Congressman Warns FTC: Leave Google Alone

concealment writes with this selection from Ars Technica: "A Democratic congressman who played a leading role in the fight against the Stop Online Piracy Act earlier this year has taken up a new cause: shielding Google from antitrust scrutiny. In a strongly worded letter to Federal Trade Commission chairman Jon Leibowitz, Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) praised Google's contribution to the nation's economy. He warned Leibowitz that if the FTC does choose to initiate an antitrust case against Google, Congress might react by curtailing its regulatory authority."

Comments

Leave Google Alone!

[PieMokz]

How fucking dare anyone make fun of Google after all shes been trough thru. All you people care about readers and making money out of her. She's a human!

Re:Leave Google Alone!

[Kuroji]

You are one hundred percent right. Google is a corporation, and corporations are people, my friend.

Re:Leave Google Alone!

[crazyjj]

I don't know, but why always a congressman sticks his nose in something it starts smelling fishy.

Maybe because Congressmen rarely do anything when they don't have a direct vested interest in the corporation involved.

Re:Leave Google Alone!

[Nadaka]

If corporations were not people, the actual people who break the law for profit and the people who supervise and direct them would be the ones with legal responsibility for their crimes and abuses. We can't have that, that would be class warfare. How dare you rise against your betters and their incorporated proxies.

Re:Leave Google Alone!

[miltonw]

If Google is innocent, then no harm no foul.

"No harm"? You haven't ever been investigated, have you? You might be completely and totally innocent and still be ruined, financially and personally by an "investigation".

While Google won't actually be ruined by this, to claim that there would be "no harm" is extremely naive.

This is just like those people who say, "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from government spying."

Re:Leave Google Alone!

[sumdumass]

A corporation does not shield anyone from breaking the law. Anyone who breaks the laws will be subject to prosecution under the law. If someone is directing others to break the law, and that can be shown as fact, they are more liable because more ranges of charges and liability would apply (racketeering, operating criminal enterprises and so on). The corporation denotation stops people who took no active role in the crime or managing of the company they own (or own stock in) from being held personally liable. The CEO and board have a fiduciary duty to operate the company within the laws and rules and regulations for those shareholders.

The problem with your confusion is that some laws carry only a fine for a penalty and corporations generally are the ones who pay that penalty. Another problem is that often criminal prosecution requires more evidence that what can be gained when asking tight lipped people questions. Think about how many times a case goes unprosecuted because witnesses are more scared of the perpetrators then the law and refuse to offer eye witness accounts of insights into why something happened. What can be more scarier then potentially being the one who could cause you and everyone else around you to lose your jobs and retirement. People will not volunteer to do that normally unless they have more to lose themselves.

ATTN: Jared Polis

[binarylarry]

My Good Friend Jared,

It would be a shame if your constituents found out about all this hentai porn you've downloaded from the Internet.

Perhaps you should send my friends at the FTC a letter explaining how their current views of Google are untenable.

*Strokes white cat*

Dearest Regards,
Dr. Larry Page

Re:ATTN: Jared Polis

[Ziggitz]

I wish Liberterarians would get some real friends so they'd stop posting their drivel on the internet for attention. You guys should arrange a meetup or something, get it all out of your system and stop shoehorning your idiotic philosophy into every single god damn slashdot submission.

Re:ATTN: Jared Polis

[NatasRevol]

Not all sides.

Lobbyists only work on the money sides.

Re:ATTN: Jared Polis

[RazorSharp]

Jim Taggart and his railroad were already chummy with Washington in the beginning of the book

Yeah, this point was conveniently overlooked. They've already been given tax breaks, handouts, protections, etc from the gov't. But the did it 'all on their own' and not at all at the cost of others.

I thought this was the biggest fallacy of Atlas Shrugged: Railroads aren't economically sustainable in a laissez-faire system, or even possible to build without eminent domain, so Rand's point about Nat Taggart building his railroad with nothing but his brains and braun was a bunch of bullshit. History especially proved Rand wrong: just compare the European and Asian railroads to American ones. Not only are the 'socialist' rail systems of Europe and Asia much more modern, but they're also utilized much more and provide immense opportunities not available in the States. Outside a couple large metropolises (which have 'socialist' subways and trains), in the States a person is screwed without a car. It's a Catch-22 for many: can't get a job without a car, can't get a car without a job. The U.S. has Amtrak and freight trains and that's it.

The congressman stuck his head out.

[lcam]

And now it's going to get hammered.

The FTC will double their resolve, they get to help Apple while defying congress.

What could be better.

As much as I like Jared, I differ here

[WindBourne]

If there is real proof that Google has a monopoly (i.e. they control the market) and that they have acted illegally by manipulating results wrongly or have forced tied products to their search engine, they SHOULD be investigated. The real issue here is that Google has a LARGE share, but does not have a monopoly. In addition, does anybody have any real proof that Google has manipulated results or forced other products to be tied to their search engine?

Good examples are ATT, IBM and MS. Is there any proof that Google has acted like these companies did? I have not seen it.

Re:As much as I like Jared, I differ here

[StormReaver]

Is there any proof that Google has acted like these companies did? I have not seen it.

Nor has anyone else.

There is a witch hunt against Google because it provides a set of services that provides better value than any of its competitors. There is absolutely nothing preventing anyone else from getting into search, except the need to provide a better product. This isn't like AT&T, IBM, or Microsoft (as you rightly pointed out), where there were insurmountable barriers (ability to install competing phone lines, incompatibilities causing vendor lock-in, and [what should have been illegal] exclusivity agreements with the entire supply chain).

The only thing keeping someone from competing with Google is that people like Google. Using a competing search engine is trivially easy (you just need to go there), but Google just provides a better service.

This witch hunt is just a desperate attempt by failed competitors to get the Government to make Google less useful, because the competitors know they can't compete on their merits.

Re:As much as I like Jared, I differ here

[WindBourne]

Skyhook, or even MS, are free to take Android and create their OWN version of it. What Google is doing is saying that we sell a package that includes our services with a set interface. There is NOTHING like MS who had closed source and actively changed it to make it impossible to switch off them without loads of pain for the seller AND customers.

Jared Polis is one of the few..

[bmo]

... that actually gets it. He was one of the 5 or so congresscritters that "stood in the way" of SOPA during the House Judiciary Committee hearings. He even understands the seedy underbelly of the net without going apeshit with wild claims. Someone this "net literate" in Congress is a rare thing indeed. There are a few with Rs next to their names that also get it, but they are rare as hen's teeth also.

>Google is a monopoly

The market is that way because every other competitor's product sucks more. Yahoo somehow keeps finding ways to suck more as time goes on, even though it seems like it can't possibly suck more. Google Maps is unparalleled, for example. Nobody else has the equivalent of Google Earth. There is Google search and then there is "everyone else" - mirroring "IBM and the seven dwarfs." They may as well be Cuil. And after, what, a decade of Hotmail being a laughingstock, I'm not motivated to use And unlike other companies that "maintain monopolies," Google doesn't go out of its way to "cut off the oxygen" of its competitors or partners - they don't have to.

I don't like big corporations and Google's size makes me uneasy. But I have problems finding serious fault with how they got to where they are today.

And when the FTC actually ever takes Microsoft seriously, then maybe I'll give them the benefit of the doubt going after Google. But they didn't and won't so I won't.

--
BMO

Re:Jared Polis is one of the few..

[bmo]

>Are you even familiar with the Unites States versus Microsoft.

I am. And David Boies was famous for prosecuting it. a

But then what actually happened?

The went under "observation."

Big deal. They should have been broken up. It would have been better for the company and for the investors as the pieces of Microsoft were worth more than the whole.

They weren't taken seriously. QED.

--
BMO

The maturing Internet

[rickb928]

We're facing some of the core issues that were warned about so long ago.

Do Not Track is proving to be a key issue, with a stand off building between advertisers/marketers/corporations, and various 'providers', and users. DNT has the potential for wrecking the models of many content providers, crushing the online ad business, and doing so by ensuring users can be 'left alone' despite the powerful drive to reach them no matter their preference. This is not much different from the Do-Not-Call fights not long ago with the telemarketers. Will the FTC and other agencies get into this fight as they did with Do Not Call, on the side of consumers, or wil the cave to the Internet and try to avoid it? Watching Microsoft try to implement DNT and being told outright that some advertisers will just ignore it sounds like the boilerroom types threatening to ignore Do Not Call, and indeed some did. Only fines worked, and then not perfectly. Will we get DNT?

Google is of course doing whatever is legally permitted, and more where there isn't much legislation to call upon. We will have to decide how we want to be tracked online, and then petition our representatives to force that, and then deal with the global Internet and all the non-US entities that may have different ideas. I don't blame Google for this, but until we legislate it, they will do whatever makes money.

And if we succeed in limiting Google and others, we should expect that the days of 'free' on the Internet , as in 'free services', are numbered. GMail is only free to you because ad revenue supports it. When you start denying the ads, you will need to pay for what was supported by them. It's just that simple. Will we? And then, google gets out of the 'beta' model and gets into the paid-for model, where customer service is necessary, and people will complain when Gmail goes haywire.

There is an outfit that is doing the paid-for model already, and seems moderately adequate. Yahoo! mail is available with POP/IMAP access for a fee, and they seem to be doing it well enough for a small fraction to pay. If I were the Yahoo! CEO, I would be lobbying behind the scenes for DNT, as it would force others (Google mostly) to find some way to fund their operations without stealing the info users would rather they not, and might force them into a new revenue model. One Yahoo! could possibly compete with.

Between the Partiot Act, TSA, SOPA, DMCA, copyright law abuses, and domestic surveillance, our government is edging closer to a full-fledged confrontation with the electorate. We will have to fight for our freedoms again in my lifetime. Privacy will not be the issue. Due process will become the issue. Watching me, intercepting my communications, and compelling my cooperation without discernable benefit are the coming issues. Already here, just not yet painful enough for us to complain. TSA Kabuki Security Theatre is one of these, NSA snooping another, and government management of healthcare another. When the governemnt decides to offer you different healthcare options based on your apparent lifestyle, based on your online data, we'll realize that none of this was good for us. And government-provided anything will always suffer from financial constraints. That will lead to making decisions based on budgets. Don't think it won't. Already, with private health insurance, you make these decisions.

We have a big fight ahead of us.