In his latest display of no-self-awareness, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, in an interview with the Atlantic, said:
- “China can be best understood as a large, well run business… and China has roughly the following objectives: It wants to maximize its cash flow; becoming the creditor, if you will, the bank of the world. And Second it wants to maximize both its internal demand as well as export demand. And the entire country seems to be organized around that principle.”
Is Google’s CEO the only sentient being on the planet that isn’t aware that China is organized around the principles of China’s National Communist Party?
“If China is best understood as a large, well-run business,” why does Communist China censor and imprison their Chinese “customers” if they object too much to China’s products and services?
Google: Transparency for thee but not for me
September 21, 2010
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.”
If transparency is good:
- Why doesn’t Google also have a map of every time Google’s human raters change the “quality score’ of a website that has the effect of burying that site’s rank so effectively no one will find them via Google search — a de facto form of anti-competitive “censorship?”
- Why doesn’t Google list all the times Google denies keywords to those who request them based on Google’s self-censored advertising categories?
- Why doesn’t Google list all bids for keywords that bid the highest price for the keyword, but effectively get censored because a bigger website offers Google more clicks than the highest bidder did?
- Why doesn’t Google support transparency about how Google’s entire password system was hacked last December, so that the hundreds of millions of endangered Google users could take measures to safeguard their privacy and security?
- Why isn’t Google transparent about how it uses other’s private, proprietary and confidential information — without their permission?
- Why does Google support mandatory transparency of how competitive broadband providers manage their networks, but opposes comparable transparency for its monopoly search fiber network that carries more traffic than all but maybe a couple of the world’s networks?
In sum, if what Google says is true, that:
- “Transparency is a core value at Google. As a company we feel it is our responsibility to ensure that we maximize transparency around the flow of information related to our tools and services. We believe that more information means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual…”
- …why is Google Inc. — the only entity in the world that collects, stores and analyzes all the world’s information, and the self-described “biggest kingmaker on this earth” — not more transparent about how Google Inc. censors information, advertising and competitors?
Google and the Internet Bed it Made — Contortions of Justifying a Google Exemption From Principles
July 15, 2010
Google strongly legitimized the problem of “search neutrality” in arguing in detail in an FT op-ed today why Google’s search should not be neutral.
- The essence of Google’s search neutrality problem is that they are imploring everyone to do what they say, but not what they do.
- (And Google does have a very big problem when the New York Times writes an editorial: “The Google Algorithm“ questioning if Google’s search “leads us fairly to where we want to go.”
- Google’s search neutrality problem is also entirely of their own making.
- Google has constructed Google’s brand as the “Don’t be evil” world champion for neutrality, openness, transparency, and no censorship, on the Internet, when their public deeds to not square with the public representation of their brand values and their full-throated claims of being neutral, open, transparent, fair, or not being the “Ultimate Internet Gatekeeper.”
As one of the first to regularly document Google’s systematic hypocrisy of saying one thing and doing another, and demanding its competitors operate in ways Google is unwilling operate, it is important to address the sincerity of Google’s arguments against being subject to “search neutrality” by governments, as explained by Ms. Mayer, Google’s VP of Product and User Experience, in her FT op-ed: “Do not neutralise the web’s endless search.”
- Innovation: Google argues search neutrality mandates could stifle its innovation.
- However, Google has summarily dismissed that same innovation problem argument made by its competitors as the lead bankroller and lobbying force for the last four years behind the push for preemptive “net neutrality” mandates and Title II Telephone monopoly price and non-discrimination regulation for all broadband providers.
- Abuse: Google argues that antitrust oversight of search would lead to gaming of the algorithm and harming the consumer experience.
- Google’s argument is a straw man, as there are a number of internal controls, and third-party/Government oversight processes and procedures that could address anti-competitive or deceptive business practices without the full disclosure of Google’s trade secrets.
- Everyone knows there are business confidentiality rules the government follows that can easily address this Google concern.
- Commoditization: How can Google argue that an expectation that Google not use its monopoly power to discriminate against non-Google-owned content would result in commoditization, when Google argues that mandated monopoly non-discrimination regulation of its competitive broadband competitors would not result in commoditization?
- Consumer Choice: Google argues that antitrust oversight of the neutrality and fairness of its search results would undermine consumer choice and search competition.
- The problem is that, despite arguing that Google works for users, Google gets paid by advertisers and publishers — not users.
- Google has a standard “Competition is One Click Away” defense that is bogus because the anti-competitive problem results from the Internet Choice Paradox, where consumer have great choice of digital information providers, but digital information providers face a Google bottleneck in reaching the global Internet audience.
In sum, Google’s self-proclaimed “search neutrality” problem is entirely of its own making.
- It has been caught in its own “don’t be evil” net, and its own longstanding, well-documented, and principled public stances arguing for world neutrality, openness, transparency, and no censorship on the Internet.
Google’s bigger problem is that it has little credibility in arguing that all the rules that Google has sought to burden its competitors with should not apply fairly to Google, when Google is caught doing what Google has long argued is wrong.
- No PR contortions from Google’s legendary PR machine, can get people to support principles, laws, and regulations that apply to everyone… but Google.
Skype’s Net Neutrality Infidelity Scandal
July 14, 2010
Skype, one of the high priests of the net neutrality movement, that preaches for Title II monopoly regulation of all the broadband providers it already rides upon for free, has been caught in the act of being blatantly unfaithful to its widely-professed net neutrality principles, by blocking interconnectivity to Fring!
Arstechnica and The Hill have both flagged Skype’s hypocrisy and infidelity to its supposed net neutrality and openness principles in blocking mobile video calling competitor Fring from access to Skype’s dominant network of a ~half-billion interconnected users.Now we know that Skype’s proclaimed principled stance for net neutrality and openness was really just a cynical PR and lobbying campaign of crony capitalism, and political cover for an industrial policy where the FCC picks Skype, Google Android, and Amazon Kindle as the “dumb pipe” market winners, and all broadband providers as the “dumb pipe” market losers.
Skype’s “do as I say not as I do” stance is particularly hypocritical because of Skype’s dominant size relative to Fring, in that Skype has about a half billion users and is “responsible for 12% of global international calling minutes” per Skype.
To the exent that the FCC attempts to change existing net neutrality rules, at a minimum, they should continue to be technologically-neutral, given the FCC’s well-known abysmal track record in trying to choose technologies and pick market winners and losers over the last several decades.
It will be interesting to see if the FCC remains silent as one of the biggest complainers of non-neutral blocking — blocks a competitor non-neutrally — or if the FCC will investigate the Skype-Fring blocking affair.
And where is SaveTheInternet and FreePress when a dominant-size half-billion-user network like Skype does to the little guy what they supposedly claim to oppose on principle…
Must Read Thierer Op-ed: America’s Chavez Fan Club
July 13, 2010
Anyone that cares about freedom generally, and freedom of the press in particular, must read PFF Adam Theirer’s outstanding Big Government expose/op-ed putting the spotlight on neo-marxist “FreePress:” “How America’s Hugo Chavez Fan Club Plans to ‘Reform’ the Media Marketplace.”
- Adam’s analysis and case are brilliant and dead-on; FreePress has one of the most destructive public policy agendas out there, period, full stop.
- It is frightening how much credence this Administration, FCC, FTC and Congress give to FreePress’ anti-freedom-of-the-press dsytopian policy agenda.
