Satirical Preview of Google’s Senate Antitrust Testimony — Google’s Pinocchio Defense Part X
September 13, 2011
Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, it is a real pleasure to be here today, and thank you again for not issuing that formal subpoena you had to threaten in order to compel us to testify.
Let me begin my testimony by taking this opportunity to divert the media’s attention from this hearing by making a series of Google public announcements that our news algorithms predict will bury news of today’s hearing on the second page of most search results.
- Yesterday, in a contest between the world’s fastest supercomputers, IBM’s “Watson” was defeated by Google’s “Knowitall” at Jeopardy, The Price is Right and the Wheel of Fortune.
- This week, the number of Google+ users surpassed Facebook as Google added 1.1 billion Google+ users “privately” without their permission in just the last month.
- Today, as a gesture of goodwill to the European Union, Google has agreed to buy Greece for €7.77 billion.
- Also today, Google’s “Knowitall” computer network became sentient and automatically renamed itself “Your Majesty.”
Now let me disarm the tension in this room by feigning humility and reciting some focus group-tested cliché mantras that our tracking algorithms tell us will be believed by 93.1459% of people in this relevant targeted audience: Don’t be evil; Google would never do anything to undermine the trust of users; Using Google is a choice; Competition is a click away; Not every website can come out at the top of the page; You can make money without doing evil; Google is not a monopoly; Big is not bad; We are for openness others for closedness; and We understand with success comes scrutiny.
That in a nutshell is our antitrust defense; so please move along, there is nothing to see here.
Before I go, I have been told by my Washington advisors it would be helpful if I feigned more humility and I apologized for what Google has been caught doing red-handed.
First, we are very sorry Google was forced by the DOJ to officially admit to knowingly committing criminal felonies over a period of several years in actively promoting illegal prescription drug imports into the U.S. and to having to pay a near record $500m in criminal fines to settle the matter. Honestly, we never intended to get caught.
Second, we are very very sorry that Federal Judge Chin and the DOJ opposed the Google Book Settlement because we illegally copied fifteen million books without the permission of, or payment to the copyright owners, and also attempted to corner the online market for orphan works. It never occurred to us that stealing was illegal.
Third, we are very, very, very, sorry for being forced to admit to deceptive privacy practices and to be on probation for twenty years in the FTC-Google Buzz privacy settlement. Google has always said one thing and done another, so we had no idea that misrepresentation on the Internet was considered a deceptive business practice. Who could have known that?
Fourth, we are very, very, very, very sorry, for being investigated by the FCC for effectively wiretapping tens of millions of Americans homes in the Google StreetView WiSpy scandal. We always thought that if an average person did not know how to encrypt their private information, passwords and email, they deserved to have their privacy violated.
Fifth, we are very, very, very, very, very sorry the DOJ had to threaten us with a Sherman Act monopolization case to stop us from colluding with Yahoo to corner the online advertising market in the proposed Google-Yahoo Ad Agreement in 2008. Frankly, we were surprised the DOJ could get so huffy about antitrust.
Sixth, we are very, very, very, very, very, very sorry the that discovery in the Viacom vs. Google copyright case showed Google knowingly infringed on hundreds of thousands of videos in order to corner the Internet video distribution market. At Google we call taking whatever content we want without permission “fair use” and “sharing,” not infringing or stealing.
Seventh, we are very, very, very, very, very, very, very sorry that in this difficult job market, the DOJ caught us colluding with five other companies, to restrain competition for highly-skilled employees to limit both the compensation and career opportunity of thousands of our employees. We are happy to report in this instance Google was not the only company caught breaking the law.
In conclusion, Google’s unique mission to organize the world’s information is not monopolistic. Our repeated clashes with law enforcement and the plethora of antitrust, criminal, privacy, property and other investigations of our company are just a big misunderstanding because Google’s ever-flowing innovations are so disruptive. Several years ago, Google’s founders chose a Tyrannosaurus-Rex as Google’s corporate mascot, and prominently installed a life size skeleton of a T-Rex at our Mountain View headquarters as a symbol of Google’s disruptive innovation. Every other dinosaur had to run faster and hide better because of the T-Rex’s constant disruptive innovation. Simply, where others see predation, Google sees innovation.
***
Google Antitrust Pinocchio Series:
Part IX: Google Locks-in Its One Click Away Defense
Part VIII: Google’s Deceptive One Click Away Defense
Part VII: Two fatal Flaws in Google’s Antitrust Defense
Part VI: Fact-Checking Google’s Antitrust Defense
Part V: “Google does not reap the benefits of significant network effects”
Part IV: Stress-Testing Google’s Top Ten Antitrust Defenses
Part III: ”Google-AdMob: ‘Its too new to dominate’”
Part II: Google: Antitrust’s Pinocchio?
Part I: What is “One click away?
Netflix continues to throw stones at the common economic practice of usage-based pricing, to which broadband carriers are naturally migrating, all while Netflix stands inside a glass house filled with mis-managed usage pricing practices.
Netflix as Stone Thrower:
In a concerted campaign for net neutrality regulation that would ban broadband usage caps or pricing, Netflix has generated a:
- Supportive Washington Post blog;
- New York Times editorial,
- Wall Street Journal op-ed,
- Shareholder letter, and
- Faux net neutrality complaint with Level III-Netflix.
Netflix as Glass House:
- Netflix has long priced and capped its DVD business based on consumer usage.
- ~60% of Netflix’ users, or 15m of Netflix’ 25m customers, are still subject to Netflix usage caps and pricing, the practice Netflix claims is anti-competitive, if other companies do it.
- Netflix’ recent whopping 60% basic price increasefrom $10 to $16, affects 60% of Netflix’ customers and must be paid in order to continue to get the same service as before, whereas in contrast, the bandwidth pricing caps Netflix objects to as anti-competitive represent a small price increase for the few percent of bandwidth-hungry broadband customers who choose to consume extraordinarily high amounts of bandwidth.
- Netflix understands that market and technological changes require Netflix to abruptly change their business model 180 degrees, from a mainly a DVD subscription business with a fast-growing streaming business, to primarily a streaming-only business with a deceasing DVD subscription business, but in contrast, Netflix can not or will not understand how the explosion of bandwidth-intensive video traffic strains Internet network infrastructure and requires an incremental adjustment in the broadband business model from unlimited bandwidth for everyone, to effective bandwidth pricing caps for a small percentage of bandwidth-hungry customers.
- Netflix has mismanaged its business so much that it must force 60% of its customers to suddenly pay as much as 60% more for the same service as before, when in contrast, the broadband industry is managing its businesses responsibly with a long term glide-path pricing transition that affects only a small amount of customers and that enables those customers affected to manage their own costs to avoid the effective price increase if they do not want to pay it.
- Netflix is effectively forcing their customers to pay as much as 60% more to effectively fund Netflix’ own major infrastructure upgrade to stream video to 43 new countries (when U.S. customers paying for the price increase will get no benefit from that new international expenditure), when in contrast, broadband providers raise investment capital via stock or debt offerings from capital markets in order to pay for their infrastructure upgrades without disrupting most all consumers’ monthly bills.
- Finally, Netflix’ is attempting to falsely frame broadband usage pricing and caps as anti-competitive and a violation of net neutrality, when the FCC formally approved broadband usage-based pricing, and when other leading net neutrality proponents support usage-based pricing.
- FCC: The FCC’s December Open Internet Order said in para 72: that the FCC “does not prevent broadband providers from asking subscribers who use the network less to pay less,and subscribers who use the network more to pay more.“… “prohibiting tiered or usage-based pricing and requiring all subscribers to pay the same amount for broadband service, regardless of the performance or usage of the service, would force lighter end users of the network to subsidize heavier end users. It would also foreclose practices that may appropriately align incentives to encourage efficient use of networks.“
- Tim Wu, former Chairman of FreePress and the person credited with coining the term “net neutrality” told the Washington Post: “…if you are cranking Netflix all day and downloading 10 gigs, I’ve never thought it unreasonable to have to pay more. That’s a billing question, not a net neutrality question. There is no constitutional right to unlimited bandwidth.”
- Gigi Sohn, President of Public Knowledge, blogged the following about usage caps in 2008: “For the past two years, we have been telling broadband Internet service providers that rather than kicking off heavy bandwidth users from their networks without notice or interfering with bandwidth-intensive traffic a la the Bit Torrent-Comcast controversy, they should instead charge consumers a flat fee for a certain amount of bandwidth, and then charge a per-bit metered rate for usage that goes beyond the limit. This would be similar to the cellphone model to which Americans have become accustomed – you pay a flat fee for a certain amount of minutes, and then a per-minute charge for every minute thereafter. This model makes sense for several reasons. First, it provides both transparency and certainty – the customer knows what their limits are. Second, it makes unnecessary controversial “network management” decisions like Comcast’s decision to throttle Bit Torrent.”
In sum, Netflix cannot credibly claim that broadband usage based caps and pricing are anti-competitive when Netflix, the largest video subscriber service in the United States, engages in relatively much more severe capping of video DVD usage, for much more of its customer base, and for a much higher relative increase in price… especially when the FCC permits the practice, and staunch leading net neutrality proponents also support broadband usage pricing and caps.
The facts show that Netflix is throwing stones from a glass house.
Previous Netflix posts:
Fact-Checking Netflix’ Net Neutrality WSJ Op-ed;
Netflix’ Open Internet Entitlement Hubris;
Sinking Level 3 Seeking FCC Internet Regulation Bailout;
Level 3-Netflix Expose their Hidden Agenda; and
Level 3 & Net Neutrality Ignorance Unleashed.
FreePress co-founder and collectivist ideologue, Robert McChesney, wrote his latest Internet manifesto: “The Internet’s Unholy Marriage to Capitalism,” in the Monthly Review – An Independent Socialist Magazine.”
McChesney’s collectivist and elitist manifesto warrants attention because it is widely disseminated to:
- McChesney’s existing extensive FreePress spawn network: Save The Internet and dozens of local media reform organizations who bombard the press and policy makers with their radical views; and
- Also to his new FreePress spawn: The Democracy Fund, founded by FreePress co-founder Josh Silver to raise funds to “curb the undue influence of corporate lobbyists,” and RootStrikers founded by Larry Lessig, co-founder of Save the Internet, in order to organize an activist network “to fight the corrupting power of money in politics.”
- Both of these new FreePress spawn networks are being created as new indirect organizing vehicles to advance FreePress’ collectivist vision for net neutrality, Title II broadband regulation, and media reform.
The dual thrusts of McChesney’s latest laborious diatribe against capitalism and private property are:
- First, the Internet is essentially a zero sum game where “private riches grow at the expense of public wealth,” and
- Second, capitalism invariably leads to monopolization.
Some other major McChesney points:
- “Our critique… will repeatedly demonstrate the weaknesses of allowing the profit motive to dictate the development of the Internet.”
- Concerning the Internet “…it is difficult to avoid noting that what is emerging veers toward the classic definition of fascism as right-wing corporatism: the state and large corporate interests working hand-in-hand to promote corporate interests, and a state preoccupied with militarism, secrecy, and surveillance.”
- “In sum, the Internet, if left prey to capitalism — to having the hunt for profits dictate its development — has veered off in a direction that downplays and undermines, rather than exploits and accentuates, the most revolutionary and democratic aspects of its technology.”
- “… the Internet is being turned into… a new means of alienation. … The moral of the story is clear. … A global network of resistance is both necessary and feasible.“
Mr. McChesney’s screed cherry-picks and copiously documents the little bits of history that support his theory, while largely ignoring most all of economic and Internet history that does not fit with his collectivist revolutionary vision and agenda.
For example, Mr. McChesney waxes nostalgic for the early Internet days:
- “The early Internet was not only non commercial, it was also anti-commercial. … If anyone dared to sell something online, that person would likely be “flamed,” meaning that other outraged Internet users would clog the individual’s email box with contemptuous messages demanding the sales pitch be removed. This internal policing by Internet users was based on the assumption that commercialism and an honest, democratic public sphere did not mix.”
- Ironically and tellingly, Mr. McChesney is silent on the fact that it took commercialismof the Internet for:
- “The masses” to have near universal access to the Internet available to them,
- The broadband Internet to be deployed, and
- All the amazing variety of Internet applications and innovations to reach over two billion people around the world.
- Ironically and tellingly, Mr. McChesney is silent on the fact that it took commercialismof the Internet for:
Another incredible example of Mr. McChesney’s selective amnesia is that after recounting essentially how there can be no market competition only monopolization, he asserts “these firms have no particular incentive to upgrade their networks.”
- Mr. McChesney obviously ignores that the U.S. private sector has invested an estimated half trillion dollars in investment upgrades to their broadband Internet networks over the last decade alone!
Yet another glaring flaw in Mr. McChesney’s tortured and backed-into analysis to reach his factually-unsupportable conclusions about the Internet, is his assertion that: “Communication is more than an ordinary market. Indeed it is properly not a market at all. It is more like air and water — a form of public wealth, a commons.“
- This is a patently ridiculous, as air and water don’t embody ideas, thoughts, solutions, innovation, information, emotions, hopes or dreams to name just the most obvious characteristics of communication.
- Air and water are commodities. Communications are unique and ever-changing.
Finally, Mr. McChesney’s rewriting of Internet history as a non-commercialized commons totally ignores the reality that constitutional democratic processes commercialized the Internet under President Clinton, and a near unanimous Congress of constitutionally elected representatives and Senators put into law in 1996 that: “It is the policy of the United States — to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market Internet that presently exists for the Internet… unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”
In conclusion, the latest screed from FreePress co-founder Mr. Robert W. McChesney is collectivist and eilitist propaganda that is a desperate attempt to rewrite Internet history and recast their radical fringe ideology as reasonable and serious.
- What I found most remarkable about this latest collectivist manifesto was that Mr. McChesney acknowledged and thanked three current and former officials of the current Administration for reviewing and assisting him in this effort: former White House Special Assistant Susan Crawford, current State Department employee Ben Scott, and current FTC employee Tim Wu.
- Their handiwork was evident in that this latest manifesto was largely scrubbed of much of Mr. McChesney’s most outrageous, red meat, and radical fringe rhetoric that he employed in the past.
- Nevertheless, their attempt to publicly sanitize Mr. McChesney’s views were not able to soften or change the main message in his diatribe against capitalism and private property that was captured in his title: “The Internet’s Unholy Marriage to Capitalism.”
- The fact that so many people were asked to review and edit Mr. McChesney’s latest collectivist manifesto is telling.
- Either Mr. McChesney, his followers, or both realize that Mr. McChesney’s radical fringe collectivist views are way out of the mainstream, offputting, and a big liability to their ultimate revolutionary goals to reform media and impose an information commons on the Internet.
- Apparently, they get the fact that FreePress’ ideological grounding, sympathies, and views which are embodied by Mr. McChesney, are essentially an anethema to most all of American society.
Mr. McChesney’s radical fringe views are hardly non-partisan or in the American public’s interest as FreePress constantly claims.
Google’s Rogue WiSpy Invasive Behavior Proliferates — Security is Google’s Achilles Heel — Part XIII
June 17, 2011
Evidence continues to mount that Google’s management and supervision of its Android operating system is out-of-control when it comes to protecting privacy and security.
- Google’s corporate ethos that it is better to “ask for forgiveness than permission” increasingly means Android has no privacy by design and hence less security for users by default.
- Requiring and respecting the need for permission and authorization is a bedrock truism of IT security — and the evidence below increasingly indicates that Google has a deep aversion to that IT security truism.
Consider the growing pattern of Google’s default design and behavior that maximizes collection of private information, which inherently puts users at greater security risk.
First, and profoundly disturbing, is a new TechRepublic revelation in a post by security blogger Donovan Colbert.
In setting up his new Android-based tablet, Mr. Colbert discovered that the Android operating system by default, i.e. without permission, automatically collected and implemented encrytion key passcodes to automatically gain access to private networks without the permission of the user. In Mr. Colbert’s own words:
- “Google is not only storing a list of what hotspots you have visited, but any private encryption keys necessary to connect to those hotspots in the cloud.”
- “The idea that every Android device connects with that access point shares our private corporate access keys with Google is pretty unacceptable.”
- “Honestly if there is any data that shouldn’t be harvested, stored and synched automatically between devices, it is encryption keys, passcodes and passwords.”
Second, we learned from WSJ privacy reporting that Google Android tracked users location a thousand times a day without the users’ meaningful permission.
- This Google no privacy by design revelation prompted congressional hearings, the scandal moniker “locationgate,” and new legislation from Senators Franken and Blumenthal.
Finally, how does this pattern involve the WiSpy scandal of Google being caught wardriving tens of millions of homes, in over thirty countries, for over three years, eavesdropping on unencrypted home WiFi routers and recording all signals including emails, and passwords.
As you may remember, Google said that systematic eavesdropping on citizens, was the mistake of one engineer, and not at all sanctioned by the company at large.
Here is Google’s 5-14-10 official story:
- “So how did this happen? Quite simply, it was a mistake. In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental WiFi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data. A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic WiFi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google’s Street View cars, they included that code in their software—although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data.“
However if Google was being forthright that it’s Android effort indeed did not want to by default to collect the maximum private information possible, why did Google mobile engineering manager Dave Burke tell the Guardian 1-29-08, the following that shows it was obviously Google’s policy to collect the most WiFi information possible…
- “If you’re going to concentrate on location you want every bit of data you can…”
- “…Cell ID is one location, the address of your Wi-Fi access point is another. The end result is that we want the user to have the best possible experience, and we’ll do whatever it takes to get it … to us they’re just network signals and we’re interested in all of them.
- The big takeaway here is that Google’s corporate priority is to collect the maximum amount of information by most any means, without meaningful permission or authorization, as fast as possible.
- This means that Google effectively has a “no privacy by design” approach to privacy, and that security is a lesser priority at Google
***
Previous parts of the “Security is Google’s Achilles Heel” Series:
- Part I: “Why security is Google’s Achilles heel”
- Part II: “Google values security much less than others do”
- Part III: “Google: “Security is part of our DNA” (Do Not Ask)
- Part IV: “Why Security is Google’s Achilles Heel”
- Part V: “Google Apps Security Chief is a magician/mentalist”
- Part VI: “Google-China: Implications for Cybersecurity”
- Part VII: “Did Google Over-React to China Cybersecurity Breach?”
- Part IX: “Google’s Titanic Security Flaws”
- Part X: : “A Google Android Botnet Problem”:
- Part XI: “Google’s Deep Aversion to Permission”
- Part XII: “Top Ten Reasons Google Has Culpability in the Gmail Data Breach”
For even more information, see the Security section of PrecursorBlog’s sister site: www.GoogleMonitor.com; or read the “Security is Google’s Achilles Heel chapter of my Book: Search & Destroy Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc. at www.SearchAndDestroyBook.com.
Top 10 Reasons Google Has Culpability in Gmail Security Breach — Security is Google Achilles Heel Part XII
June 3, 2011
Google’s deep aversion to accountability was in full view in its blog response to the latest gmail security breach, in which Google placed most all of the blame on users and others, while largely trying to absolve Google of its responsibility and accountability in the matter as the world’s largest source of private, sensitive and secret information.
Top 10 Reasons Google Has Culpability & Needs More Accountability:
- No other entity has a mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” This gives Google a unique responsibility to aspire to be the world’s leader in information security.
- No other entity actually collects all the world’s information, making mirror copies of the entire Internet many times daily involving 5 exabytes of data every two days, the amount of information created from the beginning of time and 2003.
- No other entity stores all of its information in one unified “BigTable” database eschewing the normal security protocol of compartmentalizing information to prevent catastrophic universal data breaches.
- No other entity so plainly and corporately prioritizes speed and efficiencyof accessing data over the security, privacy, and other internal controls of data.
- No other Fortune 500 company so officially relieson the crowd sourcing of their non-expert users and others to be their primary line of security defense, rather than taking corporate responsibility for maximizing the security of the information and people entrusted to safekeeping and protection at Google.
- No other entity universalizes its password access to more products and services (more that 500) than Google, a practice Google Security expert Greg Conti describes as a “single point of failure” problem.
- No other entity that we know of has had their entire password security code stolen wholesale by hackers like Google has — per John Markoff’s front page expose in the New York Times. This is relevant given Google’s representations to the public that “it is important to stress that our internal systems have not been affected — these account hijackings were not the result of a security problem with gmail itself.”
- No other entity has made more personal profiles (35 million Google Profiles) publicly accessible for easy downloading by hackers to effectively aid and abet spearfishers than Google per a recent studyby a University of Amsterdam PHD student Matthijs R. Koot. This is relevant to this latest gmail security breach because it was spear-fishing-driven.
- No other entity has been accused by the U.S. Department of Justice in court documentsof publicly misrepresenting that a suite of Google software that is related to gmail was FISMA certified. This is relevant here because Google misled that it was security-compliant with the Federal Information Security Management Act when it was not, which could have led Government employees who used gmail, and were compromised by the latest gmail breach, to believe they were secure in using gmail when they were not.
- And the most disturbing reason of all, Google is the only entity in the world to decide at the highest executive levels to index Julian Assange’s Wikileaks stolen cables and make them universally accessible and useful to bad actors, terrorists, crooks and hackers like the ones in the latest gmail breach of senior U.S. Government officials.
- (This is highly relevant in this case because spear fishing depends on learning intimate accurate details of groups and their communications about secret information that would enable a hacker to successfully fraudulently misrepresent themselves to gain officials trust, that would not have happened but for the hackers knowledge of secret Wikileaks documents made available by Google search.)
In sum, not only is Google not taking responsibility and accountability for its users security like one would expect any top brand and purported good corporate citizen to do, Google has made a series of strategic and tactical corporate decisions that have systematically and materially facilitated the success of security breaches like occurred this week with gmail.
- Most troubling of all is the fact that Google’s willful disregard for national security secrets, confidential sensitive government communications, and privacy, in deciding at the highest levels to make Julian Assange’s Wikileaks stolen cables universally accessible and useful to hackers like the ones that hacked Google’s gmail, appears to potentially have aided and abetted our Nation’s enemies in compromising our national security.
- At a minimum, appropriate oversight by inspector generals and Congressional Oversight Committees should want to investigate the connection between this latest gmail spear-fishing attack and the stolen government cables released by WikiLeaks and publicly indexed by Google’s search engine.
- The purpose of this oversight would be to bring accountability to the situation, and to help prevent future gmail or other data breaches in the future to the best extent possible.
***
Previous parts of the “Security is Google’s Achilles Heel” Series:
- Part I: “Why security is Google’s Achilles heel”
- Part II: “Google values security much less than others do”
- Part III: “Google: “Security is part of our DNA” (Do Not Ask)
- Part IV: “Why Security is Google’s Achilles Heel”
- Part V: “Google Apps Security Chief is a magician/mentalist”
- Part VI: “Google-China: Implications for Cybersecurity”
- Part VII: “Did Google Over-React to China Cybersecurity Breach?”
- Part IX: “Google’s Titanic Security Flaws”
- Part X: : “A Google Android Botnet Problem”:
- Part XI: “Google’s Deep Aversion to Permission”
For even more information, see the Security section of PrecursorBlog’s sister site: www.GoogleMonitor.com; or read the “Security is Google’s Achilles Heel chapter of my Book: Search & Destroy Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc. at www.SearchAndDestroyBook.com.
