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FTC's Internal Memo On Google Teaches Companies a Terrible Lesson
schwit1 writes FTC staffers spent enormous time pouring through Google's business practices and documents as well as interviewing executives and rivals. They came to the conclusion that Google was acting in anti-competitive ways, such as restricting advertisers from working with rival search engines. But commissioners balked at the prospect of a lengthy and protracted legal fight. For a big company, that process may have been enlightening. Agency staffers might find evidence of anti-competitive behavior. But that doesn't mean the firm will face the music in the end. Previous attempts to go after big companies — such as the Justice Department's long-running antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s — loomed large in regulators' minds at the time of the Google probe, according to a former official who worked at the agency then. "Even if we were in the right and could win," said the former official, "it could take a lot of resources away from other enforcement."
Ah, the efficient use of government resources trumps justice. Must be a first!
"We know they committed fraud and lied to investors, but really, they're just too big to do anything about so here, here's $700 billion of taxpayer money so you can pay your bonuses."
One step closer to fascism.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The government should not be constrained by market assumptions, such as that resources are limited because of efficient allocation. The government operates on principles, such as unalienable rights, that markets do not value.
If we stop balancing, the whole thing will crash eventually. You know that, don't you?
This is a universal truism that fits to all law enforcement actions. If a crime is too common to police universally, the law will be applied selectively. If you could convince every defendant of a specific crime to fight the charge in court, that would influence the prosecution of that crime. While every prosecutor would pursue crimes that have an obvious harm to society, prosecution of 'victim-less' crimes would drop off in the face of consistent & vigorous defense. The 'law & order' works because most defendants don't aggressively defend themselves in court.
Don't use Google. Avoid their search, don't use their maps, or mail, or spyware phones.
If you make them a monopoly, they'll abuse their position. So stop using them. Use other products and services instead. There are still (for the moment) alternatives to all their things. Other mail providers. Mapquest instead of google maps. Etc. Use them instead. Let Google die.
Or, if you wish, keep using Google but then don't turn around and bitch when they pwn all your data and build databases of every single thing or person you do, talk to, read, write, watch, buy.
Markets _do_ value rights, and the markets have spoken: governments are free to do anything they want to, as long as relatively cheap porn can be had on the Internet.
Why are corporations now free to act above the law?
It's absurd to assume markets are capable of any values. People are the only things we know that exist that are capable of a moral compass. It's unfair to characterize a philosophy of society as being capable of good or evil. Companies do not feel, but their CEO does. No matter what system you prefer, the nature of people will determine it's morality. Far Leftism can be made evil just as easily as Far Rightism. This is the fallacy that somehow a government can be more moral than a private entity. They are still just collections of people.
Microsoft's illegal monopoly was spared a break-up by the dept. of Justice's 180 degree turn to a settlement -- that happened right after the Bush presidency started. Read about the case here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.#Judgment
Do all evil.
Same ol' same ol'. Shit floats to the top, no matter what you do.
Trickle down economics carefully explained
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I thought the government operated on the principle of who has the most money...... Additionally this seems to fit in that Google is a large company with much money/resources to fight the charge, therefore Google gets away with murder.
I'm sure with enough money even laws can be rewritten :) Welcome to America home of the big pocketbooks :)
What "other enforcement"? o.k., presumably the FTC is doing other things with their time than just antitrust. But if you're talking about getting the largest enforcement effect for your tax dollar, wouldn't going after a huge company be a good buy? 1) big company = big effect (in $) on the market. 2) big company = big news = littler companies telling themselves, "Well, if google can't get away with it, than neither can we."
I'd be interested to see the actual numbers behind this comment. It smells to me like not just a case of maximum efficiency, but rather a total imbalance in the numbers. Either google is so huge that they can outspend the U.S. Government - in which case, um, antitrust? Or alternatively, it's code for, "We're stretched so thin that we genuinely can't do our job."
But, hey - limited government, right? Thank God we don't have fascist socialist muslim regulators preventing Google from coming up with yet another half-baked product that they abandon as soon as someone finds it useful.
After the banks and car companies which are "too big to fail", we've got Google/etc which are "too big to sue".
U.S.A., land of the free*
* if you have enough money
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
by definition.
Yes the federal employee will be paid win or lose. But the goal is for the federal employee to generate revenue, to bring in money. Their time is "better spent" going after some mom-and-pop shop that can't afford to defend themselves and will just pay the fine.
Wrong, it's the governments (of the world actually) that do not value unalienable rights. That is the only reason USA used to be known as unique, it had those rights built into the Constitution and then eventually as those rights allowed the markets to create the wealthiest economy in the world in 19th century, the collectivists saw that as an opportunity to steal and pushed for destruction of what made USA unique - protecting those rights.
Markets value what individuals value on voluntary basis and individuals on voluntary basis making individual choices do value their own freedom to possess and operate private property. That's the most important right that governments of the world violate every minute of every day.
AFAIC it is absolutely Google's business and nobody else's how they provide results to the search queries sent to their servers. Governments involving themselves into that process is destruction of the unalienable rights, destruction of private property rights, just like all business regulations, all income and wealth related taxes, pretty much everything governments do every moment of every day.
You can't handle the truth.
One step closer to fascism.
I realize it is currently trendy to believe that fascism is somehow related to corporate control but it is not. Fascism is an odd combination of far right *and* far left ideas. With respect to industry its actually socialistic. Fascism promotes control of industry by syndicates of workers *not* control by corporations.
That's not a "market assumption", it's plain old reality: resources are finite, so you need priorities. If a cop pulls someone over for speeding, then sees an armed robbery in progress, or a paramedic is treating someone's sprained ankle then a bystander has a heart attack, do you want them to stick to what they were doing and reject the notion of priorities as being a "market assumption"? I'd rather they focus their efforts on the higher priority, because that gives the best outcomes.
In this case, the FTC had more pressing enforcement jobs, like telemarketing scams, the fight with cellphone companies over ripoff premium services ... they felt putting their resources there made more sense than fighting Google over the order of search results, and I'm not at all sure they were wrong about that.
By coincidence, I was discussing law enforcement priorities at work on Friday (we teach computer forensics for law enforcement, among other things); unlike the world of CSI, real law enforcement doesn't go spending days testing out an obscure theory, or digging into every possible detail of each case: they do enough work on a case to pass it to the next stage, then get on with the next case. No "market" - there just aren't an unlimited number of hours in each forensic caseworker's day.
None of the linked articles state any charge of breaking the law. Looks like regulators have done an in-depth investigation and found no evidence and have used the media to cover their ass. All we see are accusations that their shopping search engine used to (or may had have) rank results that they participated in higher, and they had captive agreements with business partners. But where are the specific charges and evidence?
The links states " Google was acting in anti-competitive ways". Leads one to believe that that is not the current situation. With new technology (wonder why we have such long beta services) errors will be made, it's the companies responsibility to create the highest RIO it can. Specifically speaking, if I run a shopping service wouldn't I want to present the most profitable product first? If I am not participating how will I assure future survival and with a publicly traded company, how does this protect the investor?
I don't buy excuse that they are too scared to litigate or prosecute a violation of law. If it's true, the regulatory agency needs to be replaced, isn't their primary function to uphold the law?
Recent media coverage seems like, "Hey boss we took the whole fleet fishing for the past few months, spent a bunch of money and came back with an empty hull". The recent media coverage seems like smear to me.
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The result of the Republican efforts to create a government that "Can be drowned in a teacup" has resulted in government agencies that can in fact be drowned by insufficient resources.
And here we are, exporting this great idea to the rest of the world: go, TTIP, go! Go, Trans-Pacific, go!
Bigcorp: you don't like what laws happen to come out of that hellhole's parliament? How was it called... France?
Just sue the pants off them!
And now excuse me while I go barf.
Agency staffers might find evidence of anti-competitive behavior. But that doesn't mean the firm will face the music in the end.
From the POV of a company, that doesn't sound like a terrible lesson to learn, that sounds like an awesome lesson to learn.
A better headline might be "FTC's Internal Memo On Google Informs Individuals of a Terrible Fact". Much more accurate, and sounds just as click-bait worthy, to me at least.
This portion of the gov't does not work on a market model, it works on a revenue generation model. What generates more revenue, having staff go after mega corporations that can afford to defend themselves or much smaller businesses that can not?
So many problem in business and government exist because the incentives/rewards are screwed up. In business school there is a recurring lesson that shows up in many varied topics. You don't get what you ask for. You don't get what everyone agrees is right. You get what you reward. So if you reward a gov't bureaucrat based on win/loss ratio and/or fines generated you will not get justice, you will get wins and fines.
That gets dicey, from everything to perpetual war (thank god the last depression reeled in our Middle East adventures) to reexamining drug laws after 40 years of paying for prisons for the drug war. If it weren't for market assumptions, that madness might have never ended.
Besides, this is the same lie that was told regarding the lack of prosecution for the banking scandals, while accepting million dollar fines for billion dollar frauds, yet there is absolutely no problem in finding the 2.7 million per prisoner to keep Guantanamo open. It's handing waving away the problem, as that is much more media friendly than a simple fuck you, we'll do what we want.
A side effect of following up and taking an offending company to court just might be that other companies might clean up their act lest they suffer the same fate. ``Sternly-worded'' letters haven't done squat to end anti-competitive practices. The fines, though, have helped to make some money for the government. Not like that does anything to the groups who've been screwed by the anti-competitive practices. All they get is a warm and fuzzy feeling that some justice has been done. At least until a future Justice Deptartment decides to look the other way again.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
with the far right in power at the moment and no credible left wing in America it's pretty much a waste of time/effort to go after a big corp. The right is openly against anti-trust regulation (among other forms of regulation), and if all else fails they'll just cut the agency's funding until enforcement stops. It's a side effect of our screwed up political system. Gerrymandering plus our Senate makes it cheap and easy to put a little pressure in the right place and completely control our politics. That wasn't by accident either. It was designed that way because wealthy land owners were afraid of the plebes voting themselves land & food.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
No excuse, it's not even pronounced the same.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
you'd never here about it on google searches :)
Preferably a dictionary so you can spell "poring" correctly...
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
This situation is an example of an economy that has never had a base. It is also proof of a system that has been corrupted. The congress will never pass laws that would correct the problem in that one way or another the congressmen are on the take. For example we could pass a law that bans complex contracts. To enforce that law we simply put a rule into play that if challenged as being a complex contract and the challenge is upheld the complaining party must always win a complete recovery plus legal fees. We can also continue to tax companies that try to offshore divisions of their business. For example if GM wants to make all car seats in Mexico we can add an import tax and also fine them if they do not pay American minimum wages. Further we should allow only individuals to contribute to political campaigns and not corporations and we should cap individual contributions at $100.. Many things could be done to have a rational and just society but they will not be done due to capitalism corrupting the entire political system.
A graduated tax with no loopholes would be just as effective in eliminating corruption as a flat tax would. Just fairer. Most flat tax advocates are just advocating this bargain: don't tax the rich in the first place, and then they won't use their influence to corrupt the system. But a simple graduated tax would do the same thing - just do it without the massive giveaway to the rich. A simple system doesn't have to be simplistic - unless your goals are as simplistic as the system.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
If they deliberately don't enforce the big guys on grounds that have nothing to do with the actual law, then they become arbitrary and lose all legitimacy to enforce anything with anyone else.
One of the major selling points of our western type states is supposed to be universality of the law and that everybody is equal before the law.
Destroy that, and you are basically canceling the social contract with all it entails. Every single last bit of it.
Stupid, vapid and sucking the corporate teat like there is no other source of sustenance in the world. That and political advertisers are their lifeblood.
There is nothing believable for /. from the likes of the Washington Post. WSJ while I am on a rant. Old school rubbish bins is where these old school news providers belong.
In what dialect? They're both /o/ in my speech.
* except when it improves the bottom line.
Are they still spouting this bs as doublespeak or have they realized the hypocrisy is too blatant and stopped?
There are many who now suggest the USA is not longer a democratic republic but rather a fascist country. Fascism is defined as being the point where government and business are so interconnected as to be virtually one and the same thing. It would seem then that any situation in which companies can willfully violate laws, creates a technically de facto fascist state.
This idea might also be applied to so called corporate welfare, and the infamous "to big to fail" bank bailouts. When a single company or group of companies failure can compromise the national financial system, it indicates a lack of government control, and or national sovereignty. So to with auto companies who had to be propped up with government funds.
I don't think it's extreme to suggest that this kind of weakness on the government side of the equation favors corporate interests. What is evident from that is how much power and control corporations have to influence, perhaps define government policies. By any other name, that is fascism.
trickle-down economics
That is the rich man pissing down your back and telling you its raining.
Sure is a warm rain.
A lot of cops are on speeding duty because it makes money, not because its useful.