internet and tech sectors, to a Gconomy focus of disintermediating and dominating much of the rest of the economy.    

In the coming months, Google, and to a lesser extent, Facebook and Apple are on a collision course with American and foreign law enforcement over their pervasive, law-evasive, encryption of Internet traffic by default, which increasingly means law enforcement with a legitimate court-ordered-warrant, cannot search a Google, Facebook, or Apple users’ communications to investigate, prevent and prosecute terrorism or felony crime.

All three, to different degrees, are seeking to regain user trust lost by Snowden’s exposure of ubiquitous NSA spying, by deceptively trumpeting their encryption of traffic as a panacea for privacy vulnerabilities.

[Please don’t miss the summary below of that encapsulates how more pervasive, law-evasive, encryption is not a privacy/security panacea but a grave threat to both public safety and the global free and open Internet we know today.]     

What is the Internet?

Simple question, one would think the FCC could give a simple, straight and accurate answer when talking to their international regulatory counterparts, but they won’t.

That’s because they don’t want them to regulate the Internet like the FCC just has regulated the Internet in its Open Internet Order.

To try and justify regulating just the ISP-telecommunications-side of the Internet, but not regulating the Silicon-Valley-telecommunications-side of the Internet, the FCC’s, diplomatic message is as hypocritical as it is embarrassing: ‘do as we say, not as we do.’ (Translation: Adopt America’s Silicon-Valley-industrial-policy as your country’s policy.)   

The FCC has lost its credibility internationally because to claim that they are not regulating the Internet, the FCC must torture the definition of “the Internet” beyond recognition.

America’s international counterparts get the joke, they weren’t born yesterday.

And the joke is the FCC’s spin.

EU officials, who believe normally-big-fines by themselves will be enough to deter Google’s illegal antitrust and privacy abuses, are making a profound miscalculation about what actually motivates and deters Google.

Google’s leadership is not motivated primarily by money, but overwhelmingly by the power and influence of “changing the world” by scaling most every facet of data, computing, and connectivity, first and fastest.

Google’s leadership understands the Internet marketplace is really a simple first-mover race to scale -- and that any fines along the way, without serious limits on Google’s power, are insignificant nuisances.       

Google is unlike any other company EU law enforcement has confronted.

Google’s wiretapping is back in the news. The Guardian reports “Google [Chrome] eavesdropping tool installed on computers without permission.”

This is not an isolated incident. It is a part of a broader Google pattern of behavior.

What should be big news and scandalous here is that the company that has gathered the most Internet users in the world based upon public representations of being pro-privacy and open -- is secretly engaged in widespread wiretapping.  

Wiretapping is illegally intercepting and recording people’s communications without their knowledge or consent. In the U.S., wiretapping is a criminal offense punishable by a fine and up to five years in prison.

After successfully taming the FTC and the DOJ via the intimidation of politically placing seven former Google executives or consultants in senior positions in most every major federal policy or law enforcement area of legal or commercial interest to Google Inc., Google has turned its intimidation modus operandi on the only American law enforcement arm that apparently remains willing to investigate and enforce the law when it comes to Google – state attorneys general.

A succession of demonstrably wrong and lax antitrust decisions by the FTC has created a 90% market share Android mobile monopoly in licensed mobile operating systems that is anti-privacy by design, because Google’s ill-gotten mobile advertising dominance demands bulk data collection of Android users’ app metadata and private information without users meaningful knowledge or consent.

A Satirical Merriam-Webster Press Release

A Sample of New Google Antitrust-Relevant Dictionary Words for 2015

SPRINGFIELD, MASS., June 3, 2015— Gconomy, Gclipse, Gvolution, Gvil, Goobris and other Google antitrust-relevant words join over 1700 new words and definitions added to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary in 2015, available now in print and online at Merriam-Webster.com. These new additions to America's best-selling dictionary reflect the growing influence Google is having on human endeavor.

Gconomy – Google’s system for the management and development of the three most important factors of production going forward: information, connectivity, and computing power; or, the fastest growing part of the economy.

Surprise! Google-Android is as dominant as Google search in the EU and much more so in the U.S.

Not only does Google face substantial business risk from the EU concluding Google has abused its 90% search dominance by favoring Google Shopping over competitors in Google search results, but Google’s future business in mobile also faces substantial business risk from the EU likely concluding in its investigation of alleged Android abuses of dominance, that Google-Android has >90% mobile operating system (OS) market share because Apple iOS is not an Android competitor for antitrust purposes.

Google-Android faces much more antitrust risk than conventional wisdom appreciates because antitrust law and precedent can define relevant market boundaries very differently than consumer-oriented industry researchers, investment analysts, or the media do for their particular purposes, which can yield a surprisingly dominant market share in this particular antitrust case.