Why Google is the Biggest Threat to Americans’ Privacy:

-By Scott Cleland

The Detailed Case from my House Testimony

In my testimony Thursday on Internet privacy before Chairman Markey’s House Internet Subcommittee, I documented for Congress the detailed case of how Google, which is subject to no Federal privacy laws, is the single biggest threat to Americans’ privacy today.

The evidence assembled here shows how Google’s mission and culture are hostile to privacy, how Google’s unprecedented scale and scope enable a breath-taking collection of intimate “blackmail-able” information, and how Google’s track record is not worthy of trust.

From my testimony:

Case Study: How Google Systematically Threatens Americans’ Privacy

To begin, I am not alone in believing Google’s privacy practices are a particularly serious consumer protection problem.

  • Privacy watchdog, Privacy International, ranked Google worst in its world survey on privacy in 2007 and described Google as “hostile to privacy.”
  • EPIC, CDD, and USPIRG filed suit with the FTC last year challenging Google’s privacy practices as deceptive trade practices.

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  • Recently, a broad coalition of privacy advocates pressured Google to finally comply with California privacy law and put a link to their privacy policy on their home page.

First, Google’s mission is antithetical to privacy

Google’s megalomaniacal “mission is to organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful.” Google’s mission is so uniquely antithetical to privacy–it actually warrants the creation of a new term: “publicacy.” Google’s unique and radical “publicacy” mission believes “the world’s information,” is (and should be) public not private. (Note the mission statement puts no qualifier on “information” other than “the world’s”.)
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Debunking the Google-Yahoo Antitrust Myths

-By Scott Cleland

In advance of the Senate and House antitrust hearings on Google-Yahoo, I thought it would be useful to debunk some of the primary antitrust Myths you will likely hear.

Myth #1:

There can’t be an antitrust problem as long as consumers are just one click away from a competitive search engine.

This is intentional misdirection. Google does not get paid by users, but by advertisers and websites. The antitrust concern here is not about “competition” for free search engine use, but competition for paid search advertising.

Google is exploiting the “Internet choice paradox” (PDF file) where because users have near infinite choices to reach Internet content, they assume content businesses must have as much choice in advertising to Internet users as users have in reaching content. They don’t.
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Google’s Cerf floats trial balloon: “Why not nationalize the Internet?”

-By Scott Cleland

Google’s Internet Evangelist, Vint Cerf recently asked publicly: “Should the Internet be owned and maintained by the government, just like the highways?” according to a post by Erick Schonfeld on TechCrunch.

  • Since the Government neither owns or maintains the Internet today, Google may have much grander plans for ‘nationalizing the Internet’ than anybody appreciated.
  • Maybe we should take Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt much more seriously when he declares: “The goal of the company is not to monetize anything,” and “The goal is to change the world — and monetization is a technique to do that.”

Let’s dissect how radical and destructive Google’s notions for nationalizing the Internet are.
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Transcript of Lecture on Google, Net Neutrality, Monopolies, Click Fraud, Privacy

-By Scott Cleland

Unleashed: Transcript of Griffin/Cleland talk on Google, net neutrality, monopolies, click fraud, privacy

For those who like the written format, here is the transcript of ChipGriffin’s interview of me on all things Google.

The transcript is just below the podcast button to hear the interview.

This interview turned out to be one of the most comprehensive and in-depth discussions I have had on all things Google — that’s been captured for web listening or reading.
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Why a Lack of Openness Sullies the Integrity of Google’s Ad Auctions

-By Scott Cleland

Does Google warrant the current exceptional leap-of-faith in the integrity of its dominant ad auction model, given its near total lack of openness, transparency, independent auditability or third party oversight? There is a growing body of evidence that Google does not.

The New York Times article today by Miguel Helft, “The Human Hands behind the Google Money Machine,” is a must read for anyone following Google or concerned about the openness and transparency of public markets. It is also a little treasure trove of fresh information on Google.

Why a lack of openness sullies the integrity of Google’s ad auctions.

First, it is widely accepted that public markets operate best when open and transparent.

Google’s ad auction model has become one of the world’s most important public markets. Google is increasingly becoming the world’s primary public information broker. Google brokers:

  • Information for over 700 million search users worldwide, over three to six times their nearest rivals;
  • Advertisement placement for over a million advertisers several times more than their nearest competitors;
  • Monetization for over a million websites several times more than their nearest competitors.

Google is also not open or transparent.
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Can you trust Google to obey the rules? Is Google accountable to anyone?

-By Scott Cleland

In monitoring Google as closely as I do, it has become increasingly clear that Google does not believe it has to obey the rules, standards, regulations and laws that others routinely obey and respect. Google increasingly operates like a self-declared, virtual sovereign nation, largely unaccountable to the rules and mores of the rest of the world.

There is plentiful evidence of Google’s unaccountability; see the following analysis peppered generously with source links. The impetus for this analysis and documentation was Saul Hansel’s outstanding New York Times Blog: “Google fights for the right to hide its privacy policy.”

In a nutshell, Mr. Hansel spotlighted how Google is refusing to abide by the rule that its members must display a link to their privacy policy on their home page; and that this industry self-regulatory body is expected to bend its rules specifically to accomodate Google. This is not an isolated incident. Shirking the accountability that most everyone else respects is near standard operating procedure for Google.

Is Google accountable to anyone?
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Why the EU’s concerned with a Google-Yahoo pact—Google is close to monopoly share in Europe

-By Scott Cleland

A Yahoo-Google search outsourcing pact arguably faces even more problems with European antitrust authorities than with the reported U.S. DOJ antitrust investigation, for two reasons:

First, this Yahoo-Google pact represents a horizontal market problem of collusion between leading direct search competitors; this is very different from the recent approval of the Google-DoubleClick merger, which was a vertical merger where DoubleClick was not found to be an actual direct competitor of Google. (Yahoo is universally viewed as one of Google’s top two direct competitors.)

Second, the market facts of search concentration in Europe put Google perilously close to the unofficial definition of a monopoly, which is 90% share of a market.
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