Google 21st Century Robber Baron

[Magda Hassan]

Google 21st Century Robber Baron

specialImage by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife


In June, GoogleExecutive Chairman Eric Schmidt publicly asserted"we're a law abiding company." Wednesday the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee will test that public representation when Mr. Schmidt testifies publicly under oath for the first time. Overwhelming evidence belies Google's Don't be evil' credo and corroborates that Google has become the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century's quintessential robber baron. No "law abiding company" has this long of a rap sheet.
In August, Google admitted to knowingly and repeatedly violating Federal criminal laws against the "unsafe and unlawfulimportation of prescription drugs" for years, in a criminal non-prosecution agreement; Google also paid a near record $500m forfeiture penalty. The Rhode Island U.S. Attorney who led the Google criminal probe said the evidence was clear current Google CEO "Larry Page knew what was going on."
In March, Google admitted in an FTC settlement that it "used deceptive tactics and violated its own privacy promises to consumers" with Google Buzz in 2010. The settlement bars Google from misrepresenting its privacy practices and requires privacy audits for an unprecedented twenty years.
Over the last four years, antitrust authorities have sanctioned Google more than any other company. In 2008, DOJ threatened a Sherman 2 monopolization case to block the proposed Google-Yahoo Ad agreement. In 2009, the FTC forced Google's then CEO Schmidt off of Apple's board because it was anti-competitive. In 2010, Google and five other companies admitted to illegally colluding to restrain competition for highly skilled tech employees. In 2011, both the DOJ and Federal Judge Chin opposed the Google Book Settlement as an illegal attempt by Google to create monopoly power. Currently, Google's business practices are under antitrust investigation by no less than the FTC, DOJ, Texas, California, New York, European Union, andKorea.
Over the last decade, Google has become the western world's most pervasiveserial property infringer. In 2004, to clear the way for its IPO, Google settled a patent lawsuit with Overture-Yahoo for ~$250 million that alleged Google stole the idea and auction method for keyword advertising, the wellspring of Google's monopoly. In 2005, most of the world's authors and publishers, and Governments like Germany and France, sued Google for copying millions of books without permission. Even after the DOJ and Federal Judge Chin rejected Google's proposed settlement this year as illegal, Google continues to copy books without permission over 15 million to date. In 2007, Viacomsued Google-YouTube $1 billion for infringing ~160,000 copyrighted video without permission. There are many incriminating emails showing Google's leadership condoned the mass infringement. In 2010, Oracle sued Google for billions of dollars because it "knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related property." An incriminating Google email shows Google's leadership knew they were infringing. Also in 2010, Skyhook Wireless sued Google for infringing several of its WiFi location patents that enable most location-driven mobile applications. There are many incriminating emails in this case too showing Google leadership complicity in this infringement. In 2011, eBay sued Google for stealing Paypal trade secrets. In addition, Google has been sued for property infringement by most all types of content: wire services, newspapers, broadcasters, movie studios, authors,publishers, visual artists, software providers, trademark owners,photographers, artists, graphic designers, illustrators, and filmmakers. Underscoring Google's obvious hostility to others property rights, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt recently vowed to fight the pending Protect IP Act even if it were to become law.
Concerning privacy, Google has been investigated, sanctioned or fined for illegal Street View wiretapping of WiFi communications in thirteen countries:U.S., Canada, Germany, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Spain, Belgium,Czech Republic, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and Hong Kong.
Concerning national security, Google's Wikileaks actions exacerbated this serious national security breach because Google's leadership decided to publicly index and make accessible via Google search all of the stolen Wikileaks documents (which contained national security secrets, confidential law enforcement information, private information and property). Google is the only public corporation supporting Wikileaks' criminality.
Concerning Google's many constituencies, the evidence shows Google routinely shortchanges them. Google shortchanges users by misrepresenting that users are Google's customers when users actually are the product Google sells to advertisers. Google's many undisclosed serious conflicts of interestdeny consumers their most important line of defense against harm and fraud: fair disclosure and honest information. Google shortchanges advertisers byrepresenting their algorithms as "auctions," which implies that keywords go to the highest bidder when Google's algorithms actually assign keywords to the bidder that maximizes Google's revenue. Google shortchanges websitestrying to be found, by constantly changing the rules of the game for what merits a website being found by users. This ensures websites' actions and merits have no control over a business' destiny online. Google shortchangestrademark owners by forcing them to buy their own trademark property as keyword advertising in order to protect their businesses from Google selling their trademarks to competitors. In the physical world this scheme is known as a "protection racket." Google shortchanges content owners, by "misdirecting users to its own web pages, displaying the content of others, and foreclosing competitors from that same aggregated content," per theMedia Institute. Google has shortchanged its shareholders, by transferring$400 million in shareholder wealth to employees without shareholder consent when Google unilaterally re-priced employee stock options for most all Google employees in 2009. And Google even shortchanges taxpayers, by pushing the envelope of tax avoidance, which results in Google paying by far the lowest effective overseas tax rate 2.4% of all the major tech companies.
Lastly, Google routinely ignores its corporate responsibility to protect others in Google's care. Google's no curation policy means Google does not screen, review, or police apps in the Android Market before they can be used by the public, like Apple and others do to protect consumers and ensure their platforms are not abused by unsafe or illegal apps. This means that "Android is the worst platform for malware;" Android enables music piracy; and Android piracy is hurting developers' bottom lines. Moreover, Google has abdicated responsibility for offering a mechanism to report and get harmful activity on Google rectified. This abdication enables bad actors to manipulate Google Places to show restaurants are "closed" when they are in fact "open," harming businesses unnecessarily. Google's irresponsible policy on security is to not try and prevent predictable problems before they occur, but to rely on others to report security and safety problems after the fact and after the harm has been done.
How can all this be? A top Google lawyer tells us how: "Google's leadership does not care terribly much about precedent or law," per the book In The Plex. Compounding the scofflaw nature of Google's leadership, is that Google senior management have no practical accountability to their board. Under theSarbanes-Oxley, the Corporate Accountability and Responsibility Act, Google's Board, "independent" directors and audit committee are supposed toensure that Google senior management adheres to its legal and ethical standards and that Google has sufficient internal controls. But Google's founders ensured that that accountability could not occur. In Google's 2004 IPO, senior management were granted 10-1 super-voting shares, to ensure that Google's senior management would control the company and that the Google Board would have no real power or accountability over senior management's behavior, practices or ethics.

Sadly, the overwhelming rap sheet documented above proves Google is not the "law abiding company" it represents itself to be, but the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century's quintessential robber baron.
"Scott Cleland is President of Precursor LLC, a consultancy serving Fortune 500 clients, some of which are Google competitors; he is also author ofSearch & Destroy: Why You Can't Trust Google Inc."
Author's note: This post includes 79 links to supporting evidence from respected mainstream sources so any reader can confirm Google's scofflaw track record is indeed how this post documents it to be.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcleland...r-baron/2/

[Carsten Wiethoff]

From above article:

Concerning national security, Google's Wikileaks actions exacerbated this serious national security breach because Google's leadership decided to publicly index and make accessible via Google search all of the stolen Wikileaks documents (which contained national security secrets, confidential law enforcement information, private information and property). Google is the only public corporation supporting Wikileaks' criminality.

I find it questionable to hold Google's indexing of Wikileaks against them. Furthermore I am not aware that any court has made any determination regarding Wikileaks. As long as that is so, it is not legal to speak of "Wikileaks' criminality", even if in the author's opinion a crime has been committed.:nosmilie:

[Magda Hassan]

Agreed Carsten. The author is clearly anti-Google and anti-Wikileaks but I still found much of interest there despite his bias. If Google did what the writer demands there would be wholesale censorship of any and all crime reporting and we'd never know what the government was doing.