Open source advocate: Google will dominate the cloud
January 20, 2010
While I generally disagree with ZDNet’s open source columnist, Dana Blankenhorn’s views, I regularly follow what he writes and respect his analysis and clarity of thought.
Given all the talk of Google’s many antitrust issues and Google’s own denials that it is a monopoly, Mr. Blankenhorn’s candor as a Google ally, was refreshing in his piece: “Open source and the Google Cloud:”
- “Google has achieved such economies of scale in delivering transactions and storage that competing with them over the long run looks foolish.”
- “Unless you have a breakthrough that can balance out those cost disadvantages you’re really at their mercy. If Google decides to “embrace and extend” its cloud dominance into software and services you’re going to lose.”
- “It’s Google’s world, in other words. Open source just lives in it.”
- If Google decides to “embrace and extend” its cloud dominance into software and services you’re going to lose.”
Mr. Blankenhorn is on the mark in his analysis. Google’s domination of search advertising has afforded it the cybrastructure scale and scope that no one can compete with and that can easily be repurposed to enter into and dominate any digital information or digital distribution business — almost at will.
Why so many are concerned about Google and antitrust is because of what Mr. Blankenhorn candidly asserts:
“The DOJ (book settlement) and the FTC (Google -Admob) are formally looking into Google’s attempted extension of their market power into books and mobile advertising.”
Mr. Blankenhorn is putting cloud computing on the DOJ and FTC’s antitrust radar screen too.
Google’s Open Double Standard — Fact-Checking Google’s Treatise on “The meaning of open”
December 22, 2009
Google posted its treatise on “The meaning of open” designed to redefine the word “open” in Google’s image. It is an important read because it is a bay window view into the altruistic way that Google yearns for the world to perceive it.
- Like most all of Google’s PR, however, Google’s Treatise on “The meaning of open” may be “the truth” as Google sees it, but it is certainly not “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
I. Google’s Open Double Standard
Simply, Google is for “open” wherever it does not have a monopoly or dominant market position, however where it does, as in AdWords, AdSense and search advertising syndication, it is closed, to ensure that its dominance remains impregnable to competitors.
In the height of irony, Google has cleverly flipped a concept that was originally designed to be a sword of competition to a closed monopoly, and applied it as a political/PR shield to protect Google’s closed monopoly from competition.
- Google admits: “Open systems are chaotic and profitable, but only for those who understand them well and move faster than everyone else.” [bold emphasis added]
- Google de facto admits here that open systems are only profitable for the one that better understands and is faster than “everyone else” i.e the open-opoly winner of the open race.
- Now light bulbs should be going on in readers heads why Google:
- Has a master plan to “Make the Web faster;”
- Serially releases betaware forcing open sourcers to orbit around Google’s monopoly center of gravity; and
- Serially releases more new products and services than anyone (that just happen to uniquely integrate with one another and depend on underlying data and private information that only Google has.)
- Google “understands” that its doublespeak re-definitions of “open” and “free” enable Google to uniquely harness the Internet’s many network effects for the benefit of Googleopoly.
- In a word, Google’s between-the-lines re-definition of “open” is: “that which benefits Google.”
In Google’s 4400 word treatise telling everyone else how they should run their businesses openly, Google dismisses the notion in 82 words that Google’s monopoly businesses should be open.
- “In many cases, most notably our search and ads products, opening up the code would not contribute to these goals and would actually hurt users. The search and advertising markets are already highly competitive with very low switching costs, so users and advertisers already have plenty of choice and are not locked in. Not to mention the fact that opening up these systems would allow people to “game” our algorithms to manipulate search and ads quality rankings, reducing our quality for everyone.”
There is a reason students are not allowed to grade their own papers and judges are not allowed to hear their own appeals and it is the same reason Google cannot be the definer and arbiter of Internet openness no matter how deeply Google feels that it already is and always should be.
Principles to be principles must principled. Any monopoly power that can de facto dictate a standard for everyone else but itself, is unjust, unfair, and unreasonable.
Google, in pretending to stand for “The meaning of open” for all, while at the same time self-exempting only Google’s monopolies businesses from the so-called principle, is the ultimate in dystopian hypocrisy and cynicism.
II. Fact-Checking Google’s “The meaning of open” Treatise
Google: “…we need to lay out our definition of open in clear terms… There are two components of our definition of open: open technology and open information. Open technology included open source… and open standards…”
- Why does Google not include the definition of an “open market” — “a freely competitive market operating without restrictions”?
- Could the reason for Google’s gross omission of “open market” be that the definition then would not square with Google’s self-serving re-definition of an “Open Internet” which requires that FCC regulation and not market competition produce openness? And which requires that open Internet principles only apply to Google’s broadband competitors and not to Google itself?
Google: “…we have a big opportunity to lead by example…”
- Why doesn’t Google lead by example where Google leads the world by opening Google’s “black box:”
- Search algorithm?
- Search advertising auctions for AdWords and AdSense? and
- Quality Score which determines Google PageRank?
- Why is Google’s Chrome browser closed to the Internet in that it blocks user access to the Domain Name System address bar that enables users to go directly to the website of their choice?
Google: “Our committment to open systems is not altruistic. Rather it is good business.”
- How does this assertion square with Google’s assertion above that “open systems are chaotic and profitable but only for those who understand them well and move faster than everyone else.”
- And if its good business, why shouldn’t Google’s clients (advertisers and publishers) have access to the same buy-sell market information that customers have in most every other market, but don’t get from Google?
Google: “Our goal is to keep the Internet open…”
- Since over 70% of the world searches Google’s exact mirror copy of the Internet stored on Google’s servers, why is GooglesNet not considered the Internet when it is for all intents and purposes for over 70% of Internet search users?
Google: “…our approach to open information is to build trust with the individuals who engage within that ecosystem… we adhere to three principles of open information: value, transparency, and control.”
- How is it open when, like a one-way mirror, Google takes access to more private information than any entity in the world without permission, but is among the most secretive companies in America about its own core business?
- How is Google’s open information “transparent” to users, if surveys indicate that most users are largely unaware that their private information is being collected without their permission by Google?
- How is a user in so-called “control” of all the information Google collects on them if Google’s so-called “privacy dashboard” does not have:
- An on-off switch?
- One omni-opt-out-box? Or
- A “Do Not Track List” button that is only “one click away?”
Google: “… open is the only way…”
- Why should there be no competition to Google’s re-definition of “open?”
- What if someone does not want, or agree with, Google’s open approach?
- Is there any room for dissent or reasonable difference of opinion from Googleopoly’s “only way?”
In sum, Google obviously is aware that the word “open” has over 88 different definitions per Dictionary.com, so it is furiously trying to redefine what “open” means in the context of Google and the Internet.
- Part of “the whole truth and nothing but the truth” that Google has so grossly omitted from its definition of “open” is that open can easily mean “vulnerable,” which is why I wrote the white paper: “The Many Vulnerabilities of an Open Internet.“
Lastly, it should be no surprise that the author of Google’s post on “The meaning of open,” is Jonathan Rosenberg, Google Sr. VP for product development, who infamously declared earlier this year in a Google omni-post:
- “We won’t (and shouldn’t) try to stop the faceless scribes of drivel, but we can move them to the back row of the arena.”
How Can Craigslist Not Be Neutral or Open, But Support Net Neutrality & an Open Internet?
December 2, 2009
Craig Newmark of Craigslist, a leading net neutrality proponent, posted another strong support of net neutrality on Huffington Post where he shared Consumer Reports definition of net neutrality.
In another tech elite case of “Do as I say, not as I do,” it is particularly ironic that Mr. Newmark is publicly championing how important it is for dominant players to not block traffic on the Internet, at the same time, Craigslist, the most dominant online classified ad site in the U.S., is blatantly blocking a new mashup called Flippity and “every single project built on Yahoo Pipes,” per TechCrunch’s post yesterday:
- “Craigslist Blocks Yahoo Pipes After Dev Shows Craig His New Mashup.”
Why is the FCC changing its current consensus net neutrality principle #4 that consumers are entitled to competition among service providers, application providers and content providers, to a non-consensus principle in the FCC’s Open Internet proposed regulations that consumers are no longer entitled to applications or content competition online?
- Maybe Mr. Newmark is confident that neither competition nor the FCC will prevent Craigslist from acting non-neutrally or in a closed Internet fashion.
If neutrality is an important principle for competitive broadband providers, why is it not an equally important principle for dominant applications like Craigslist, Google, eBay and Amazon?
- How can net neutrality be a true “principle” when it is applied arbitrarily and capriciously and not fairly and equally?
More “reason” behind Reasonable Network Management
September 22, 2009
For those trying to better understand some obvious, important and necessary reasons why networks need to engage in “reasonable network management” and prioritize Internet traffic to ensure quality of service for all — please read a great post by George Ou over at Digital Society.
Jonathan Zittrain’s NYTimes Op-ed today, “Lost in the Clouds” ironically captured three of my big concerns/themes about the Internet and its natural outgrowth — cloud computing.
- I recommend this op-ed because it pulls together a whole host of converging Internet issues that others generally treat separately.
- The problem with writing about these issues separately is that much of the richness of how these inter-related issues interact — is lost.Zittrain: “The cloud, however, comes with real dangers.”
- I agree. That has been much of the point of my 13 part series since the first of the year:
- “The Open Internet’s Growing Security Problem“
Zittrain: “Worse, data stored online has less privacy protection both in practice and under the law.”
- I agree. This is the point of my June testimony before the House Internet subcommittees on Internet privacy.
- My central thesis was:
- “Why A Consumer-Driven, Technology/Competition-Neutral, Privacy Framework Is Superior to a Default ‘Finders Keepers Losers Weepers’ Privacy Framework”
- As long as we make privacy policy, technology driven and not consumer driven, it will be haphazard, lagging and full of massive holes.
- My central thesis was:
Zittrain: “If the market settles into a handful of gated cloud communities whose proprietors control the availability of new code, the time may come to ensure that their platforms do not discriminate.”
- Once again, Mr Zittrain makes sense.
- I have long advocated that if Google, Amazon, and eBay believe that net neutrality and an open Internet is important enough to mandate it from broadband providers, why should it not apply to the webopolies Google, eBay and Amazon, that have a much more dominant “gatekeeper” power in their segments than any of the broadband competitor has in their market?
- If their proposed net neutrality mandates were good and not poison, why wouldn’t the webopolies eat their own cooking?
- Any techie will tell you, cloud computing is just network computing.
- Any antitrust expert will tell you that the Internet’s network of networks creates huge network effects than can be anti-competitive.
- Common sense tells you that a “platform” is just tech-speak for a “network.”
- If network computing platforms naturally produce large network effects, why should “network” neutrality expectations not apply?
- Without technologically-neutral network neutrality expectations, is the next cloud computing monopoly just “a click away?”
Update: The reason I said that this post was ironic is that most people who follow my blog would be surprised that I would agree with Mr. Zittrain on anything, because I am in most strong opposition to Mr. Zittrain’s overall philosophy of the Internet and his support for an information commons.
- I agree. That has been much of the point of my 13 part series since the first of the year:
