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Google Draws Fire From Congress
bonch writes "Democrat Herb Kohl, the Senate's leading antitrust legislator, has vowed an antitrust probe into Google as one of his top priorities. Others in Congress are criticizing the search giant over several flubs, including scanning personal data over neighborhood WiFi, collecting Social Security information from children in a doodling contest, and sidestepping net neutrality rules through a deal with Verizon. They're also concerned over ties with the administration — Eric Schmidt is a technology adviser to President Obama, Andrew McLaughlin serves as Obama's deputy chief technology officer, and Sonal Shah leads the White House Office of Social Innovation. Google spent $5.2 million last year on federal lobbying, but critics say their increased Washington presence has made more enemies than friends."
Reader walterbyrd contributes an article that suggests this is all just a fund-raising ploy.
to Congress campaigns enough lately.
What about the Son of Acta that was posted yesterday? Or the patriot act? Or the fact that I know while driving to California tomorrow along 8 I'm going to get stopped and searched at least 2 to 3 times by border patrol in complete violation of my 4th amendment rights? I'm not going to say that all of that data mining isn't a treasure trove of information, I'd just suggest this is all a diversion, that if given the chance all those politicians creating a stink would *love* to get their hands on all of it, and that they have *much* more pressing issues at the moment.
They should do an anti trust probe into real anti trust problems. More specifically one that looks at that ever lovely comcastic company.
Yes, when I think of out-of-control industries that are stamping on the rights of ordinary people, colluding to price-gouge us and passing legislation harmful to American interests, I think Google. Not the RIAA or MPAA or union-busting industries or economy-wrecking fraudulent financial groups or small-business-annihilating megamarts or the military-industrial complex or cable and phone companies. Definitely Google. Please oh please stop them before they voluntarily collect our publicly available SSNs and information we blast out over wireless on clear unencrypted channels.
Disclaimer:
I am not stating here that this information is correct, but it's certainly worth a read.
So go ahead, and have a read over here.
That's the biggest myth in tech world, the idea that end-user payments determine whether a service is paid or not.
Here's the fact: Google doesn't give anything away for "free." With most of its services you are the product being sold to advertisers.
Herb is kind of above reproach. Having grown up in Wisconsin and actually met the man once, I can say comfortably that he isn't some kind of fundraising whore; he's a principled legislator who will probably get swept out in the next tide of teabagging. So I would be very careful in ascribing any kind of sinister motive to his investigation, or in drawing any conclusions about what the committee's findings will be.
So it's evil when Google mines my data and makes no attempt to hide the fact that they do, but it's ok when congress creates fusion centers that create profiles of average american citizens that have never committed any crimes and places wire taps on phones without proper warrants or just cause. I'm sorry, but I actually feel much safer trusting Google with my information than I do the federal government. Google just wants to make a profit, the federal government wants to control my life.
I now see why you've been moderation bombed.
Yeah, it's called a legislative shakedown. I don't mind google being pushed around by idealistic Europeans, but once America's asshats get into the game, well it's a shakedown pure & simple.
Google would eventually turn evil once Sergey Brin dies of course, but thus far they ain't too bad. We should encourage Larry and Sergey to push positive moral aims through their company itself, rather than adopting Gate's be evil & then be nice approach.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Except Google really doesn't try to hide anything. I like Google not just because they give stuff away for free, but because they also deliver a quality product, but, more importantly, they are very honest and transparent with their actions. Like with the incidents with the WIFI data, they came forward and admitted it without anybody investigating them. There is nothing "shady" about their business practices. You may not agree with the way they do that business, but you are completely free to use another product as you so suggest. It's not evil. It's just business
Not donating enough to the various political parties.
MS have a long history of bungling. I vote this post for best typo of the month award!
For example, their free gmail service is subsidized by their search products, and these products are largely unrelated.
What are you talking about? It pays for itself the same way every other free email service does, by having ads on it.
And I hope you're not suggesting that running a division at a loss is somehow unlawful, because otherwise Microsoft's xbox and online services divisions are in deep trouble.
The "real" evil here is that the political establishment is inventing a controversy out of nothing, so they have something they can pretend to stand for while at the same time not addressing any of the real issues that plague our country but are politically unpopular to deal with. Medicare, Social Security, Gay Rights, the erosion of our fundamental civil liberties, education. All require politicians to vote for things that will make them lose votes from both Republicans and Democrats, but would benefit the general public. Instead they do nothing... and create an emergency out of thin air that makes little sense so they can pretend to be on your side. Herb Kohl is doing nothing and acting the coward. It's shameful.
Dumping is not considered unlawful everywhere, but it certainly is anti-competitive. Ok, so maybe gmail may pay for itself by now (this definitely has not been the case when they started), youtube certainly is operating at a loss.
You might want to read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
If you're still not convinced, let's assume that you are the owner of a game development studio. Suddenly, microsoft comes along, and with the money they earned on OSes and office software, they can afford to give away games on a large scale. And suddenly you are out of business. Under normal circumstances, when a corporation pushes another corporation out of business, this can be viewed as ''evolutionary forces at work''. But here this is definitely not the case, because these divisions of microsoft are clearly unrelated. It is an anomaly in the system, and this is exactly what governments should protect against.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Ok, so maybe gmail may pay for itself by now (this definitely has not been the case when they started), youtube certainly is operating at a loss.
YouTube has been operating at a loss since before Google bought them, and they're in the process of slowly turning that around. This is the normal way industries work -- you have to make an initial investment to create the infrastructure necessary to enter the market and the returns don't come until some time down the road.
If you're still not convinced, let's assume that you are the owner of a game development studio. Suddenly, microsoft comes along, and with the money they earned on OSes and office software, they can afford to give away games on a large scale. And suddenly you are out of business. Under normal circumstances, when a corporation pushes another corporation out of business, this can be viewed as ''evolutionary forces at work''. But here this is definitely not the case, because these divisions of microsoft are clearly unrelated. It is an anomaly in the system, and this is exactly what governments should protect against.
The logic doesn't really work for digital goods. The idea with dumping is that you sell for less than the reproduction cost. With digital goods the reproduction cost is effectively zero. It's not like Google is paying people to use its products (unlike, say, Microsoft).
If you want to call every act of giving away software dumping then you're going to have to condemn the entire industry. Microsoft is destroying the market for Windows security updates by distributing them for free. Canonical is wrongfully giving away Ubuntu. How dare Apple contribute back its improvements to Webkit and allow just anyone to run Darwin? And those guys at the FSF, it's practically a criminal enterprise! Not to mention the people at Berkeley and the NSF -- both the states and the feds are in on it. And the shareware people on top of it all.
Calling it dumping makes no sense. Especially when it's open source, because the whole problem with dumping is that when all the competitors go out of business then the last man standing has a monopoly. But if the software is open source then there is no "monopoly" -- anybody who doesn't like what you're doing can fork it and do something else and the original developer has no opportunity to charge monopoly prices because anyone can redistribute the software for free.
The harm only comes if the software is free-as-in-beer but not free-as-in-speech and once it becomes dominant the controlling developer does the sort of things Microsoft did with Internet Explorer, like discontinuing all the editions other than those that run on Windows and making it incompatible with industry standards so that people would have to use Windows to visit most websites as was the case in the early 2000s. Can you point to anything Google does along these lines? If anything they're doing the opposite, with efforts like this.
I'll trade our entire government for one run Google-style. They're better at foreign relations. They're better at having a balanced budget. They know how to treat people fairly. They know how not to waste everyone's time on ridiculous litigation that nobody (except their competitors) is calling for, especially when there's a shitton of far more pressing issues at hand. There are also corporations that behave much, much worse than google.
Are you reading this, Google? Get on it.
The answer is Skyhook, a company that war-drives our neighborhoods, collects WiFi info without permission, associates WiFi MACs or other identifying info with Lat. & Long. coordinates and sells a service that can tell WiFi receivers where they are.
So if it's evil for Google to war-drive and collect WiFi identifiers, shouldn't it also be evil for Skyhook?
Disclosure: I don't work for Google but a couple friends do...
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Now they just have it pushed by every piece of freeware from CCleaner on with the default opt in so now I'm seeing Chrome installs all over the place from people who don't know what it is or where it came from like I saw with Safari and iTunes.
And crashes 70% of the time? you really need to let go of Windows 98 or find a better dumpster to dive in for PCs friend, because frankly I can't even remember the last time I saw a BSOD. If you are gonna use the old Windows is crash prone meme you might as well be talking about how Apple computers don't support multitasking, since both memes are about the same age.
And finally Chrome saved Windows? BWA HA HA HA HA...oh wait, you were serious? Allow me to laugh harder..BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Riight because it isn't the bazillion programs need for work and play that are Windows only it is a fricking Google browser that keeps them on Windows! So what's next, you gonna claim those 400 million XP sales were just a fluke, because they didn't have Google to save them?
You know to write a successful troll one really needs to make their bullshit halfway believable, yours is so bad the only people posting will be the ones laughing at you...well like me.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Holy cow. October 2011? You're FROM THE FUTURE!!!
Tea Party senator presses for 'vigorous' oversight of Google
By Jordan Fabian - 03/11/11 03:12 PM ET
Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) wants a congressional hearing to examine whether Google has run afoul of antitrust laws.
In a letter to Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), the chairman of a Senate antitrust panel, Lee said that Google's dominance of the Internet search arena prompts the "need for vigorous antitrust oversight and enforcement in this area."
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/149039-tea-party-senator-wants-google-oversight-hearings
So google is an abusive monopolist, and microsoft isn't? How could that be? Oh wait . . .
In his election campaign, the freshman Utah Republican took $5,000 each from executives of Microsoft and AT&T, two of Google’s biggest competitors; executives at 1-800 CONTACTS gave Lee $7,500 in donations last year.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/51414450-76/1-800-anti-company-contacts.html.csp
Ummm, the market price for webmail is free. There are exceptions and the "free" services are generally fremium, but that doesn't change the fact that consumers expect the service to be free. It's not dumping if ad revenue covers the cost.
Put identity in the browser.
Really ? That's like saying every time someone steals an Escort, Ford has failed. Even if 50% of the time it's because the owner left the keys in the ignition and 40% of the time it's because the installer of the aftermarket alarm and immobilizer got it wrong..
"Shoddy" in what respect ? What capabilties does Windows lack ?
Windows has a security and permissions model more comprehensive than - and equally restrictive as - traditional/typical UNIX systems, and has had for the better part of two decades now. Even the consumer versions have had it for ten years.
Really? Because I don't consider police raiding the house of individuals for showing films or bookshops for having books that weren't approved by the Australian government to be considered free speech. Heck, I don't consider not allowing the sale of any speech material of any form to be an invasion of freedom of speech. Australia also has some of the most intrusive internet censorship laws. They feel the need to make sure that no adult likes small breasted women and therefor can't be turned into a child pornographer by banning women with perfectly legitimate but smaller breast size (B) from the cover of pornography cases. I'm really just scratching the surface here. There is a lot more you can read about and understand on your own time, but as far as the first world is concerned, Australia is one of the worst offenders in freedom of speech.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/11/3063975.htm
http://opennet.net/research/australia-and-new-zealand