Category: Menacing Monopoly

Finally, somebody is telling Google NO:

The company’s plan to digitize every book ever published and make them widely available was derailed on Tuesday when a federal judge in New York rejected a sweeping $125 million legal settlement the company had worked out with groups representing authors and publishers.

The decision throws into legal limbo one of the most ambitious undertakings in Google’s history, and it brings into sharp focus concerns about the company’s growing power over information. While the profit potential of the book project is not clear, the effort is one of the pet projects of Larry Page, the Google co-founder who is set to become its chief executive next month. And the project has wide support inside the company, whose corporate mission is to organize all of the world’s information.

Fortunately, wide opposition outside of the company helped persuade Judge Denny Chin that the proposed settlement was not in the public interest. A broad coalition, including librarians, college professors, The Justice Department, Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Consumer Watchdog all opposed the settlement.

Consumer Watchdog issued a statement hailing the decision:

“Google’s entire business model is to never ask permission, but to seek forgiveness if necessary,” said John M. Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project. “Judge Chin has ruled simply that you can’t take other people’s property and use it without asking.  This should send the message to the engineers at the Googleplex that the next time they want to use someone’s intellectual property, they need to ask permission.”

Simpson noted that Judge Chin also found the deal raised antitrust problems.  Consumer Watchdog was among the first to oppose the agreement on those grounds and urged the U.S. Justice Department to intervene. Justice argued against the deal.

The Monster of Mountain View likes to claim that it is just trying to expand access to knowledge. In reality, it’s trying to gain control over created works and use them to make money. Thank goodness this most recent attempt by Google to extend its monopoly position has been thwarted.

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The San Jose Mercury News reports that Mountain View is running out of space for companies that aren't named Google:

Google's aggressive online growth increasingly has a counterpart in bricks and mortar, with the company's Mountain View headquarters mushrooming in the past four years to occupy more than 4 million square feet, or the equivalent of about 40 Home Depot stores.

But that's just a start. On Silicon Valley's NASA base, Google is preparing to build a new corporate campus with fitness and day care facilities and — in a first in the valley — employee housing, adding 1.2 million square feet of space to Google's real estate holdings.

Although other valley giants also occupy vast amounts of real estate, Google is growing in a way that is distinct, remaking its surroundings according to its own values. In addition to buying and leasing buildings and squeezing out some of its neighbors, it is prodding the city of Mountain View to transform the area around its headquarters, adding housing and retail to create an environment more like a town center.

The Monster of Mountain View's appetite for land and office space is resulting in a loss of economic diversity in town, as other tech firms migrate elsewhere:

Phil Mahoney, executive vice president with Cornish & Carey, recently relocated the semiconductor company MIPS Technologies to Sunnyvale, “as much as anything, getting out of Google's way.”

“The handwriting is on the wall. You don't want to compete with them for space,” Mahoney said. “In real estate circles, it's called 'the Google effect.' “

Google is so hungry for space it's willing to pay to get rid of tenants so it can use every bit of space in buildings it has purchased.

Other businesses feel pressured by Google's expansion, like Colin McDowell's McDSP, a tiny atoll bobbing in the Googley ocean.

McDSP's 1,682-square-foot office is now the only non-Google space in 1300 Crittenden Lane, a 115,000-square-foot building that Google bought in 2006 as part of a $319 million deal that also included the core Googleplex. McDowell, the CEO of the six-person audio-technology company, has a lease through 2014, but Google wants him out now. McDowell hasn't wanted to move, saying the rent is good and the offices are close to Shoreline Amphitheatre, where professional musicians frequently need McDSP's services on short notice.

As he enters his office each day and peers through a glass window into a Google break room replete with a Google-logo espresso maker, racks of candy, snacks and an often boisterous foosball table, McDowell says he can't help but feel a hint of jealousy.

“Could you just not flaunt it so bad?” he says of his landlord. “Not right in our face?”

Mercy? From Google? Fuhgetaboutit.

An individual who naively switched to Chrome a few months ago because the existence of one particular feature convinced her the spyware-laden brower could be recommended to persons “concerned about privacy and security issues” is now having second thoughts:

It seems that the new Chrome beta (7.0.517.24) — being automatically pushed out now — has (with no warning whatsoever) removed what I consider to be a key functionality, the cookie control setting that allows you to be queried for a decision whenever new cookies are being offered, and permits you to determine how cookies from related sites will be handled in the future.

She concludes:

Without such a setting, or an alternative means to access equivalent functionality (e.g. through a browser plugin/extension), I will likely be forced to move back to Firefox, and recommend the same course for most other individuals and firms.

It's no doubt true that many Chrome users have never accessed this feature, and choose rather simply to accept all cookies on a willy-nilly basis. But this simply is not an acceptable modus operandi for vast numbers of users and organizations who need convenient site-by-site cookie control. Nor is manually entering cookie exceptions into tables a practical solution on a routine basis.

Apparently this person, Lauren Weinstein, is unaware that Google logs keystrokes typed into the Chrome search box. She's also unaware that per-site cookie control – by itself – is almost meaningless in terms of safeguarding one's privacy. Cookie control doesn't provide the capability to block web bugs and trackers, find and erase Flash cookies, or prevent malicious JavaScript from executing, for example.

There are add-ons for Firefox that do all of those things.

Nobody concerned about privacy and/or security should be using any Google products, period. To say that Google is hostile to the very idea of user privacy is an understatement. Google is actively working to create a world in which there is no privacy. Those opposed to such a dystopia should be boycotting Google products and services regardless of how usable or useful those products and services may be. Those who do not stand on principle will have to accept the consequences of allowing their computer, mobile phone, and television to essentially become telescreens for Google.

The NY Times has a rather good article out about the impact that the loss of net neutrality would have on user privacy:

Without neutrality, say advocates of online privacy, the Internet becomes more like a mall — where users are from the start viewed as consumers — and less like a public square.

“The people who are pushing for a nonneutral world are pushing it for monetary purposes,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for privacy online.

“Interfering with packets,” she said, echoing Mr. Saxon’s concerns, “creates the space for this kind of surveillance.”

Google has no incentive to be in favor of “net neutrality”. It is already a monster, the Monster of Mountain View. Because of its size, it can strike deals with internet service providers like Verzion, ensuring that its “services” are delivered through the fast lane. So what if everyone else gets screwed?

Google isn't interested in being the web's gateway. Rather, Google's executives want Google to be the destination. The only place you have to go when you connect to the Internet. Er, make that the GoogleNet. Google envisions itself as handling all your communications needs (email, chat, and social networking) providing a global storefront for you to buy physical goods, digital content, plus software “apps”, and giving you a place to store your data (photos, documents, spreadsheets, etc.) Since you'll trust Google with all your information, everything, Google will know pretty much everything about you. And they'll be able to use such knowledge to monetize you.

It is already happening:

For a recent series in The Wall Street Journal about how Web sites track their visitors, called “What They Know,” The Journal studied the top 50 Web sites in the United States to see how many tools they embedded in visitors’ computers. Many use more than 100 such tools; only Wikipedia had none.

Eben Moglen, a professor at Columbia Law School who is an advocate for free software and online privacy, sees frameworks like the one proposed by Google and Verizon as emphasizing the business of the Internet at the expense of the privacy of the Internet.

“As the network does more to adapt to what commerce needs, it becomes more and more about knowing what’s inside the head of the user, about what the person is doing and buying,” he said.

Google has sold out on net neutrality, just like it sold out on user privacy a long time ago. If you are bothered by this, do what we've done: Leave Google behind. It's possible. And it's rewarding. You'll see more of the Web, you'll see it faster, and you'll see it with less clutter and junk.

Too many people naively think that they're anonymous when using the Internet. Truth is, as far as Google is concerned, nobody should be anonymous. The Monster of Mountain View is doing everything it can to make privacy an ideal of yesterday:

Google's roving Street View spycam may blur your face, but it's got your number. The Street View service is under fire in Germany for scanning private WLAN networks, and recording users' unique Mac (Media Access Control) addresses, as the car trundles along.

Germany's Federal Commissioner for Data Protection Peter Schaar says he's “horrified” by the discovery.

“I am appalled… I call upon Google to delete previously unlawfully collected personal data on the wireless network immediately and stop the rides for Street View,” according to German broadcaster ARD.

Schaar might be horrified, but given what we know about how Google operates already, we're not. We're simply not surprised at all.

We have to give Germany propos for having a Federal Commissioner for Data Protection. The United States – where Google is headquartered – really needs one of those. The Federal Trade Commission is a joke. It doesn't keep pace with Google at all. And that allows Google to get away with things like this.

The EFF reports that Google has embarked upon another creepy project:

Lawyers from EFF warned this week of the implications of Google Sidle, a new beta product the company describes as, “Bringing our mission of organizing the world's information to your cafeteria,” but which one EFF lawyer described as, “Creepy, even for Google.”

Companies and schools subscribing to Sidle will have the convenience of not having to bus their own trays in exchange for allowing Google-nominated “Foodlers” to review leftovers for what the company describes as “analysis intended to improve food offerings and better target future nourishment.” Customers can later visit personalized webpages describing what they didn't eat and how tasty it turned out to be.

“Google's business model has always relied on collating all the great free stuff on the Internet — stuff that you might otherwise have missed,” said the official blog entry announcing the service. “Our maintenance staff noticed a lot of free food in our award-winning restaurants was going to waste. After that insight, it only took Google engineers a few weeks to take the benefits of our foraging to millions. It also gives our hungry Googlers (or 'hungrooglers,' as we fondly refer to them) the opportunity to sample cafeteria food from around the country.”

While initially cautious beta-testers have been reportedly swayed by the bright primary colors of the mu-mus early “Foodlers” have worn, privacy experts warn that new Sidle customers may be giving away more than they realize.

“Consumers should ask themselves some hard questions about this free service,” said Kurt Opsahl, Senior Staff Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “such as 'Why don't these people just buy their own food,' 'Where do they take this stuff,' 'Why do they wear those gloves when they're taking it,' and, most importantly, 'Why do they keep staring at me while I'm trying to eat?'”

Even some employees within Google are said to have concerns about how much pre-launch testing the new, experimental service has undergone. “Usually we extensively self-trial these new social networking features within the organization,” said one anonymous source, “but as soon as the Sidle people started talking about 'dogfooding,' everyone just stopped sitting near them at lunch.”

Sidle is reportedly a “20% project,” a unique Google custom where the 20% of the engineers with the poorest socialization skills are put to work on projects that management does not closely supervise and can retrospectively deny all knowledge of. Other 20% projects have included the “GTalk Slightly Too Loudly” instant messaging client that relayed private conversations to the Google search index (as well as everyone else in the room), and the extremely short-lived “Google Boggle Ogle
Goggles (Street View Edition).”

Seemed like it might be real for a minute, didn't it? Happy April Fools' Day!

Why settle for controlling the user experience on only two out of three screens? The Monster of Mountain View has revealed plans to extend the Googlenet's reach to television:

Google and Intel have teamed with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Web into the living room through a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes.

The move is an effort by Google and Intel to extend their dominance of computing to an arena where they have little sway, the TV.

What are Intel and Sony thinking? Google doesn't have partners, it has stooges. Mozilla and Apple are discovering that Google isn't much of a friend; it seeks to use them for its own purposes, and doesn't have their best interests at heart.

Sony and Intel will eventually learn this lesson.

The New York Times' sources say the “Google TV” contraption will be based on Android, the Google-approved spyware that ships on mobile phones.

Tech writer Kirk McElhearn has announced this week that he's made the noble and informed decision to Leave Google Behind:

For a company whose unofficial slogan is “Don’t Be Evil,” Google has been ignoring its so-called core value with alarming frequency as of late. And because of that, I decided to delete my Gmail account, along with all other Google services that I am able to do without. I have also deleted as much personal information as possible from my Google profile.

He goes on to recite the many ways that Google can collect data about its users, which are noted on LGB's front page:

But not only does Google dominate the search (and, hence, advertising) market, it also knows a lot about you. By adding more and more “free” services—free in exchange for the annoyance of ads, and for users’ giving up their privacy — Google accumulates a wealth of information about your interests, your browsing habits, your contacts, the blogs you visit (using your Google profile), pictures of your home, and much more.

He concludes:

Google knows more about you than the NSA, and has recently shown that it doesn’t give a hoot about your privacy. The company has gotten too big, and has turned into just another corporation trying to maximize its assets—and those assets are you.

Well said. Welcome to the LGB movement, Kirk!

In the futuristic digital world that Google wants to create – the Googlenet – there is no such thing as user privacy. So naturally, Google didn't bother to build meaningful privacy safeguards into its latest offering, Google Buzz, which is basically an attempt to further monetize and exploit the people that Google has lured into signing up for Gmail:

When Google introduced Buzz — its answer to Facebook and Twitter — it hoped to get the service off to a fast start. New users of Buzz, which was added to Gmail on Tuesday, found themselves with a ready-made network of friends automatically selected by the company based on the people that each user communicated with most frequently through Google’s e-mail and chat services.

But what Google viewed as an obvious shortcut stirred up a beehive of angry critics. Many users bristled at what they considered an invasion of privacy, and they faulted the company for failing to ask permission before sharing a person’s Buzz contacts with a broad audience. For the last three days, Google has faced a firestorm of criticism on blogs and Web sites, and it has already been forced to alter some features of the service.

Whoops.

Normally, when Google rolls out a new product that lacks privacy safeguards, it faces some criticism, but the Monster of Mountain View always brushes it off. Refreshingly, it looks like that might be harder to do in this case.

[C]ritics said that Google’s decision to use e-mail and chat correspondence as the basis of a social network was fundamentally misguided. While it is common for social networks to make public a person’s list of friends and followers, those lists are not typically created from e-mail conversations.

“People thought what they had was an address book for an e-mail program, and Google decided to turn that into a friends list for a new social network,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington. “E-mail is one of the few things that people understand to be private.”

Yeah, but Gmail's not private… it never has been. It's a product offered by Google, which inherently means there is no guarantee of privacy whatsoever. People who want their email to be secure and deletable should use a service like Hushmail that actually respects their privacy.

Of course, Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan had to make this dumb comment:

I don’t think people expected that Google would show the world who you are connected with.

Well, we Google skeptics did. This is par for the course.

If there is a silver lining to Google's continuing onslaught against privacy, it's that more people are starting to take Google skeptics (like those of us here at LGB) seriously. Google is still growing like a dangerous cancer, but the number of people who are developing a healthy suspicion of Google is also growing. Hopefully, the growth of the latter will soon outpace the growth of the former.