WebProNews

Tag: Government

  • If It’s a Streaming War We’d Like To Be an Arms Dealer, Says IAC CEO

    If It’s a Streaming War We’d Like To Be an Arms Dealer, Says IAC CEO

    “If it’s a streaming war we’d like to be an arms dealer,” says IAC CEO Joey Levin. “We want to send the product and services to people who are making video. Video is relevant not just to people building streaming services, which there are now endless amounts of that and endless amounts of capital, but also every small business and every event. Everywhere people interact they’re expecting video now. It used to be text, then it was images, and now it’s video.”

    Joey Levin, CEO of IAC, discusses their position as the “arms dealer” in the streaming wars in an interview on CNBC at The Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference:

    If It’s a Streaming War We’d Like To Be an Arms Dealer

    If it’s a streaming war we’d like to be an arms dealer. We want to send the product and services to people who are making video. Video is relevant not just to people building streaming services, which there are now endless amounts of that and endless amounts of capital, but also every small business and every event. Everywhere people interact they’re expecting video now. It used to be text, then it was images, and now it’s video. People need the tools to make that and our goal is to provide them.

    I’m thrilled (we pivoted away from being a platform for streaming) now that everyone’s jumping into that space. I think between the time we announced that we were going to get into the streaming wars and the time we backed out there was another several billion dollars within a few months that entered the category. We were not competing with weapons that size and thought we’d be better off being a service provider. 

    It’s Possible To Compete With Google But They Have To Play Fairly

    I don’t know what the right answer is (regarding breaking up big tech companies such as Google and Facebook) but I do know that we need an answer. Regulations are very hard to get right. I think frequently regulations in areas like that end up helping the incumbents. Those companies have already built huge data stores and they know what to do with those. It’ll just make it harder for the next people that come in to gather the data they need to compete. I don’t know how the regulations would work. I’d love to see that happen. I’d love to see regulations allow for more competition and protect competition, but it’s hard to see how that’s going to work. I don’t think GDPR did that really and I don’t know what would. They may need other solutions.

    I think it’s possible (to compete with Google) but they have to play fairly. They have a significant position in search and they have a significant position in other areas too and that’s where a lot of people start their behavior. If Google starts favoring its own products or continues favoring its own products that is not going to leave room for others. I think that’s not necessarily great for the country.

    In Deciding To Take a Company Public We Take a Long-Term Perspective

    We don’t think a lot about a particular market state when we’re taking a company publicly. We think about what’s right for the company at the time. Does the company need access to capital? Does the company need a currency? Could a company benefit in some way by being public and having a public currency? It’s kind of independent of what market we’re in at that moment (when we decide it’s the right) time to take a company public. Just because the market might be hot or valuations might be high doesn’t mean we need to hit that window because we take a much longer-term perspective.

    The (recent IPOs) are all different and they all have their own story. There are fantastic companies going public. I think it’ll be good for investors and they have opportunities to invest in them. It’s better that their public in a lot of cases than being private where a limited number of people can invest in them.

    We Now Match 100 Percent of Employee 401k Contributions

    I think there are different answers for different businesses (regarding potential regulations that could shut down the gig economy). We have businesses that have gig economy workers, 1099 workers, and we have businesses that are very big on W2 workers. The question is are the employees or the people doing the work getting the benefits that they want and getting the benefits that they need? Many of them prefer to be independent contractors and many of them prefer some of the benefits of independent contractors. Others like BlueCrew, which is all W2 workers, want benefits and need the things that come with being a W2 worker. Each business has its own needs on that.

    One of the other things that we’re doing at IAC right now that’s really important for our 8,000 employees is we just announced a big change to our 401k plan to address the income inequality gap, to get more people investing in the market, to get more people participating in the economy and in capitalism. We are now matching a hundred percent of people’s 401k contributions up to 10% of their salary which is I think relatively unheard of among our competitors and other companies. I’m hoping other people follow that.

    If It’s a Streaming War We’d Like To Be an Arms Dealer, Says IAC CEO Joey Levin
  • VMware Is Now a Platform For Digital Transformation, Says CEO

    VMware Is Now a Platform For Digital Transformation, Says CEO

    “We believe that our conversations now have gone from targeted to holistic to be this platform for their digital transformation,” says VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger. “That core idea of how do they get to that digital future, that’s not an IT discussion anymore, that’s a business strategy conversation. That’s why we are seeing this real uplift in the position in the conversation that we are having with customers globally.”

    Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, discusses how VMware has become a complete digital transformation platform for companies in an interview on CNBC:

    VMware Is Now a Platform For Digital Transformation

    We believe that our conversations now as we’ve expanded from selling compute Hypervisor to a complete cloud infrastructure, complete end-user computing, a transformation of their network and security offerings, our conversations have gone from targeted to holistic to be this platform for their digital transformation. That core idea of how do they get to that digital future, that’s not an IT discussion anymore, that’s a business strategy conversation.

    That’s why we are seeing this real uplift in the position in the conversation that we are having with customers globally. As we’ve positioned in the past, as people move to the full VMware offering that is a multiplier. A company or an institution that is using us as a Hypervisor, now the full cloud stack of network, compute, management, and automation, that is a business expansion opportunity for us.

    VMware Seeking Ability To Be a Government Cloud Provider

    As I said on the (earnings) call we are now in the FedRAMP High process. We are seeking that ability to be a cloud provider for the government and many of the government. Many of the government in defense and intelligence are big VMware footprints. We see this as a great opportunity. We are in process to get approval. As the JEDI contract gets resolved we hope to be able to be positioned with Amazon and Azure, given our relationships with both.

    Even as our preferred relationship with Amazon is very strong we do see this ability for us to participate for government business being an essential element of our multi-cloud strategy where Amazon, Azure, IBM, and our other cloud partners all give us a great opportunity to participate for government contracts.

    VMware Is Now a Platform For Digital Transformation, Says CEO Pat Gelsinger
  • We Are Simply a Pawn of The Internet Business Model: Data Collection

    We Are Simply a Pawn of The Internet Business Model: Data Collection

    The Internet exists to collect your data. We all should realize that everything we do is recorded into huge data sets in order for advertisers to target us better, for online stores to sell us stuff more effectively and for government agencies to know what we are up to. That’s why the Intenet attracts investors and why it is financially viable as a platform. Unfortunately, criminal enterprises are also utilizing our data to steal from us and sell our data to other criminals on the Dark Web.

    In a recent Tedx Talk, Eric Jardine, Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech specializing in Internet security and privacy, dived into the difficult issue of privacy and whether the Internet should be anonymous or open to data collectors:

    Growing Lack of Online Privacy

    At the core of all of this, is our growing societal problem of online privacy, or really the lack thereof. Currently, through a series of seemingly innocuous choices, we’re barreling towards a world with very little individual privacy. There are tools that currently exist which could catapult us from one end of this spectrum all the way to the other. Technologies such as The Onion Router or Tor are gateways to a portion of the internet known colloquially as the Dark Web.  In this realm we’re anonymous by design and our privacy is pretty much as maximum as we can get.

    We don’t want to end up on either of these extremes. Instead, there are discrete practical steps that we can all take as part of our daily lives that would move the needle a little bit and land us somewhere more in the middle.

    The Statistics

    • 3.9 Billion Internet Users
    • 2.2 Billion Facebook Users
    • 5 Billion Daily Snapchats
    • 300 Hours Watched on YouTube Per Minute

    As we move for more of a digital content platform-centric universe into an Internet of Things reality, we move into a whole other area of interconnectivity. Projections are wild, but one study indicates that by 2025, as many as 75 billion IoT devices could be interconnected into our cars, our homes, even things as silly as our toothbrushes!

    Our engagement with all of these platforms and with all of these internet connected devices generate data. That data takes two separate forms. The first is content related information or content related data, some of which could be very personal, such as sexting. it’s obvious why you wouldn’t want companies, government, or random strange individuals getting access to the content of your messages.

    The other type of data is what is known as metadata, or essentially data about data. Imagine three data points. First one is a visit to a dating site, the second transaction in this record is a visit to a sexual health website a couple of days later and then following that, maybe a month later, you have a visit to an abortion clinic website. These are three solitary little data points, but already I bet you are starting to infer something about the person who’s visiting these sites and can draw a number of conclusions.

    Imagine how many data points you might generate with the searches you do in a day, a week, a month, or a year? Once you leverage Big Data analytics and apply it to all of this information you get a scarily accurate picture of what people are like.  

    Data is the Internet’s Business Model

    If that amount of data that is generated wasn’t bad enough, the entire internet ecosystem, the entire commercial world wide web, is essentially based on a business model that emphasizes the collection, aggregation, sharing and monetization of your user-generated data.

    This means that there are a host of actors who have access to the data that we generate as we move through the internet ecosystem. This obviously includes ISP’s, but it also includes the content platforms we engage with on a routine basis, governments who can requisition all of this information, and third-party data brokers. In the United States alone there are upwards of 4,000 discrete data brokers whose whole job it is is to take information about you, aggregate it, and sell it to somebody for some purpose.

    We have a privacy problem. We readily engage every day with an ecosystem that’s built around the absence of privacy and the use of our personal data. I think there are important reasons over and beyond just the fact that maybe we want to keep things private some of the time of why privacy remains something important and something to be cherished in society.

    No Privacy Vs. Privacy

    We have on one end of the privacy spectrum a problem and with the lack of privacy and on the other hand there is a suite of tools that could catapult us all the way in the other direction, where it’s possible we could become too private for society’s good. These are the tools that are part and parcel of the Dark Web, and the Dark Web is anonymous by design. And of course, there’s a problem with the ways in which humans tend to behave or react when we get total anonymity. As soon as our actions lose consequences we can tend to become unmoored from our moral sensibilities, and that’s problematic for society as a whole and probably for us as individuals as well. The Dark Web does that by design.

    It says you do what you want and no one will know who you are, so it doesn’t matter. Researchers from the United Kingdom have done a great job categorizing available Dark Web content and they found a pretty grim picture. For instance, about 15% of available Dark Web content is dedicated to drug sites, 2% is dedicated to what they categorized as child abuse imagery sites.

    It’s clear, that this extreme end is very problematic. You’re dealing with a cesspool of crime and that’s not a place I think a lot of us want to go.

    So where does that leave us?

    If we’ve lopped off the two extremes of that privacy spectrum, where do we want to land? In sort of Goldilocks fashion, we probably want to be somewhere closer to the middle of that. I would like to prioritize privacy when we can but recognize that there are limits. Then the question obviously becomes if that’s where we want to land, and currently, we’re careening towards little privacy, and the tools of Tor and the Dark Web will take us too far in the other direction, how do we get to that happy medium?

    There are two things that we need to do generally speaking to get there. The first is we need to be sympathetic to privacy. Inherently, privacy is context specific and we need to be sympathetic about that. We don’t want to just default to where you are clearly are doing something wrong if you actually want some element of privacy.

    Secondly, and I think a bit more problematic pragmatically, we don’t want to just give up on privacy. When you see an entire ecosystem built up around the idea that your data is what turns a buck, it’s hard to fight back against that. Facebook has 2.2 billion users, what am I going to do against that kind of behemoth?

    I think within this category, there are tools that we could use to increase our privacy that are well short of Tor and the Dark Web. You could use, for example, a virtual private network or VPN. That’s a small step, but it masks part of your Internet traffic in a way that’s discoverable by law enforcement, yet hidden from Internet service providers or the companies that are trying to build profiles about you. You could also use more private search engines, like Duck Duck Go, that promise to keep your data private, as opposed to Google.

    We the People have the Power!

    Beyond that, it’s important for us to recognize that individually we may be weak, but collectively we have a tremendous amount of power. We are consumers, and if we work in concert and come to a social consensus that privacy is still valuable, we can pressure the developers of the various services that we use to emphasize privacy.

    Lastly, we can pressure our elected representatives and government to try to come to grips with the fact that technology is not going away and that we have a need to deal with the fact that data is going to be collected and data is going to be shared.The questions about how much data to collect, when and how long an entity should keep our data, what kind of rules govern data and who can share the data, is certainly the role of government.

  • Government Can Speed Up Implementation of IoT Technology

    Government Can Speed Up Implementation of IoT Technology

    Government around the world play a key role in whether IoT becomes a mainstream technology sooner rather than later according to Cisco IoT expert Maciej Kranz. Kranz recently posted an excerpt of his book Building the Internet of Things on the Cisco Innovation blog.

    IoT Adoption is Key to Regional Competitiveness

    “Governments around the world are beginning to realize that IoT adoption will be one of the key factors defining the competitiveness of their cities, provinces, countries, or regions and that IoT can help solve many of the chronic problems plaguing their economies and their environments,” says Kranz. “Thus, governments at various levels have a number of key roles to play.”

    “There will be competition for bandwidth and other resources; there will be ideas that may conflict with public policy; and there will be IoT-based ideas that need to be regulated to ensure public safety and privacy,” noted Kranz. “Think drones. In these and other ways, government regulations can help direct and align the industry.”

    Kranz offered a few examples of U.S. legislations and related impact:

    • The Energy Act drove the need for energy monitoring, including smart meters.
    • The Rail Safety Improvement Act specified the requirements and the deadline (since extended) for adoption of Positive Train Control on main U.S. railways.
    • The Food Safety Modernization Act drove the requirements for IoT-based systems, including quality control and source tracking, across the food supply chain to prevent food safety issues.
    • Most recently, the Drug Quality and Security Act requires the adoption of a system to identify and trace prescription drugs.

    Kranz believes that government funding priorities may drive the future of IoT. “Through their spending power, governments can drive the focus and accelerate the adoption of IoT technologies and solutions. In aggregate, governments represent a huge global market. Their priorities, what they choose to buy, and what problems they choose to address can drive the roadmaps of IoT technology and solution providers.”

    He lists these additional government roles:

    • Supporting training and education
    • Supporting development of startup ecosystems
    • Supporting standards efforts
    • Supporting basic research and development
    • Enabling competitiveness and openness of the country’s markets
    • Promoting best practices and modern business models
    Why the IoT is Important to Our Future

    Kranz’ promo video for his book says this about the amazing future predicted for IoT technology, impacting not just consumers but manufacturers and really… everybody.

    “The wheel, printing press, the airplane. It’s impossible to imagine life without them and soon it will be just as impossible to imagine life before the Internet of Things! IoT is already happening and the growth and opportunity it provides isn’t just big, it’s huge. Wheel, printing press and airplane huge. Billions of connected devices, trillions in revenue.”

    At its core, Kranz said on his website, “it’s about business outcomes and people; it is about new ways of doing business, talent and change management; it is about migration to open technologies and open business structures based on co-development and ecosystems of partnerships; it is a multi-year, multi-phase journey.”

    Here’s a recent interview that Maciej Kranz gave explaining IoT to investors:

  • There Has Never Been a Moment Like This: Driverless Vehicles Recognized by US

    There Has Never Been a Moment Like This: Driverless Vehicles Recognized by US

    Driverless vehicles have the ability to literally change the world by making driving safer, more energy efficient, more accessible, and many will be happy to hear… eliminate congestion and gridlock. The government today made an important first step in truly making this possible.

    “Today is an important moment at the Department of Transportation,” announced Anthony Foxx, US Secretary of Transportation. “We have issue record recalls, we still have too many people dying on our roadways and we have too many Moms and Dads stuck in traffic losing productive time with their families. In the 50 years of the Department of Transportation there has never been a moment like this.”

    He added, “A moment where we can build a culture of safety as new transportation technology emerges that harnesses the potential to save even more lives and that will improve the quality of life for so many Americans. Today, we put forward the first Federal policy on automated vehicles. The most comprehensive national automated vehicle policy that the world has ever seen. It is a first of its kind.”

    “It is taking us from the horseless carriage to the driverless car,” says Foxx. The policy is effective today, but the agency welcomes ongoing dialogue and will make changes as time goes on. “The focus on this technology will always be safety.”

    The New Driverless Vehicle Policies

    The new policies by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will also let those “drive” without a drivers license, just like they do currently with Uber, Lyft and taxis. The government differentiates rules and regulations for cars requiring a driver and those that don’t.

    If you were wondering, driverless cars will not have to have steering wheels or brake pedals. The agency says they have been charged with creating a path toward fully autonomous vehicles.

    The 15 point assessment is designed to recognize that driverless vehicles are a rapidly changing and emerging technology. It does however, let the industry see a roadmap for how the government will deal with the regulatory environment for autonomous vehicles. Their goal is to build a safety culture now around autonomous vehicles, instead of as an afterthought.

    The bottom line is that the NHTSA is extending its rulemaking authority to driverless vehicles.

    Autonomous Vehicles Will End Drunk Driving

    Also speaking during the announcement was the National President of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), Colleen Sheehey-Church, saying “over ten thousand people continue to die each year needlessly due to drunk driving.” She added, “A fully autonomous vehicle would stop a drunk drive simply because they can’t physically drive the vehicle.”

    “I would also like to point out the driverless cars can do much more than simply stop drunk driving, these vehicles could potentially stop most of the traffic deaths in our country,” says Sheehey-Church. “A driverless car is not distracted, it ensures that the occupants are traveling at appropriate speeds and it would avoid pedestrians and bicyclists.”

    “While improving safety, a driverless car would also create new mobility opportunities,” she said. “Older drivers who may be shut in or unable to drive may be able to drive at night again. Members of the disabled community who may not be able to drive could now have new opportunities for transportation like never before.”

    “To that end, MADD is proud to support the new proposal on autonomous vehicles,” she said.

    Watch the HAV Press Conference here:

    Overview of Federal Automated Vehicles Policy

    The Obama Administration today has released the first set of guidelines for fully autonomous vehicles called the Federal Automated Vehicles Policy. The 8 page policy release predicts a driverless car future that will create safer roads and many more energy efficient transportation options. Although the main focus of the new policy is about highly automated vehicles (HAVs), there are portions that also apply to lesser levels of automation such as the driver assist systems found in Tesla’s and other high end cars.

    “We’re envisioning a future where you can take your hands off the wheel and the wheel out of the car, and where your commute becomes productive and restful, rather than frustrating and exhausting,” said Jeff Zients, who is Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, in announcing the new policy.

    The government sees autonomous vehicles as a way to leap current hurdles for the 4 million Americans who are living with a disability as well as older people who have difficulty seeing at night. They also view it as a way to make our society more fair and just, where vehicles are made assessable for all. They even believe that blind people will eventually be able to use driverless cars to get around, with innovative technology that will be developed to assist.

    The policy guidelines which were developed over several years are a work in progress and will be updated annually with the goal of keeping the regulations up-to-date with the rapidly evolving technology.

    Components of the Policy

    • Vehicle Performance Guidance for Automated Vehicles: The guidance for manufacturers, developers and other organizations outlines a 15 point “Safety Assessment” for the safe design, development, testing and deployment of automated vehicles.
    • Model State Policy: This section presents a clear distinction between Federal and State responsibilities for regulation of HAVs, and suggests recommended policy areas for states to consider with a goal of generating a consistent national framework for the testing and deployment of highly automated vehicles.
    • Current Regulatory Tools: This discussion outlines DOT’s current regulatory tools that can be used to accelerate the safe development of HAVs, such as interpreting current rules to allow for greater flexibility in design and providing limited exemptions to allow for testing of nontraditional vehicle designs in a more timely fashion.
    • Modern Regulatory Tools: This discussion identifies potential new regulatory tools and statutory authorities that may aid the safe and efficient deployment of new lifesaving technologies.

    Vehicle Performance Guidance

    The policy creates a 15-point Safety Assessment which outlines objectives on how to achieve a robust design. It allows for varied methodologies as long as the objective is met:

    • Operational Design Domain: How and where the HAV is supposed to function and operate;
    • Object and Event Detection and Response: Perception and response functionality of the HAV system;
    • Fall Back (Minimal Risk Condition): Response and robustness of the HAV upon system
      failure;
    • Validation Methods: Testing, validation, and verification of an HAV system;
    • Registration and Certification: Registration and certification to NHTSA of an HAV system;
    • Data Recording and Sharing: HAV system data recording for information sharing,
      knowledge building and for crash reconstruction purposes;
    • Post-Crash Behavior: Process for how an HAV should perform after a crash and how
      automation functions can be restored;
    • Privacy: Privacy considerations and protections for users;
    • System Safety: Engineering safety practices to support reasonable system safety;
    • Vehicle Cybersecurity: Approaches to guard against vehicle hacking risks;
    • Human Machine Interface: Approaches for communicating information to the driver,
      occupant and other road users;
    • Crashworthiness: Protection of occupants in crash situations;
    • Consumer Education and Training: Education and training requirements for users of
      HAVs;
    • Ethical Considerations: How vehicles are programmed to address conflict dilemmas on
      the road; and
    • Federal, State and Local Laws: How vehicles are programmed to comply with all
      applicable traffic laws.

    Model State Policy

    The policy emphasizes that states will continue with their traditional responsibilities for vehicle licensing and registration, traffic laws and enforcement, and motor vehicle insurance and liability regimes while also carving out a new Federal role for autonomous vehicles. The goal is to not have states stepping all over themselves with a hodgepodge of rules, making it impossible for self-driving cars to drive between states.

    The Federal responsibilities include setting safety standards and enforcing them, investigating safety issues and managing recalls, public education on driverless safety and communicating future guidance to the public in order to achieve national safety goals.

    The Feds also created a regulatory framework model for states to follow in order to create a consistent approach to governing autonomous vehicles:

    • Application by manufacturers or other entities to test HAVs on public roads;
    • Jurisdictional permission to test;
    • Testing by the manufacturer or other entities;
    • Drivers of deployed vehicles;
    • Registration and titling of deployed vehicles;
    • Law enforcement considerations; and
    • Liability and insurance.

    Current Regulatory Tools

    Especially interesting is the governments forward looking approach in trying to make existing laws work to allow the use of driverless vehicles. This will be done via government agency reinterpretation of existing laws, using Letters of Interpretation, basically stretching them as far as they can go without changing their intent.

    The policy is also going to use its current power to provide limited exemptions to vehicle manufactures to test new designs of cars that are not currently allowed. For instance, all cars must have a steering wheel, except that you don’t need one in a driverless car and it could even add danger because people could bump into it. Exemptions will allow manufacturers to bypass “buggy whip” rules that aren’t applicable in a vehicle that nobody is driving.

    They have also created a path to more permanent ways to bypass old safety and design rules using a petition for rulemaking. This allows manufactures to adopt new standards, modify existing standards, or repeal an existing standard.

    Modern Regulatory Tools

    The new policy identifies new tools that could be created under current law while also laying the foundation for new laws requiring Congressional action. Within this section the policy is a first step toward reinventing laws and regulations of the world’s likely driverless future revolving around safety issues, software updates, regulation processes, record keeping and data sharing.

    Data sharing is an area the self driving industry may not be too happy about. They are likely to focus their army of lobbyist on Congress to make sure they aren’t giving up their proprietary data that they have spent millions obtaining.

  • Google Updates Transparency Report, Enables Search of Removal Requests

    Google Updates Transparency Report, Enables Search of Removal Requests

    Google released today an updated Transparency Report on their copyright removal requests from Google search results. These requests come from copyright owners who claim that sites linked to in Google search results are violating copyright laws. Often these pages are auto-scraped exact copies of a site trying to steal Google visits and ad clicks.

    “The report hasn’t changed much since 2012 and was getting a little rusty,” posted Google’s Manager of Public Policy & Government Relations, Jess Hemerly. “So today, we’re releasing a new version of the report that makes it easier for you to understand the data.”

    Picture 9

    Here are the changes that Google noted:

    • Examples of removal requests, similar to the annotations we added to government requests to remove content last year. These illustrate the range of things we’re asked to remove and the decisions we make in response.
    • A new Explore the Data page, which lets you search the database of removal requests and see a more detailed list of reporting organizations, domains, and copyright owners.
    • An explanation of how copyright notice and takedown is applied to Google Search, which we hope leads to a better overall understanding of the process.

    Google also made some earlier changes to other sections of the Transparency Report according to Hemerly:

    • In late July, we published the data on government requests for user data for the second half of 2015. We coupled this update with a blog postabout some of the recent advances in surveillance reform, including the Judicial Redress Act and the EU-US Privacy Shield.
    • At the beginning of August, we added added YouTube and Calendar to ourHTTPS Report Card, continuing to show our progress toward secure connections for people across our products. Learn more about YouTube’s efforts on the YouTube Engineering blog.
    • A few weeks ago, we updated the government requests to remove content section with data for the second half of 2015. The data show an upward trend in governments asking us to remove content from our products and services, with content on YouTube, Search and Blogger cited most frequently.

    From July to December 2015, the top three products for which governments requested removals were YouTube, Web Search, and Blogger.

  • How Companies Can Solve the China Puzzle

    How Companies Can Solve the China Puzzle

    Amy Karam, author of the book, The China Factor:Strategies to Compete, Grow and Win in the New Global Economy, recently was interviewed at Google’s Mountain View campus, providing insight for companies to better compete.

    “The main intention of “The China Factor” is to equip western-based companies with strategies and tactics and knowledge to better compete with emerging entrants like those from China,” says Karam. “China has risen, they’re doing a great job, there a strong force in our economy and they do business differently. The premises is that we as western-based companies need to change our game. We need to know that emerging competitors have different approaches and we need to be more creative about that.”

    “The other element is the innovation advantage and how do we protect or maintain and evolve our innovation advantage?” she asks. “How did China become so strong? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each side, the West and the East?”

    Working for Cisco in China Was Eye Opening

    Karam’s time at Cisco where she was involved in the Cisco sales strategy shaped her opinions of how Western companies can better compete. “The results were eye opening,” she said. “Wow, this isn’t business as usual. It’s not like our domestic competitors. It’s not a product superiority play anymore, where it’s like my box is better than your box so I’ll win the business. That’s not what was happening in emerging markets and especially with some emerging competitors.”

    “That was the catalyst for me to say, wow, this is not a trend, this is not a blip, this is here to stay.” She noted some big competitive differences with Chinese companies. “First is the severe price discounting and that’s no shocker right? Most of us know that that’s generally a pretty consistent market penetration strategy, but there was really no bottom to it. I encountered a lot of escalations where they say, hey my competitors just discounted me by another 25% and I need approval for another discount. We realized that wasn’t going to be a successful strategy for either competitor and even for the customer, it wasn’t a winning game.”

    “Another big thread was financing, which we didn’t really get into very much as a Western based company but that’s a a real helpful tool for emerging customers. This competitor would help them with financing and to an extreme degree. Sometimes they would help finance over a very long
    period of time and that was a real great value to these emerging markets customers.”

    “Another huge trend that came up was the use of politics to influence business decisions,” Karam said. “We’re like whoa, where did that come from what do we do about that? I would get escalated complaints from emerging markets that we’ve been working this deal for two years, we had in the bag and in the eleventh hour they would just say it was a an influence from above and we have no idea where it came from. It was government-to-government influencing for business decisions at a more granular level.”

    What Can Western companies Do at the Practical Level?

    “For those who are business geeks, you know there are the 4 P’s of marketing… product, price, place, promotion, so I created the 5th “P” which is politics,” said Karam. “I created the 5 P’s of Global Marketing framework. Because this has become such a a big world but it’s small at the same time, we need market access, we want to play and other peoples sandboxes, but there are certain rules and there are certain limitations that we need to encounter. When Google pulled out of China in 2010 for censorship reasons that was a big decision and the implications were huge. You could have affected 1.5 billion people in terms of access to knowledge, but there were really good reasons and those were the the boundaries within which a Western based company decided that they did not want to operate.”

    “Recent headlines say that Google is going back in,” says Karam. “So market access is really important and reach is really important, so the political element is knowing that co-oppetition is is the new element. It’s an integral part of a strategy going forward, it’s not us versus them. It’s how do we all play together within our own boundaries and desirables to get ultimately the success that we need. That’s it at a high level.”

    “Then how do we at the working level deal with politics?” she asks. “Politics even happens at the organizational level and generally there’s a pretty negative connotation to politics, but it’s really important, we can’t ignore it anymore, we we need to embrace it and apply it.

    “So how do we apply it from a sales perspective is to educate the sales teams on some of the tools available from the US government and the local governments in the different countries,” asks Karam. “How can they engage with their own government to help influence their own sales locally? Reaching out to the consulates, how do you get them involved, how do you know that some of these deal opportunities are happening early on in the game? There may be unfair trade issues that you’re experiencing so that maybe some intervention sooner rather than later so it’s not at the eleventh hour when we oftentimes hear about it.”

    “We’re also organizationally changed and we’re able to convince the senior vice president of government affairs to shift the focus from just a policy perspective to helping with sales objectives,” she says. “Using the influence that they have in the government affairs group for more of the end result in terms of numbers and not just policy has been very effective.”

    How Should Western Companies Evolve and Change?

    “Very simply, go global,” says Karam. “A lot of times Western based companies have been hesitant to go global. The second part is let’s move out of emerging markets being a novelty. I think a lot of Western based companies dabble in emerging markets thinking it’s really cool, it’s let’s try it out let’s throw a few people and in there and see how it works out, and then… oh no, not making the ROI that we need so we need to pull out. It needs to be a longer-term investment, it needs to be a commitment and you need to know that it’s it’s not just a temporary thing.”

    “Make sure that your product development is catering or customizing to local customer needs,” she says. “We can’t just recycle, saying this is a mature product in this market and let’s just throw it over the fence and see if they’re going to like our old product.

    How Can Western Companies Maintain Their Innovation Advantage?

    “Every company, East to West, really wants to be innovative because that’s where the next phase of growth comes from,” says Karam. “We see contingents of emerging folks coming to Silicon Valley wanting to learn the secret of how is Silicon Valley innovative, how do you do it how do you become creative? But the idea is that we have to also be creative – we have to be innovative at being innovative, so you can’t just the rest on your laurels. This whole concept of innovation is evolving and as more players from different backgrounds are becoming innovative they’re bringing different business models.”

    “Some business model innovations are coming from the East,” she says. “They’re really good and commercializing things and we’re really good at making things, really cool things, but they’re really good at making money yet from really cool things or even making money from ok cool things.”

    “We also talked about supply chain or process innovation,” said Karam. “There’s the reputation of manufacturing, they’ve got it down. One venture capitalist who I interviewed for the book says, you know all this business about bringing manufacturing back to America, we don’t have the efficiencies, we don’t have the ecosystems yet to do that, and some of the Eastern countries do. We need to either establish that ecosystem or just understand that there’s there’s a different source of innovation happening out there.”

    “What I’m saying s let’s get more creative, let’s figure out what’s our what’s our innovation 2.0,” she says. “How are we going to step up our game and learn from others as well?”

  • YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft Agree To Censor EU “Hate Speech”

    YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft Agree To Censor EU “Hate Speech”

    In a disturbing agreement from the perspective of free speech advocates Tuesday, the European Commission and U.S. based social media companies Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft agreed to a “Code of Conduct” on “hate speech”. It’s pretext is to stop terrorist related propaganda on social media, but reading the announcement from the EU it looks to also be a way to censor opposition to negative news about Muslims. The EU describes it this way:

    The IT Companies support the European Commission and EU Member States in the effort to respond to the challenge of ensuring that online platforms do not offer opportunities for illegal online hate speech to spread virally. They share, together with other platforms and social media companies, a collective responsibility and pride in promoting and facilitating freedom of expression throughout the online world. However, the Commission and the IT Companies recognise that the spread of illegal hate speech online not only negatively affects the groups or individuals that it targets, it also negatively impacts those who speak out for freedom, tolerance and non-discrimination in our open societies and has a chilling effect on the democratic discourse on online platforms.

    The EU further describes the purpose for the new rules as follows:

    In order to prevent the spread of illegal hate speech, it is essential to ensure that relevant national laws transposing the Council Framework Decision on combating racism and xenophobia are fully enforced by Member States in the online as well as the in the offline environment. While the effective application of provisions criminalising hate speech is dependent on a robust system of enforcement of criminal law sanctions against the individual perpetrators of hate speech, this work must be complemented with actions geared at ensuring that illegal hate speech online is expeditiously reviewed by online intermediaries and social media platforms, upon receipt of a valid notification, in an appropriate time-frame. To be considered valid in this respect, a notification should not be insufficiently precise or inadequately substantiated.

    The problem is what is hate speech? It’s well known that the EU has often twisted the idea of hate speech from a battle with Islamic extremists and terrorists to a fight to stop the speech of those opposing their extreme positions. For instance, is it hate to draw a political cartoon of Mohammed as the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo did which resulted in the murder of 12 members of its staff by radical Islamic extremists. By Western standards of free speech, obviously not. But from the EU’s point of view maybe.

    Many see these new rules as Orwellian and distressing that US based social media companies would agree to censorship of views the EU doesn’t agree with. From Breitbart:

    Janice Atkinson MEP told Breitbart London: “It’s Orwellian. Anyone who has read 1984 sees it’s very re-enactment live.

    “The Commission has been itching to shut down free speech in the Parliament and now they’re attacking social media. We have already seen Facebook ‘policing’ so-called right-wing postings.

    “If an MEP, such as the centre-right Hungarians, the Danish People’s Party, the Finns, the Swedish Democrats, the Austrian FPO, say no to migration quotas because they cannot cope with the cultural and religious requirements of Muslims across the Middle East who are seeking refugee status, is that a hate crime? And what is their punishment? It’s a frightening path to totalitarianism.”

    UKIP’s Justice and Home Affairs spokeswoman Diane James MEP told Breitbart London:

    “This legislation is so vague that it is the thin end of the wedge not just curb hate speech but free speech as well.

    “Different people and cultures across Europe have different ways of communicating. The Liberal tradition in Britain for instance is more open and very different from that of dictatorial former Communist countries in the East.

    “The EU was sold to people as a Common Market, it became a political union and now wishes to decide and compromise our civil liberties as a people. This is unacceptable to a free people who have a right to know where all this legislation is leading to.

    “In my opinion, if the EU still allows to me have an opinion, I believe this matter should be decided by national parliaments rather than the unelected European Commission.“

    In response the these new restrictive rules on speech by the EU and American social media companies the European Digital Rights (EDRi) announced that is pulling out of future discussions with the Commission:

    Faced with this lamentable outcome, and with no possibility to provide meaningful input to this process, the Commission has left us with no other choice but to withdraw from the discussion,

    said Estelle Massé, EU Policy Analyst at Access Now.

    It is ironic that the Commission is threatening to take Member States to court for failing to implement EU law on racism and xenophobia while it is persuading companies like Google and Facebook to sweep offences under the carpet,

    added Joe McNamee, Executive Director at European Digital Rights.

    In a release, the EDRi explains why they have a problem with this new Code of Conduct agreement:

    What is in today’s code of conduct?

    – an explicit statement that companies will “take the lead” in policing controversial speech online, which means that law enforcement authorities will not be taking the lead;

    – an undertaking that IT companies will ban content that should already be legally banned;

    – an undertaking to review notifications against company terms of service first and then, “if necessary” to review them against the law. In practice, this means that the legal procedures for testing the legality of content against the law will never be used as the code of conduct asks for illegal content to be banned by terms of service.

    In short, the “code of conduct” downgrades the law to a second-class status, behind the “leading role” of private companies that are being asked to arbitrarily implement their terms of service. This process, established outside an accountable democratic framework, exploits unclear liability rules for companies. It also creates serious risks for freedom of expression as legal but controversial content may well be deleted as a result of this voluntary and unaccountable take down mechanism.

    This means that this “agreement” between only a handful of companies and the European Commission is likely in breach of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, under which restrictions on fundamental rights should be provided for by law. It will, in practical terms, overturn case law of the European Court of Human Rights on the defense of legal speech.

  • Twitter Says Government Data Requests Way Up

    Twitter Says Government Data Requests Way Up

    Twitter’s new transparency report is out, and the trend continues. Government requests for user data and content removal are on the rise.

    “As has long been the trend, we continue to see a rise in the number of these requests. Notably, requests for account information have increased 52 percent, which is the largest increase between reporting periods we have ever seen, with removal requests and copyright notices growing by 26 percent and 11 percent respectively,” says Twitter’s Jeremy Kessel, Senior Manager, Global Legal Policy.

    Here’s what that looks like. First, government requests for user information:

    Screen Shot 2015-08-11 at 10.32.11 AM

    And here’s a look at government content removal requests. Per usual, Turkey leads the field. There were 25 specific requests for content removal in the US over the past six months, and Twitter complied with none of them.

    Screen Shot 2015-08-11 at 10.34.59 AM

    Twitter added two new sections to the transparency report – one on trademark notices and another on email privacy practices.

    From January to the end of June, Twitter received neatly 13,000 trademark notices for content on Twitter and Vine. The company removed approximately 7% of them.

    Image via Anthony Quintano, Flickr Creative Commons

  • What Does the New Online Poker Bill Mean for US Poker Players?

    This post is brought to you by James Moore

    To outsiders, the long and slow progress of online gambling regulation in the USA must seem difficult to understand. After all, America has one of the world’s largest gambling industries as the casinos of Vegas and Atlantic City rake in billions each year.

    But conservative attitudes towards gambling remain prevalent among the electorate. Poker lobbying groups were horrified when, in 2006, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was “snuck” through the House of Representatives; attached to a completely unrelated port security bill. Those in favour of legal online gambling see this move as a diabolical assault on the democratic process but, in reality, there was very little public outcry (and even a deal of support) for the measure.

    Nowhere is this cultural dichotomy more apparent than in California; where online gambling legislation has been debated in the state legislature for no less than six years. At the same time, tribal casinos operate legally and thousands of semi-legal “gaming parlours” offer scratchcard and slot games under the guide of operating as internet cafes.

    There are essentially two ways that a regulated online gambling market could develop in the USA. Firstly, states could use their legal right to control commerce to set up regulators and licensing local operators. Lobbyists have belatedly accepted this approach, although it could conceivably lead to a messy patchwork of overlapping jurisdictions and a “race to the bottom” in terms of regulatory requirements (as states compete to poach operators and their tax revenue from one another).

    The alternative approach would be to re-visit the UIGEA at a Federal level, which had previously been considered extremely unlikely. However, the USA has faced international lawsuits at the World Trade Organisation, claiming that tight regulation which bars foreign casinos amounts to “restraint of free trade”. This, in part, is the reason that Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) has sponsored a new bill which would open up the online Poker market, but further restrict other online gambling.

    The Poker market is, both politically and economically, a good place to start when looking at nationwide regulation. Poker involves a high element of skill, something that even the most dogged opponents of gambling have belatedly had to concede, putting the game in a separate category to other casino games. A successful Poker market also requires high “liquidity”; essentially a large and active player base, to function properly. The bill proposes that poker regulation be handled by the Department of Commerce; which would likely mean that all American players could be within the same “pool”.

    Progress may seem slow, but large private equity firms have taken large gambles themselves, on the prospect of a legal online market. The Amaya group spent $4.9 billion acquiring cardroom PokerStars last year and more significantly a Canadian group, Intertain, has been assembling a portfolio of brands ready to assault the US Market, if and when it opens. Their largest (and most significant) acquisition was the $646 million (£425.8m) purchase of several key brands from gaming powerhouse Gamesys, including Jackpotjoy and Starspins.

    The new bill has bipartisan support, but that does not by any means guarantee it will pass a House which is still wary of online gambling. Even projections of $7 billion additional tax dollars has little sway; as such projections have proved to be hugely optimistic in the past (just ask Chris Christie).

    Online gambling has already reached the United States, as possibly millions of citizens have active accounts at offshore, or even black market, operations. This leads to tax revenue being diverted abroad and no protection for players who are exploited. Joe Barton’s bill may not be a complete solution to the tangled web which is online gambling, but it could be a step in the right direction!

  • Should Google Be Slapped With Antitrust Action?

    After a five-year long investigation, the European Commissioned announced it has sent a Statement of Objections to Google alleging it has abused its dominant position in the markets for general internet search services by favoring its own comparison shopping product in general search pages.

    The commission says this infringes on EU antitrust rules because “it stifles competition and harms consumers”. The commission notes that sending a Statement of Objections does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation.

    Do you believe Google’s practices harm consumers or stifle competition? Let us know in the comments.

    But that’s only part of the news as the commission has also launched a formal investigation into Google’s Android business. We’ll get to that later. First things first.

    Search

    EU Commissioner in charge of competition policy Margrethe Vestager said: “The Commission’s objective is to apply EU antitrust rules to ensure that companies operating in Europe, wherever they may be based, do not artificially deny European consumers as wide a choice as possible or stifle innovation”.

    “In the case of Google I am concerned that the company has given an unfair advantage to its own comparison shopping service, in breach of EU antitrust rules. Google now has the opportunity to convince the Commission to the contrary. However, if the investigation confirmed our concerns, Google would have to face the legal consequences and change the way it does business in Europe.”

    Let the convincing commence. Google has already posted an article to its official blog called “The Search for Harm“.

    In that, Amit Singhal, Senior Vice President, Google Search writes, “In the summer of 2010, Google announced plans to acquire the flight search provider, ITA. As we said at the time, while many people buy their airline tickets online, finding the right flight at the best price can be a real hassle. Today Google Flight Search has made that much easier. Search for ‘Flight CDG to SFO’ and you get the different options right there on the results page. It’s a great example of Google’s increasing ability to answer queries directly, saving people a lot of time and effort — because as Larry Page said over a decade ago ‘the perfect search engine should understand exactly what you mean and give you back exactly what you want’.”

    “At the time of the ITA acquisition, several online travel companies–Expedia, Kayak, and Travelocity–unsuccessfully lobbied regulators in the US and the European Union to block the deal, arguing that our ability to show flight options directly would siphon off their traffic and harm competition online. Four years later it’s clear their allegations of harm turned out to be untrue. As the Washington Post recently pointed out (in an article headed ‘Google Flight Search, four years in: not the competition-killer critics feared’) Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline and Travelocity account for 95% of the US online travel market today.”

    Noting a “similar situation in Europe,” he shares this graph looking at travel sites in Germany:

    Later in the posts, he shows similar graphs for shopping sites in Germany, France, and the UK, each of which show Google Shopping being trounced by other sites like Amazon, eBay, and others.

    According to Singhal, people have more choice than ever before. For search, they have Bing, Yahoo, Quora, DuckDuckGo, and “a new wave of search assistants” including Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana. For specialized search, he names Amazon, Idealo, Le Guide, Expedia and eBay. For social sites, which he says people are increasingly using to find recommendations, he names Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter for finding things like where to eat, which ovies to watch, or how to decorate their homes. For news, he says people often go directly to their favorite sites.

    “Of course mobile is changing things as well,” he writes. “Today 7 out of every 8 minutes on mobile devices is spent within apps — in other words consumers are going to whichever websites or apps serve them best. And they face no friction or costs in switching between them. Yelp, for example, has told investors they get over 40% of their traffic direct from their mobile app. So while in many ways it’s flattering to be described as a gatekeeper, the facts don’t actually bear that out. ”

    He continues, “Which brings me to the competition. Companies like Axel Springer, Expedia, TripAdvisor, and Yelp (all vociferous complainants in this process) have alleged that Google’s practice of including our specialized results (Flight Search, Maps, Local results, etc.) in search has significantly harmed their businesses. But their traffic, revenues and profits (as well as the pitch they make to investors) tell a very different story.”

    “Yelp calls itself the ‘de facto local search engine’ and has seen revenue growth of over 350% in the last four years. TripAdvisor claims to be the Web’s largest travel brand and has nearly doubled its revenues in the last four years. Expedia has grown its revenues by more than 67% over the same period.”

    He even quotes something Expedia allegedly told investors, noting that it’s “remarkable” given their complaints: “We’re seeing increased traffic coming through Google Hotel Finder. It is ­clearly getting more exposure. And in general … the product continues to improve. And Google has invested in it, we’ll continue to invest in it … From our standpoint, we’re happy to play in any market that Google puts out there and over a long period of time, we have proven an ability to get our fair share in the Google marketplaces.”

    Yeah, that one’s a bit of a head scratcher.

    Axel Springer, Singhal notes, “continues to invest in search, including the French search engine Qwant, because as the company told investors, ‘there is a lot of innovation on the search market‘.”

    He concludes the whole post by saying, “Any economist would say that you typically do not see a ton of innovation, new entrants or investment in sectors where competition is stagnating — or dominated by one player. Yet that is exactly what’s happening in our world. Zalando, the German shopping site, went public in 2014 in one of Europe’s biggest-ever tech IPOs. Companies like Facebook, Pinterest and Amazon have been investing in their own search services and search engines like Quixey, DuckDuckGo and Qwant have attracted new funding. We’re seeing innovation in voice search and the rise of search assistants — with even more to come. It’s why we respectfully but strongly disagree with the need to issue a Statement of Objections and look forward to making our case over the weeks ahead.”

    The Commission, which says it’s concerned users don’t necessarily see the most relevant results in response to queries “to the detriment of consumers and rival comparison shopping services” and that it’s “stifling innovation,” has put out a fact sheet about its Statement of Objections to Google. It goes on to name the following points as its preliminary conclusions (emphasis from the Commission):

    Google systematically positions and prominently displays its comparison shopping service in its general search results pages, irrespective of its merits. This conduct started in 2008.

    Google does not apply to its own comparison shopping service the system of penalties, which it applies to other comparison shopping services on the basis of defined parameters, and which can lead to the lowering of the rank in which they appear in Google’s general search results pages.

    Froogle, Google’s first comparison shopping service, did not benefit from any favourable treatment, and performed poorly.

    As a result of Google’s systematic favouring of its subsequent comparison shopping services “Google Product Search” and “Google Shopping”, both experienced higher rates of growth, to the detriment of rival comparison shopping services.

    Google’s conduct has a negative impact on consumers and innovation. It means that users do not necessarily see the most relevant comparison shopping results in response to their queries, and that incentives to innovate from rivals are lowered as they know that however good their product, they will not benefit from the same prominence as Google’s product.

    The Commission says to “remedy the conduct,” Google should “treat its own comparison shopping service and those of rivals in the same way.” It adds, “This would not interfere with either the algorithms Google applies or how it designs its search results pages. It would, however, mean that when Google shows comparison shopping services in response to a user’s query, the most relevant service or services would be selected to appear in Google’s search results pages.”

    The Statement of Objections gives Google a chance to make its case and seek an oral hearing to present its comments. The Commission says it will carefully consider Google’s comments before taking a decision. It also points out that the Statement of Objections only relates to the first of four concerns the Commission has outlined in the past, and that it continues to investigate Google’s conduct with regards to the others.

    The FairSearch Coalition, a group of complaining Google competitors, said, “The Commission’s actions are significant steps toward ending Google’s anti-competitive practices, which have harmed innovation and consumer choice. More than 30 companies and consumer organizations filed complaints concerning Google’s abuse of its dominance in search. Google’s abuses have devastated rivals, from mapping to video search to product price comparison. While the Commission’s action concerning the search practices of Google is very significant, it has previously identified other problematic areas that are not covered, and we look forward to those being addressed in due course.”

    Android

    As mentioned, the commission has opened a new investigation into Android, even as reports are circulating that Apple sold more of its smart watches on the first day of sales than manufacturers sold Android smart watches throughout all of last year.

    “Since 2005, Google has led development of the Android mobile operating system,” the Commission says. “Android is an open-source system, meaning that it can be freely used and developed by anyone. The majority of smartphone and tablet manufacturers use the Android operating system in combination with a range of Google’s proprietary applications and services. These manufacturers enter into agreements with Google to obtain the right to install Google’s applications on their Android devices. The Commission’s in-depth investigation will focus on whether Google has breached EU antitrust rules by hindering the development and market access of rival mobile operating systems, applications and services to the detriment of consumers and developers of innovative services and products.”

    “Smartphones, tablets and similar devices play an increasing role in many people’s daily lives and I want to make sure the markets in this area can flourish without anticompetitive constraints imposed by any company,” said Vestager

    The investigation will focus on three main allegations (again, emphasis is the Commission’s):

    1. whether Google has illegally hindered the development and market access of rival mobile applications or services by requiring or incentivising smartphone and tablet manufacturers to exclusively pre-install Google’s own applications or services;

    2. whether Google has prevented smartphone and tablet manufacturers who wish to install Google’s applications and services on some of their Android devices from developing and marketing modified and potentially competing versions of Android (so-called “Android forks”) on other devices, thereby illegally hindering the development and market access of rival mobile operating systems and mobile applications or services;

    3. whether Google has illegally hindered the development and market access of rival applications and services by tying or bundling certain Google applications and services distributed on Android devices with other Google applications, services and/or application programming interfaces of Google.

    FairSearch weighed in on that too: “The Commission’s determination to investigate this is important because Google Android has used its dominance to move from an open system to a closed one, so it can exclude competitors to the benefit of its own businesses.”

    Google has already responded to the Android allegations as well with a post called “Android has helped create more choice and innovation on mobile than ever before“.

    This time it’s Hiroshi Lockheimer, VP of Engineering, Android making the argument: “The pace of mobile innovation has never been greater. Smartphones are being adopted globally at an increasingly fast pace, with over hundreds of millions shipped each quarter, and the average smartphone price fell 23% between 2012 and 2014. It’s now possible to purchase a powerful smartphone, without subsidies or contracts, for under $100. And the app ecosystem has exploded, giving consumers more choice than ever before. Android has been a key player in spurring this competition and choice, lowering prices and increasing choice for everyone (there are over 18,000 different devices available today).”

    He continues, “It’s an open-source operating system that can be used free-of-charge by anyone—that’s right, literally anyone. And it’s not just phones. Today people are building almost anything with Android—including tablets, watches, TVs, cars, and more. Some Android devices use Google services, and others do not. Our Google Play store contains over one million apps and we paid out over $7 billion in revenue over the past year to developers and content publishers. Apps that compete directly with Google such as Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft Office, and Expedia are easily available to Android users. Indeed many of these apps come pre-loaded onto Android devices in addition to Google apps. The recent Samsung S6 is a great example of this, including pre-installed apps from Facebook, Microsoft, and Google. Developers have a choice of platforms and over 80% of developers are building apps for several different mobile operating systems.”

    “The European Commission has asked questions about our partner agreements. It’s important to remember that these are voluntary—again, you can use Android without Google—but provide real benefits to Android users, developers and the broader ecosystem.”

    He concludes by making the point that Android’s success isn’t just about benefiting Google, but that it has helped manufacturers compete with one another with their own offerings while helping developers increase their audiences.

    Should Google be penalized either for search or for Android practices? Neither? Both? Tell us what you think.

    Images via Google

  • FTC: Controversial Wall Street Journal Google Article ‘Misleading’

    FTC: Controversial Wall Street Journal Google Article ‘Misleading’

    On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal published an inflammatory report under the title “Google Makes Most of Close Ties to White House,” which attempts to make the case that Google was able to sway the outcome of the FTC’s antitrust investigation into the company in 2012.

    The publication recently published a leaked document from the investigation, which appeared to suggest the FTC would take action against the company months before it ultimately settled with Google making a few voluntary concessions. The new report cites numerous meetings between Google execs and top White House and FTC officials as well as Google’s history with the Obama administration and lobbying efforts. The narrative in the report suggests that Google was able to utilize its Washington clout and spending to get itself off the hook.

    The report is certainly worth a read, and does illustrate just how frequently Google is talking to top Washington officials. For example, it says Google employees have visited the White House for meetings with senior officials about 230 times (or about once a week) since the Obama administration has been in office, while one Google lobbyist alone has had over 60 meetings. It compares this to Comcast having only visited the White House about 20 times during that period.

    The FTC is dismissing the report as “misleading” and says it doesn’t contain facts that actually support the case it’s trying to make. When all is said and done, there aren’t really any smoking guns in it. There are a lot of interesting facts, and they don’t look particularly good, but there’s really no proof that shows any of this had a direct influence on the outcome of the antitrust probe. Another interesting tidbit from the report is that Microsoft, the company with the most to gain from antitrust action taken against Google, was the only company that contributed more in campaign donations to Obama’s re-election campaign than Google. The report seems to use campaign donations to support its case that Google was able to buy its way out of FTC action.

    The FTC put out a press release in response to the new media attention the probe is getting, which all stems from Wall Street Journal reports. Here’s what it says:

    The Federal Trade Commission conducted an exhaustive investigation of Google’s internet search practices during 2011 and 2012. Based on a comprehensive review of the voluminous record and extensive internal analysis, of which the inadvertently disclosed memo is only a fraction, all five Commissioners (three Democrats and two Republicans) agreed that there was no legal basis for action with respect to the main focus of the investigation – search. As we stated when the investigation was closed, the Commission concluded that Google’s search practices were not, “on balance, demonstrably anticompetitive.”

    Contrary to recent press reports, the Commission’s decision on the search allegations was in accord with the recommendations of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, Bureau of Economics, and Office of General Counsel.

    Some of the FTC’s staff attorneys on the search investigation raised concerns about several other Google practices. In response, the Commission obtained commitments from Google regarding certain of those practices. Over the last two years, Google has abided by those commitments.

    The Commission works vigorously to protect consumers and promote competition in the marketplace and does not hesitate to act on behalf of consumers when the facts warrant an enforcement action. In fact, on the same day that it closed the search investigation, the Commission settled a complaint alleging that Google’s conduct with regard to certain standard essential patents constituted unfair methods of competition under the FTC Act.

    Today’s Wall Street Journal article “Google Makes Most of Close Ties to White House” makes a number of misleading inferences and suggestions about the integrity of the FTC’s investigation. The article suggests that a series of disparate and unrelated meetings involving FTC officials and executive branch officials or Google representatives somehow affected the Commission’s decision to close the search investigation in early 2013. Not a single fact is offered to substantiate this misleading narrative.

    Finally, we regret the inadvertent disclosure of confidential documents and information in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The Commission takes seriously its obligation to maintain the confidentiality of business and other sensitive information provided to the agency by all parties involved in our investigations. We are taking additional steps to ensure that such a disclosure does not occur in the future.

    Note: Neither Commissioner Joshua D. Wright nor Commissioner Terrell McSweeny were at the Commission at the time of the decision on the Google search investigation.

    The WSJ report also includes statements from Google, the FTC, and the White House, as well as Jon Leibowitz, the FTC chairman at the time of the settlement.

    Google said: “We think it is important to have a strong voice in the debate and help policy makers understand our business and the work we do to keep the Internet open, to build great products, and to fuel economic growth.”

    Regarding the FTC document that leaked, Google said: “We understand that what was sent to the Wall Street Journal represents 50% of one document written by 50% of the FTC case teams. Ultimately both case teams (100%) concluded that no action was needed on search display and ranking. Speculation about consumer or competitor harm turned out to be entirely wrong. On the other issues raised, we quickly made changes as agreed with the FTC.”

    The White House said the FTC “is an independent agency and we respect their independent decision-making,” and that “White House officials meet with business executives on a range of issues on a regular basis. These meetings help keep the White House apprised of outside perspectives on important policy issues. Our staff is cognizant that it is inappropriate to discuss issues relating to regulatory enforcement.”

    Leibowitz said he “would never discuss any investigative matter with anyone at the White House, including the Google investigation,” and that, “The FTC is an independent agency and Commissioners take their obligations of independence and confidentiality very seriously.”

    Greg Sterling, who has been reporting on Google antitrust matters for years, writes: “The Rupert Murdoch-owned, editorially conservative Wall Street Journal may have its own reasons for pushing a “conspiracy theory” against the Obama Administration. However, the combination of the internal FTC report and the disclosure of the White House meetings does create at least an appearance of a politically driven outcome.”

    There’s no doubt that many will look to the Journal’s report as a sign that Google can get away with whatever it wants in the U.S. Whether or not that’s actually true is another matter. But like I said before, it doesn’t exactly look good.

    Image via Google

  • FCC Net Neutrality Rules Released, Blasted By Commissioners

    FCC Net Neutrality Rules Released, Blasted By Commissioners

    The Federal Communications Commission has released its new net neutrality rules after announcing them two weeks ago. The rules followed a call from President Obama in November to reclassify Internet service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, which would make it a utility. The new rules call for broadband to be considered a telecommunications service, and providers are to be regulated.

    This prompted a wide array of responses from various parties of interest, including a press release written in morse code from Verizon.

    The new release caused the FCC site to crash, and as of the time of this writing, it’s displaying a message that says:

    The normal FCC website is temporarily unavailable due to technical difficulties. We are working to restore the full FCC website back to normal as soon as possible.

    Te PDF, however, is viewable here (via Re/code):

    FCC-15-24A1

    The site seems to be going on and off, so if you keep trying, you might be able to bring it up.

    Since the release of the document, a policy summary of FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai’s “statement dissenting from the FCC’s decision to adopt President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet” has been released. Here’s what it says:

    For twenty years, there’s been a bipartisan consensus in favor of a free and open Internet—one unfettered by government regulation. So why is the FCC turning its back on Internet freedom? It is flip-flopping for one reason and one reason alone. President Obama told it to do so.

    The Commission’s decision to adopt President Obama’s plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet. It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works. It’s an overreach that will let a Washington bureaucracy, and not the American people, decide the future of the online world.

    One facet of that control is rate regulation. For the first time, the FCC will regulate the rates that Internet service providers may charge and will set a price of zero for certain commercial agreements.

    The Commission can also outlaw pro-consumer service plans.If you like your current service plan, you should be able to keep your current service plan. The FCC shouldn’t take it away from you.

    Consumers should expect their broadband bills to go up. The plan explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes on broadband. One estimate puts the total at $11 billion a year.

    Consumers’ broadband speeds will be slower. Compare the broadband market in the U.S. to that in Europe, where broadband is generally regulated as a public utility. Today, 82% of Americans have access to 25 Mbps broadband speeds. Only 54% of Europeans do. Moreover, in the U.S., average mobile speeds are 30% faster than they are in Western Europe.

    This plan will reduce competition and drive smaller broadband providers out of business. That’s why the plan is opposed by the country’s smallest private competitors and many municipal broadband providers. Monopoly rules from a monopoly era will move us toward a monopoly.

    The Internet is not broken. We do not need President Obama’s plan to “fix it.”

    The plan in front of us today was not formulated at the FCC through a transparent notice-and-comment rulemaking process. As The Wall Street Journal reports, it was developed through “an unusual, secretive effort inside the White House.” Indeed, White House officials, according to the Journal, functioned as a “parallel version of the FCC.” Their work led to the President’s announcement in November of his plan for Internet regulation, a plan which “blindsided” the FCC and “swept aside . . . months of work by [Chairman] Wheeler toward a compromise.”

    The plan has glaring legal flaws that are sure to keep the Commission mired in litigation for a long, long time.

    A legal summary of Pai’s statement has also been released. Here’s what that one says:

    In adopting President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet, the FCC violated the procedural requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

    The FCC never proposed the rules being adopted, violating the APA’s notice-and-comment requirement. In last year’s Notice, the FCC proposed rules under section 706 of the Telecommunications Act. Every single proposal and every single tentative conclusion in last year’s Notice was tailored to avoid reclassifying broadband as a Title II service. Yet that’s exactly what the FCC does in this Order.

    No one could have anticipated the number or nature of the hoops the Order would jump through to reclassify broadband. Nor could anyone have anticipated the Order’s 49 separate forbearance decisions; its decision to subject interconnection to Title II as a “component” of broadband Internet access service; its decision to amend agency rules regarding mobile broadband; or its adoption of an omnivorous “Internet conduct” standard, the scope of which remains uncertain.

    The FCC cannot rely on President Obama’s YouTube directive to the agency cure these deficiencies. The President’s video was not approved by FCC commissioners, published in the Federal Register, or subject to public comment.

    President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet also violates the Communications Act.

    Neither the text of the Act nor FCC precedent allows the agency to reclassify broadband Internet access service as a Title II telecommunications service. In 1996, President Clinton and Congress decided that “any” service that “provides access to the Internet” would be an information service. In turn, the FCC has never classified an Internet Service Provider as a telecommunications carrier. Instead, the FCC has determined each and every time since the Clinton Administration’s Stevens Report that Internet access always involves more than meretransmission—and thus is an information service.

    Section 332 of the Communications Act independently bars the FCC from reclassifying mobile broadband Internet access service as a Title II telecommunications service.

    The text, structure, and Congressional intent all make clear that section 706 of the Telecommunications Act does not give the FCC any independent authority.

    The Order invents an entirely new method of forbearance analysis that doesn’t adhere to the forbearance criteria in the Act or the FCC’s precedents.

    Pai appeared on Fox business to talk about this more:

    The FCC has also released a dissenting statement from Commissioner Michael O’Reilly. HIs is seventeen pages long, so I’ll direct you to his tweets, which include a link.

    Some words from FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler:

    So what’s everybody else saying about it all? Here’s a quick glance at Twitter:




  • Did The FCC Get Net Neutrality Right?

    Did The FCC Get Net Neutrality Right?

    As you may have heard, the FCC announced that it has set rules on net neutrality and an open Internet, which it says “will protect free expression and innovation on the Internet and promote investment in the nation’s broadband networks.”

    Do you think they got it right or do there need to be changes? Let us know what you think.

    Back in November, President Obama urged the FCC to reclassify Internet service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, which would make it a utility, and the FCC has done so. Broadband is considered a telecommunications service, and providers are to be regulated.

    The FCC says in its announcement:

    The FCC has long been committed to protecting and promoting an Internet that nurtures freedom of speech and expression, supports innovation and commerce, and incentivizes expansion and investment by America’s broadband providers. But the agency’s attempts to implement enforceable, sustainable rules to protect the Open Internet have been twice struck down by the courts.

    Today, the Commission—once and for all—enacts strong, sustainable rules, grounded in multiple sources of legal authority, to ensure that Americans reap the economic, social, and civic benefits of an Open Internet today and into the future. These new rules are guided by three principles: America’s broadband networks must be fast, fair and open—principles shared by the overwhelming majority of the nearly 4 million commenters who participated in the FCC’s Open Internet proceeding.

    Absent action by the FCC, Internet openness is at risk, as recognized by the very court that struck down the FCC’s 2010 Open Internet rules last year in Verizon v. FCC.

    Broadband providers have economic incentives that “represent a threat to Internet openness and could act in ways that would ultimately inhibit the speed and extent of future broadband deployment,” as affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The court upheld the Commission’s finding that Internet openness drives a “virtuous cycle” in which innovations at the edges of the network enhance consumer demand, leading to expanded investments in broadband infrastructure that, in turn, spark new innovations at the edge.

    However, the court observed that nearly 15 years ago, the Commission constrained its ability to protect against threats to the open Internet by a regulatory classification of broadband that precluded use of statutory protections that historically ensured the openness of telephone networks. The Order finds that the nature of broadband Internet access service has not only changed since that initial classification decision, but that broadband providers have even more incentives to interfere with Internet openness today. To respond to this changed landscape, the new Open Internet Order restores the FCC’s legal authority to fully address threats to openness on today’s networks by following a template for sustainability laid out in the D.C. Circuit Opinion itself, including reclassification of broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act.

    With a firm legal foundation established, the Order sets three “bright-line” rules of the road for behavior known to harm the Open Internet, adopts an additional, flexible standard to future-proof Internet openness rules, and protects mobile broadband users with the full array of Open Internet rules. It does so while preserving incentives for investment and innovation by broadband providers by affording them an even more tailored version of the light-touch regulatory treatment that fostered tremendous growth in the mobile wireless industry.

    The new rules apply to both fixed and mobile broadband, and prohibit broadband providers from blocking access to legal content, apps, services, or non-harmful devices. They also prohibit providers from impairing or degrading lawful internet traffic on the basis of content, apps, services, or non-harmful devices. Providers may not favor some lawful Internet traffic over other lawful Internet traffic “in exchange for consideration of any kind”. In other words, no fast lanes. ISPs are banned from prioritizing content and services of affiliates.

    You can find the full announcement here (PDF).

    The matter is far from settled. Republicans in Congress have reportedly proposed legislation to throw out the Title II restrictions on providers.

    Here’s what people are saying on Twitter:




    Naturally, plenty of companies are weighing in with their comments. Here are Verizon’s:

    If you click the link for the “translated’ version, you’re taken to a news release dated for 1934 in a font that looks like this:

    You get the idea.

    AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi said:

    To be sure, one must have principles and a philosophy of government’s proper role. But a democracy cannot function when either side lapses into rigidity. Or worse, when political advantage becomes more important than the nation’s best interest.

    In our little world, and in my decades of interaction with it, I’ve felt, and still feel, that the FCC has tried to stay focused on solving problems and avoided turning issues into dogma. Every chairman in my memory, including the current one, has faced political stampedes of one sort or another. Yet the agency has always tried to find a middle ground and a consensus win. They’ve understood that a win, unlike a fight, is the product of reaching out to both sides, and working in a bipartisan way to find a solution. A win is the product of compromise, thoughtful policy, and a genuine desire to find the answer to a complex set of issues.

    We had such a situation – and a bipartisan win – in the 2010 net neutrality rule. Unfortunately, this was undone by a court decision, facing us with the same situation a second time. Today, an Administration and an FCC that appeared headed toward another bipartisan win on net neutrality were driven instead to a partisan fight. The 3-2 FCC vote, along party lines, for sweeping new regulation of the Internet, is a rejection of the compromise win and an embrace, however reluctant, of the political fight. It’s unfortunate that this single issue, more than any other, has over the course of ten years caused a divisive spirit to spread to an agency that has long sought unanimity on significant long term issues, and generally found it. A 5-0 decision doesn’t leave a lot of room for either side to continue the argument, while a 3-2 decision, particularly on issues of such broad scope, is an invitation to revisiting the decision, over and over and over.

    Full statement here.

    Sprint’s response:

    Sprint has been a leader in supporting an open Internet and commends the FCC for its hard work in arriving at a thoughtful, measured approach on this important issue. We believe balanced net neutrality rules with a light regulatory touch will benefit consumers, while fostering mobile broadband competition, investment and innovation in the United States. We look forward to reviewing the FCC order and continuing to work with policymakers to ensure consumers benefit from an open Internet.

    Here’s the latest from T-Mobile:

    Netflix, which has been a very vocal member of the debate says:

    “The net neutrality debate is about who picks winners and losers online: Internet service providers or consumers. Today, the FCC settled it: Consumers win.

    Today’s order is a meaningful step towards ensuring ISPs cannot shift bad conduct upstream to where they interconnect with content providers like Netflix. Net neutrality rules are only as strong as their weakest link, and it’s incumbent on the FCC to ensure these interconnection points aren’t used to end-run the principles of an open Internet.

    Given the lack of competition among broadband providers, today’s other FCC decision preventing regulations that thwart local investment in new broadband infrastructure also is an important step toward ensuring greater consumer choice. These actions kick off a new era that puts the consumer, not litigious corporate giants, at the center of competition policy.”

    The ACLU says, “This is a victory for free speech, plain and simple. Americans use the internet not just to work and play, but to discuss politics and learn about the world around them. The FCC has a critical role to play in protecting citizens’ ability to see what they want and say what they want online, without interference. Title II provides the firmest possible foundation for such protections. We are still sifting through the full details of the new rules, but the main point is that the internet, the primary place where Americans exercise their right to free expression, remains open to all voices and points of view.”

    Mozilla says, “This is an important victory for the world’s largest public resource, the open Web. Net neutrality is a key aspect of enabling innovation from everywhere, and especially from new players and unexpected places. Net neutrality allows citizens and consumers to access new innovations and judge the merit for themselves. It allows individual citizens to make decisions, without gate-keepers who decide which possibilities can become real. Today’s net neutrality rules help us protect this open and innovative potential of the Internet.”

    The FCC received over 4 million public comments over the past year, which the commission used to help “shape” its rules.

    Do you consider the FCC’s rules to be a win for the Internet? Let us know.

    Image: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (Wikimedia Commons)

  • Interactive Advertising Bureau Weighs In On Obama Proposals

    During Tuesday’s State of the Union Address, President Obama briefly touched on some proposals that may have an impact on the digital advertising industry. These include laws to combat cyber attacks and to protect the data of minors.

    Here’s the full speech in case you didn’t watch it:

    From the prepared remarks:

    We are making sure our government integrates intelligence to combat cyber threats, just as we have done to combat terrorism. And tonight, I urge this Congress to finally pass the legislation we need to better meet the evolving threat of cyber-attacks, combat identity theft, and protect our children’s information. If we don’t act, we’ll leave our nation and our economy vulnerable. If we do, we can continue to protect the technologies that have unleashed untold opportunities for people around the globe.

    The follows Obama’s proposal last week to require companies to notify customers of breaches within 30 days as a “single, strong national standard”. This is part of what’s known as the Personal Data Notification and Protection Act. The President says this will not only let consumers know when their info is stolen, but also make it easier for companies to deal with hacks.

    The Interactive Advertising Bureau has some thoughts about the President’s proposals, and sent us a statement from Mike Zaneis, EVP, Public Policy & General Counsel.

    “Among these ideas, were some extremely positive legislative vehicles that IAB wholeheartedly endorses,” he said. “The mission of securing the internet through stronger cybersecurity laws is vitally important. This is why the IAB created an Anti-Malware Working Group and formed an information partnership with the FBI in September of 2014. We also laud the President’s call for a single, national data breach notification standard. Having a patchwork of 46 disparate state laws does not adequately protect consumers’ identities. The President rightly called for new free trade agreements that would allow the internet to flourish. We also applaud the President in his effort to craft a new Federal law to secure students’ data when they are using innovative digital tools.”

    “The President laid out many areas where there can be bipartisan cooperation to enact new consumer protections that also allow industry to continue to innovate and create new jobs. These are ideals shared by the IAB, so much so that the digital marketing industry has taken a lead role in ensuring that consumers have the ability to control their privacy online, creating the first ever comprehensive digital self regulatory program called the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA). The DAA was developed in coordination with the FTC and endorsed by this Administration in 2012.”

    “We want to build upon these successes, but some of the President’s proposals could derail our collective efforts,” he added. “A push for controversial, European-style privacy restrictions, such as enactment of a ‘Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights,’ would make the U.S. less competitive in the global economy. This nebulous concept is ill-advised and could undermine the opportunities to deliver real results to the American public. ”

    “We look forward to working with the Administration and the 114th Congress on their pro-growth agenda and to having the $50 billion U.S. digital advertising industry continue to lead our economy in the right direction.”

    Not all of this was explicitly discussed in the State of the Union Address, but here’s the President’s speech about protecting consumers and families in the digital age from January 12:

    And his speech on Cybersecurity the following day:

    The White House Blog runs down the key takeaways from the privacy speech here.

    Images via YouTube, IAB

  • Yelp Gets A Lot Of Critical Data On Restaurants

    This was announced last week, but it kind of flew under the radar. Yelp has formed an open data partnership with Socrata to distribute restaurant inspection information. The companies are calling it a strategic partnership aimed at helping improve public health conditions around the world.

    Yelp becomes a new member of the Open Data Network, and teams up with Socrata’s government customers, which will get tools for connecting their restaurant inspection data to Yelp. According to Socrata, most cities throughout the U.S. aren’t publishing such data in a format that can be consumed by B2C services like Yelp, and this will supposedly change that.

    “We’re thrilled to be working with Socrata and its network of partners to make this valuable information more accessible to the millions of people that turn to Yelp every month,” said Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman. “This was a joint effort as part of Yelp’s Local Inspector Value Entry Specification (LIVES) open data standard, which enables local municipalities to accurately upload restaurant health inspection scores for display on Yelp business pages.”

    “We are very excited to launch this partnership with Yelp, the global leader in crowd-sourced reviews for local businesses,” said Socrata CEO Kevin Merritt. “With this behind-the-scenes data integration, millions of people will be able to benefit from better health information, which will ultimately improve their lives.”

    Two years ago, Yelp started showing health scores on listings in San Francisco and New York City. In the meantime it has begun doing so in other areas as various municipalities have adopted LIVES.

    Last May, Yelp was actually able to help health officials in New York find hundreds of cases of food borne illness. Fox News reported at the time:

    Researchers involved in a pilot project between the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Columbia University and Yelp trawled the site for reviews that included words like “sick,” “vomit,” “diarrhea” and “food poisoning,” between July 2012 and March 2013.

    Roughly 294,000 Yelp reviews were analyzed, and researchers found 468 posts that were consistent with cases of recent food borne illnesses. Only 15 of those cases had been independently reported to the health department.

    Yelp is always under fire from small businesses claiming that the quality of reviews being displayed about their business doesn’t represent popular opinion. Yelp’s small business evangelist Darnell Holloway reportedly told Fortune that they “tend to be ‘perfectionists’ who expect nothing less than the elusive five-star rating.”

    Health inspection data, however, is something that consumers can look at without having to take the word of random Yelp users. Now Yelp will have a great deal more of that data.

    “Love it or hate it, Yelp is becoming more and more part of civic digital infrastructure across the nation,” says Michael Grass at Government Executive.

    As he notes, the New York City Department of Transportation has also been experimenting with using Yelp data in its iRideNYC app.

    Last week, Yelp announced that it hit a major milestone with over 100,000 developers using its API to integrate its data into their products. This is something of a wake-up call to businesses that regardless of whether or not potential customers are going to Yelp’s website or app, there’s a good chance they’ll run into listings in some other way.

    More on LIVES here.

    Image via Thinkstock

  • Google Slams MPAA For Trying To Resurrect SOPA, Censor The Internet

    Google Slams MPAA For Trying To Resurrect SOPA, Censor The Internet

    Google says it’s “deeply concerned” about reports that the MPAA has been secretly leading a campaign to revive SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and help “manufacture legal arguments” in connection with an investigation by Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood.

    Google is referring to the campaign as “ZombieSOPA,” and has started a campaign of its own:

    SOPA was defeated nearly three years ago in no small part thanks to widespread protest from Internet users and websites (115,000 of them).Opponents maintained that the legislation would have led to widespread censorship. According to Google, Congress received over 8 million phone calls and 4 million emails in protest of SOPA in a single day. That’s in addition to 10 million petition signatures.

    In a blog post, Google walks through some of the recent reports, and writes:

    Even though Google takes industry-leading measures in dealing with problematic content on our services, Attorney General Hood proceeded to send Google a sweeping 79-page subpoena, covering a variety of topics over which he lacks jurisdiction. The Verge reported that the MPAA and its members discussed such subpoenas and certainly knew about this subpoena’s existence before it was even sent to Google.

    Attorney General Hood told the Huffington Post earlier this week that the MPAA “has no major influence on my decision-making,” and that he “has never asked [the] MPAA a legal question” and “isn’t sure which lawyers they employ.” And yet today the Huffington Post and the Verge revealed that Attorney General Hood had numerous conversations with both MPAA staff and Jenner & Block attorneys about this matter.

    The company says it has “serious legal concerns about all of this.” It also points to a quote from the MPAA’s website about how the organization aims to preserve free speech, but is trying to censor the Internet.

    Image via Twitter

  • Should Google News Be Shut Down In Spain?

    Publishers aren’t fond of the idea of not having Google News to send them traffic, it would seem. Who knew? Last week, Google announced it would shut down Google News in Spain on December 16. The day is here, and as of the time of this writing, the site is operational, but it may be gone soon. The company’s hand was forced by legislation in that country requiring news aggregation services like Google News to pay publishers for using small snippets of content.

    Should Google be forced to pay publishers or shut down Google News? Do you agree with this law? Should it be implemented in other countries? Should publishers just be grateful for the traffic they get? Share your thoughts on the issue in the comments.

    The law is similar to one in Germany that ensured publishers could charge services like Google for doing just that, but the difference with the Spanish law is that publishers actually have to charge.

    You see, when the scenario played out in Germany, publishers eventually caved, coming to the realization that they actually relied on that Google traffic. Google wasn’t going to pay them for snippets, so it just wouldn’t index those who wanted to charge. Minds were changed.

    Minds have also changed in Spain, but given the different nature of the law, a reversal might not be as easy. The Spanish Report reports that the Spanish Newspaper Publishers’ Association (AEDE) wants the Spanish government and EU competition authorities to stop Google from closing Google News. The publication writes:

    The Spanish Newspaper Publishers’ Association (AEDE) issued a statement last night saying that Google News was “not just the closure of another service given its dominant market position”, recognising that Google’s decision: “will undoubtedly have a negative impact on citizens and Spanish businesses”.

    “Given the dominant position of Google (which in Spain controls almost all of the searches in the market and is an authentic gateway to the Internet), AEDE requires the intervention of Spanish and community authorities, and competition authorities, to effectively protect the rights of citizens and companies”.

    Keep in mind, this is the group that lobbied the government for such a law in the first place. Apparently they didn’t expect Google to actually pull the plug. Now they seem to be panicking.

    Last week, Richard Gingras, Head of Google News, said:

    As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply not sustainable. So it’s with real sadness that on 16 December (before the new law comes into effect in January) we’ll remove Spanish publishers from Google News, and close Google News in Spain.

    For centuries publishers were limited in how widely they could distribute the printed page. The Internet changed all that — creating tremendous opportunities but also real challenges for publishers as competition both for readers’ attention and for advertising Euros increased. We’re committed to helping the news industry meet that challenge and look forward to continuing to work with our thousands of partners globally, as well as in Spain, to help them increase their online readership and revenues.

    We’ve yet to see any comment from Google in light of this new news, and it remains to be seen if the government will indeed intervene again to keep Google News alive in the country.

    Currently, Google News is still operational from Google.es. If you go to the main Google News page, it presents the user with Google’s message about shutting down, but if you perform a regular Google search that lends itself to news, you still get news results within the regular search results, and can click through to the Spanish version of Google News like normal (h/t: Greg Sterling). This is likely how most people use the service as it is.

    This could very well go away soon, but we have to wonder if Google is in talks with the government in light of the publisher group’s recent comments. After all, they would be the beneficiaries of the law, so the law has little reason for existing if it doesn’t cater to those it’s supposed to protect.

    Do you think Google News will ultimately remain in operation in Spain, or do you expect it to actually be gone for good? Let us know in the comments.

    Images via Google

  • ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Dangerous, According To Web’s Inventor

    A lot of people (especially those not trying to hide information about themselves) agree that the Right to Be Forgotten in Europe is problematic for a variety of reasons, including the censorship of information.

    The latest to speak out against the current situation is none other than Tim Berners-Lee, the guy responsible for the World Wide Web. Via CNET:

    “This right to be forgotten — at the moment, it seems to be dangerous,” Berners-Lee said Wednesday, speaking here at the LeWeb conference. “The right to access history is important.”

    …

    In a wide-ranging discussion at the conference, Berners-Lee said it’s appropriate that false information should be deleted. Information that’s true, though, is important for reasons of free speech and history, he said. A better approach to the challenge would be rules that protect people from inappropriate use of older information. An employer could be prohibited from taking into account a person’s juvenile crimes or minor crimes more than 10 years old, for example.

    The EU recently put forth some guidelines for the right to be forgotten, for search engines to work with, though they don’t go very far in terms of quelling the biggest concerns many have with the ruling, such as Berners-Lee’s.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Alabama Bill To Be Named After Tim Cook

    Alabama Bill To Be Named After Tim Cook

    In October, Tim Cook penned a piece for Bloomberg Buisnessweek in which he publicly came out as gay. Now, it appears that an anti-discrimination bill in Alabama is to be named after him.

    Reuters reports:

    Democratic state Representative Patricia Todd, Alabama’s sole openly gay lawmaker, said on Wednesday that Apple was initially hesitant about having Cook’s name on her bill, which faces steep odds in the Republican-dominated Legislature, but later embraced the idea…

    “Nobody could have scripted this,” said Todd, who plans to introduce her bill in the Alabama legislative session beginning in March. “I never in a million years would have expected it.”

    Todd had said after Cook’s letter that she would put his name on the bill, but apparently it’s official now.

    Cook was born in Mobile.

    In other Tim Cook news, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took some issue with Cook’s comments on advertising-based businesses in a new Time Magazine cover story.

    Image via Apple

  • Google Breakup Approved By European Parliament

    As previously reported, the European Parliament was considering a proposal to call for a breakup of Google. More specifically, it wants to separate the company’s search business from the rest of its offerings.

    When the subject came up for a vote, the proposal was approved. Don’t get too excited just yet though. The Parliament doesn’t exactly have the authority to act on the Google breakup. Rather, it’s just moving forward with this position in hopes of convincing regulators that do have this authority – the European Commission, which has been embroiled in an antitrust probe of Google for years.

    The Wall Street Journal reports:

    In a vote in Strasbourg, 384 legislators voted in favor of the controversial initiative, with 174 against and 56 abstentions. Lawmakers rejected a last-minute amendment by the liberal party bloc that would have dropped a key clause calling for a possible “unbundling” of search engines from other services they may offer.

    As The New York Times recently pointed out, one member of the Parliament – Andreas Schwab – was credited with drafting the breakup proposal, and also has a direct interest in Google’s business practices in that he is “of counsel” at CMS Hasche Sigle, a German law firm. This firm has represented German publishers, which have been battling Google. According to the report, Schwab claimed the proposal was a “purely political issue”.

    Joaquin Almunia, the European Commission’s former competition chief, left office a month ago, as Margrethe Vestager stepped into the position. Vestager has indicated she will take her time with the antitrust investigation. Parliament’s call for a breakup should at this point only be considered as a suggestion to be weighed along with all other related comments from various parties.

    Image via Google