March 2012

A senior Federal Trade Commission attorney who led several of the agency's antitrust investigations into Google has been hired by the company's archrival, Microsoft.

Randall Long, a deputy assistant director in the agency's Bureau of Competition, will become a director of regulatory affairs in Washington (DC) at the end of March, Microsoft said. In recent years, Microsoft has emerged as Google's chief legal antagonist, working publicly and privately to get antitrust cops in Washington and Brussels interested in Google's activities. As part of his new job, Long will likely continue those efforts before the FTC and other agencies. At the FTC, Long focused on mergers and hasn't been part of a group at the agency now conducting a wide-ranging antitrust investigation into Google's business practices. But it remains unclear how much access he may have had to nonpublic information about the investigation in his role at the FTC. As the lead staff attorney in the AdMob case, Long recommended that the commission challenge the deal, people familiar with the matter said. Ultimately, the commission narrowly decided to allow the deal, largely because the unexpected entry of Apple into the market upended their legal case.

The surprise announcement that Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) will retire at the end of this year has roiled the line of succession to two of the Senate’s most powerful committees.

Snowe’s retirement would have bigger implications if Republicans recapture the Senate majority and control of the chamber’s panels. Commerce Committee: Snowe’s retirement puts Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), co-founder of the Senate Tea Party Caucus, in line to become the ranking Republican on Commerce, as current ranking member Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) has also announced her retirement. Sen DeMint is known as an agitator for conservative causes, ready to block Senate floor action to advance his arguments. He said the committee promotion would allow him to focus on legislating. “I’d look forward to that — if we can get ourselves to some kind of trajectory toward balancing the budget — to get back to legislating,” Sen DeMint said. “I’d rather legislate than agitate.” Sen DeMint said he will push legislation to rewrite rules for broadcast and cable television that he called “antiquated.” Sen DeMint will advocate for consolidating federal agencies and “looking at how we can reconstruct the whole Commerce Department.”

Just as a few massive chain stores eventually came to dominate the traditional printed book market in North America, the e-book marketplace is a kind of oligopoly involving a few major players — primarily Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble.

And while bookstore owners of all kinds are free to decide which books they wish to put on their shelves, these new giants have far more control over whose e-books see the light of day because they also own the major e-reading platforms, and they are making decisions based not on what they think consumers want to read but on their own competitive interests. That is turning the e-book landscape into even more of a walled garden.

Google today implements its controversial new privacy policy, which ties together more than ever before data gathered from users' online activities across all of its properties -- search, Gmail, Google Plus, Picasa, Google Maps, etc. -- to better target ads based on users' interests.

There is plenty of blowback, of course. But that might have been mitigated, at least somewhat, by Google's ad campaign, "Good to Know," which comprises cute line drawings to explain and promote the new policy. "Online privacy has never looked more cuddly," decided Advertising Age. Or maybe privacy intrusion has never looked more cuddly is a better way to put it. Google of course is putting the best possible face on what is, after all, a highly controversial, possibly troubling move. But the campaign might be unique in terms of taking such actions directly to the people, circumventing lawyers, interest groups and politicians to the extent possible. "Good to Know" was launched in Europe before the anti-SOPA campaign reached full volume, culminating in an online movement of people and companies that resulted in Web blackouts and other protests the led to the anti-piracy legislation's being shelved. Google took part, though only with a message on its site stating its opposition to the bill. But the company must have been pleased by the effort's success, since it offered further evidence that in many cases, direct-to-the-public publicity campaigns can be highly effective.