Jobs’ Apple Standard vs. Page’s Google Standard
October 12, 2011
Given that Apple and Google are the #1 and #2 most valuable brands in the world and that Google has invaded all of Apple’s markets in the last few years as a new competitor, it is illuminating and instructive to compare and contrast the radically different visions, values, and standards, of Apple’s former leader Steve Jobs and Google’s current CEO Larry Page.
See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post: “Jobs’ Apple Standard vs. Page’s Google Standard” here.
Google 21st Century Robber Baron
September 19, 2011
See my Forbes post “Google 21st Century Robber Baron” which briefly tells the story of Google’s Robber Baron rap sheet, in advance of Google’s Wednesday Senate antitrust hearing.
The post is documented with 79 links to the supporting evidence.
The post also explains why Google’s Board of Directors have been AWOL while all this scofflaw behavior has been going on.
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?
FreePress Cries Wolf — Yet Again
August 3, 2011
FreePress with its “all complaints all the time” approach to advocacy has been caught once again “crying wolf” when there was no real problem or threat.
A new FCC study that shows ISPs are effectively delivering on the broadband speeds they advertise, exposes FreePress for crying wolf — yet again.
- FreePress has to acknowledge Verizon’s FIOs far exceeds advertised speeds, Comcast and Charter exceed advertised speeds, and other ISPs are more than close enough to advertised speeds to show that there is not a problem here for the FCC to be concerned about.
FreePress also continues to cry wolf about its spurious tethering” complaint against Verizon because users are prevented from unauthorized tethering of additional devices trying to bypass users’ terms of service agreement.
- FreePress continues to push its bogus charge before the FCC, despite obvious language in the relevant FCC Order that plainly shows that Verizon has the freedom to do what it is doing under the FCC’s special 700 MHz rules.
- See this previous post for the FCC language that proves FreePress is crying wolf here — yet again.
Remember, FreePress also cried wolf last year with its spurious charges against Comcast for not allowing Level-3/Netflix to game the backbone market by trying to claim net neutrality meant that unregulated backbone peering arrangements should be treated like Title II interconnection agreements.
- The FCC Chairman made it clear before Congress that the FCC’s Open Internet order “doesn’t change anything to existing peering arrangements” and that the FCC “hopes those parties settle and resolve it.”
- Freepress was caught crying wolf — yet again.
In sum, like the proverbial boy who cried wolf destroyed his credibility by screaming there was a big problem when one did not exist, FreePress has earned its reputation for not being credible by repeatedly claiming broadband actions were problems, when the facts showed they were not.
New America MacKinnon’s Ridiculous Net Neutrality Revisionism — Radical Fringe Series Part II
July 19, 2011
The latest strategic demonization of private enterprise by the radical information commons movement to promote net neutrality comes from Ms. Rebecca Mackinnon of the New America Foundation, who recently charged that private corporations have too much power over the Internet and effectively should be regulated as common carriers, when she previewed her upcoming book “The Consent of the Governed” at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, which was covered by the New York Times.
Ms. MacKinnon in her talk, employed a ridiculously bad and outrageous analogy that Internet users should fight against Internet companies’ Internet tyranny like the barons in England fought King John’s tyranny in 1215 by writing the Magna Carta.
- Ms. MacKinnon charged: “The sovereigns [corporations]of the Internet are acting like they have a divine right to govern.”
- Obviously desperate to associate with, and legitimize her radical cause with the historical spark and bedrock event of today’s freedom and democracy, the Magna Carta, Ms. MacKinnon trivializes the grand importance and relevance of the Magna Carta by misleading her audience that today’s situation is somehow analogous — when her analogy could not be further than the truth.
Consider how the 1215 Magna Carta baseline could not be less analogous with today’s Internet baseline.
- In 1215, most all people were starving, plague-suffering serfs whose lives were “brutish and short,” and who enjoyed no choices, rights, liberties or due process to speak of.
- Today most all Internet users are relatively affluent citizens with health and prospects of long life, who enjoy market competition, constitutional rights, freedoms, and the democratic power to elect or throw out their leaders and representatives.
- In 1215, King John was a vicious and duplicitous tyrant and killer worthy of fear, opposition and condemnation — a despot with minimal redeeming value.
- Today, corporations must compete for Internet users’ business and they can lose them if they do not satisfy the expectations and needs of the user; and today corporations provide an ever-growing array of products, services and innovations that enhance and protect users’ quality of life.
- In 1215, King John had no accountability — zero.
- Today, most Internet users enjoy the freedom and choice to take their Internet access business to a competitor; they have contractual rights in their terms of service; they have complaint resolution processes; and they are overseen by democratic governments with separation of powers to safeguard against despotic exercise of power like King John exercised.
- In 1215, the offenses against people were real deadly and pervasive.
- Today, most all of Ms. MacKinnon’s alleged threats to the Internet are hypothetical or imagined.
In short, Ms. MacKinnon’s Magna Carta implication that modern day corporations in democratic nations are somehow analogous to a vicious despotic Dark Ages killer like King John, is outrageous, illogical, and intellectually vacuous.
