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Now that Google has admitted in court documents that it has paid “so many commentators it’s impossible to list them all,” it looks like everyone’s a suspect.
On CNBC, Consumer Watchdog’s Jamie Court suggested Business Insider’s Nicholas Carlson might be on the Google dole when the latter ripped into a bizarre screed about how consumers just don’t care about their internet privacy, and Consumer’s Union is bigger than Consumer Watchdog anyway, so how would they know what consumers want.
Court replied:
There’s a case right now where Google has to disclose all the bloggers it pays to get its viewpoint out. And I don’t know if you’re on that list or not.
Carlson and Court were on CNBC discussing the proposed $22.5 million settlement between Google and the FTC. The FTC accused Google of telling Safari users it wouldn’t use tracking cookies or deliver targeted ads — and then doing so:
The settlement is over Google’s override of the cookie controls in Apple’s Safari browser.
As the FTC explained, Google snuck around those controls by creating an invisible HTML form and then using JavaScript to pretend a user had submitted it.
Per Brad Reed: “Google’s cookie-planting antics were revealed this past February by Jonathan Mayer, a graduate student at Stanford who published research showing how Google used loopholes within Apple’s Safari browser cookie-blocking policy to place unexpected third-party cookies within the browser.”
In the proposed settlement, Google gets to skate on any admission of wrongdoing, and “denies any violation of the FTC Order, any and all liability for the claims set forth in the Complaint, and all material allegations of the Complaint save for those regarding jurisdiction and venue.”
Consumer Watchdog has filed a motion challenging the settlement with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, which must approve the deal.
As part of the proposed settlement, Google is creating a “Red Team” to protect consumers from…well, itself.
I know I feel safe.
15 Comments
Interesting three-way discussion in that clip.
Yeah, in Safari I block cookies being set from third-party sites, but several get set every session, and I have to manually remove all the cookies before hiwaying to another site. Even if I go nowhere, a cookie or two gets set, always google is one of them, and the other(s) I won’t name because I can’t understand how and why it happens when it’s not google.
The Google “cookie-planting antics” were revealed at the same time the infamous Flash Player vulnerability was discovered. WordPress was identified as one of the vectors used by the Flash Player vulnerability that invisibly installed a species of malware, which apparently did what Google does: sell user tracking info for advertising purposes.
So far, I’m pretty sure no one knows what kind of air I put in my car’s tires, except me and where the car gets serviced.
Jane!! Teh Google has bloggers on their payroll? Boy, is Atrios gonna be pissed!
I guess a slap on the wrist and a feeble self policing mandate is SOP these days for law breakers that are wealthy. Golden parachutes for criminal investment bankers and Wall Street traders who blew up the economy, a “settlement” for google though they continue to flout the law and a judge’s orders but head for the hills and Katie, bar the door if you’re caught smoking a joint in almost every state. Blatant voter suppression efforts are for all intents and purposes ignored, while I’d certainly be jailed if I had to steal food so as not to starve. As Yakov Smirnoff used to say, “What a country”!
Ah! But soon we can no doubt welcome another wonderful idiom from Duncan into our vernacular. The man is a genius like that.
Interesting heads-up, Jane Hamsher. I actually used to read at Business Insider, but some of the economics got pretty ‘confidence fairy-like’. And the booby beauties (their preferences) started to get me down.
For a time, Henry Blodget seemed like a convicted fox turned game-keeper. Apparently not any longer.
This is pretty serious. Right up there with other entities spying on us. No privacy. No rights. Funny how they call them “cookies”.
Mwa ha ha ha.
Shills bear a strong resemblance to cocaine users.
Color me nonplussed since the word means completely dumbfounded to the point of being rendered speechless, and also means utterly unfazed, ‘could care less’. You can reach for your dictionary or you can look it up fast, thanks to google.
Take away google’s only revenue stream and it won’t be free to use. Does anyone think google isn’t a useful tool?
Which one of the following best describes our ambivalence towards Google:
a. Hobson’s Choice
b. Dilemma
c. Catch-22
d. Morton’s Fork
e. All of the above
There were search engines before google and there would be in a post-google reality. The resulting newly competitive environment would actually probably spur innovation and result in better consumer choices.
Who was it who said, “If you’re not paying for the product, you ARE the product?”
In a country that has 5% of the world’s population, and 20% of its prison population.
Yep, you got it.
Louis Quatorze.
He also said (I translate) “The more things google, the more chump change”.
Facebook is considered the most hated company in the US in large part because of its abuse of it’s members private information.
There are people serving long prison sentences for relatively harmless crimes yet those who crashed our economy, threw millions out of their homes, made more millions unemployed, all in a greedy and endless search for ever more profit remain not only unpunished but continue in the same vein.
We are seeing the result of fascism as Mussolini described it; the merging of government and corporations.