When you stare down a $220 billion corporation, it’s hard not to blink. But if the Federal Trade Commission doesn’t deliver on its ultimatum to Google that it settle its antitrust problems soon for real relief or face prosecution, then consumers will never get the open and unfettered online and mobile access to information they deserve.

While the government’s battle with Microsoft in the 1990s was about whether the dominant software company could bundle software and an Internet browser, the antitrust case against Google is about whether one company should have so much control over online information that it can steer us any where it chooses for its own profit.

This is the power to make or break businesses, control online discourse, and steer consumers to the Internet giant’s own websites and affiliated businesses, all based on tweaking an unseen algorithm and holding a network of key online and mobile gateways and properties.

Google’s 70% control of online searches and 90% control of mobile searches, along with its dominant Android mobile operating system, patents, and vast content acquisitions make it the Standard Oil of our time.

The allegations against Google are that it restrains online trade with biased search results that drive consumers to the content it owns (Google Travel, Products, YouTube, Maps, Google+, etc.) or content it chooses, as opposed to that favored organically by the public.

Restraint of trade may be different today than in 1911 when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil broken into parts under the Sherman Antitrust Act. Nonetheless the antitrust principle of preventing dominant players from playing unfairly and hurting consumers by driving out legitimate competition is very real for Google’s 2012 business model.

The principle at stake in the FTC case is critical:

If you want to do business online, should you be forced to do business with Google?

Read the rest of this entry →

Washington, DC – In an opinion piece published in POLITICO today, Consumer Watchdog’s Jamie Court and John M. Simpson compare the treatment of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch – who was called before Parliament in Britain to answer for hacking into the private phone records of families – and the kid glove treatment Google CEO Larry Page has received in America after a much larger privacy breach in which the new media giant collected personal information from millions of Wi-Fi networks around the world.

Consumer Watchdog called for a Congressional hearing to require CEO Page to answer questions under oath about what he knew and when he knew it regarding “Wi-Spy,” Google’s massive invasion of the privacy of home Wi-Fi networks.

Google Street View cars collected information – including private emails, bank account information and passwords – from the unsecured wireless networks of millions of people in 30 countries. Much as Murdoch blamed the phone hacking at its newspapers on a few rogue reporters, Google has insisted that a lone engineer was responsible for the company’s collection of years worth of private information from the public.

Read the opinion piece below, or at Politico:

POLITICO
Opinion Contributor
Congress needs to search for Google transparency
By JAMIE COURT and JOHN M. SIMPSON | 6/18/12 10:15 PM EDT

A billionaire media mogul is forced to take responsibility after his employees hack into the private communications of families and use the information for his media empire’s profit. He insists top executives did not know and a few rogue employees were to blame. But the evidence contradicts him.

The government committee investigating these actions grills the plutocrat and concludes he is “not fit“ to lead. His top underlings now face arrest.
That’s the Rupert Murdoch story in London. On this side of the Atlantic, however, Google Chief Executive Officer Larry Page is overseeing privacy invasions far wider than Murdoch’s. Yet his corporation is still avoiding serious scrutiny.

The Murdoch hacking scandal affected many lives, but Google’s map-making Street View cars hacked into millions of private Wi-Fi Networks in 30 countries around the world. They sucked up personal data — email, banking information and passwords and other information. The Federal Communications Commission has fined Google a mere $25,000 for impeding its investigation of Google’s Wi-Spying.

While Google tried to blame this entire enterprise on a rogue engineer, the FCC found that the engineer told many others at the company about the wireless data collection — despite the company’s denials that anyone else knew. The scheme was even outlined in Street View project design documents.

Read the rest of this entry →