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After early hopes for a sweeping antitrust case against Google, it became clear to the Federal Trade Commission last fall that no such lawsuit was in the offing. A clinching moment came in November when FTC staff, who had exhaustively investigated the Internet search giant for 18 months, told the five FTC commissioners that they shouldn't bring a broad antitrust case, rebutting the theory that Google abused its dominant market position in Internet search to favor its own products and services at rivals' expense.
Instead, in a series of packed meetings at room 432 of FTC headquarters, they recommended pursuing a series of smaller issues. People familiar with the FTC's probe said both staff and several commissioners felt that Google engaged in questionable behavior, but they struggled to come up with a convincing theory of how consumers, and not just competitors, were harmed. Even if some in the commission didn't like what Google was doing, they concluded the tactics weren't necessarily violating antitrust law, people familiar with the process said. At the same time, Google had also undertaken extensive efforts to set an escape hatch from U.S. antitrust efforts. The Internet company spent years on lobbying and other efforts to build up goodwill in Washington, becoming the fifth-highest spender on lobbying in 2012, shelling out more than $14 million related to the antitrust probe and other issues, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics and lobbying disclosure statements. Google also dispatched executive chairman Eric Schmidt and other employees to garner support from lawmakers, adding political pressure to the landscape.
Behind Google's Antitrust Escape
The Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust investigation of Google focused mainly on the company’s lucrative search business, while its inquiry into the tech giant’s handling of patents seemed an afterthought. Yet even as Google made only a few voluntary promises on search, it agreed to a legal settlement on patents that Jon Leibowitz, the commission chairman, called a “landmark enforcement action” that applies to huge high-tech markets like smartphones and tablet computers. The FTC action by no means spells the end of the smartphone patent wars, a global conflict in which major corporations including Apple, Samsung and Google have spent billions amassing patent portfolios and then suing and countersuing one another in courts around the world. But legal experts say Google’s settlement with the FTC signals progress in clarifying the rules of engagement in high-tech patent battles, and thus could ease them.
On Google, FTC Set Rules of War Over Patents
By some accounts, the United States let Google off the hook when it found that the technology giant had not abused its dominance in the Internet search market. Few expect the European antitrust watchdog to be as lenient.
The agreement with the American authorities, analysts and competition lawyers say, is unlikely to alter the demands of European regulators, led by the competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia. “We have taken note of the F.T.C. decision, but we don’t see that it has any direct implications for our investigation, for our discussions with Google, which are ongoing,” said Michael Jennings, a spokesman for the European Commission in Brussels. Faced with nearly $4 billion in possible penalties and restrictions on its business in Europe, Google submitted proposals in July to remedy the concerns of the European Commission, which covered four areas. In its deal with the FTC, Google made concessions in two of those areas but was not required to do so in the rest.
Europe Likely to Be Harder on Google Over Search
[Commentary] What companies like Twitter, Square, and Facebook—not to mention Google, Amazon, and Apple—aspire to, and in some cases have achieved, is a status similar to that of traditional utilities like Ma Bell. They attempt to position themselves such that customers can’t get around them, or can’t afford to leave them. And when they succeed, they start appearing to some customers, would-be competitors, and regulators like scary monopolies that somebody needs to do something about.
What is new is that the path from looking for an edge to being attacked as a monopoly has gotten a lot shorter—and that gaining a monopoly seems such a plausible goal within some of the fastest-growing parts of the economy. Standard Oil had been in business for 36 years when the Justice Department sued it for antitrust violations; AT&T for 97. By comparison, Microsoft was just 15 when federal regulators started looking into its business practices, 23 when Justice sued. Google, a mere 14 years old. Today’s technology entrepreneurs are well aware of the tight link between profit and monopoly. Few are as open about it as the PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, who has described monopoly as the natural goal of any smart tech entrepreneur. But everybody gets the basic idea. “There’s a joke in Silicon Valley,” says the UC Berkeley economist Carl Shapiro: “ ‘You know you’ve really made it when you’ve got antitrust problems.’ That’s the sign of success.”
The Web’s New Monopolists
There are three things that matter in consumer data collection: location, location, location. E-ZPasses clock the routes we drive. Metro passes register the subway stations we enter. ATM’s record where and when we get cash. Not to mention the credit and debit card transactions that map our trajectories in comprehensive detail — the stores, restaurants and gas stations we frequent; the hotels and health clubs we patronize. Each of these represents a kind of knowing trade, a conscious consumer submission to surveillance for the sake of convenience. But now legislators, regulators, advocacy groups and marketers are squaring off over newer technology: smartphones and mobile apps that can continuously record and share people’s precise movements. At issue is whether consumers are unwittingly acquiescing to pervasive tracking just for the sake of having mobile amenities like calendar, game or weather apps.
Their Apps Track You. Will Congress Track Them?
Nearly a year after a wave of online protests killed two anti-piracy bills, lawmakers are skittish about moving forward with legislation aimed at cracking down on websites that illegally distribute copies of movies and music.
The House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Senate's Protect IP Act (PIPA) grabbed national attention when Wikipedia, Reddit and scores of other websites went dark on Jan. 18 to protest the bills. The public outcry over the bills led lawmakers to pull their support, and spurred others who were previously quiet on the anti-piracy measures to speak out in opposition. The fracas over SOPA and PIPA a year ago is still fresh on the minds of lawmakers, making it doubtful that similar legislation will surface in the opening months of the 113th Congress. "I think people are shell-shocked from that," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who was a vocal opponent of SOPA.
‘Shell-shocked’ lawmakers shy away from online piracy in new Congress
[Commentary] Recently there has been considerable discussion about a looming spectrum shortage. Yet the reality is that most of our spectrum is unused most of the time. This is because spectrum is managed by often assigning exclusive rights to a particular “licensee” to use a specific frequency in a specific location, and often only for a very specific purpose or service.
This approach, which is analogous to building a private road for every different type of vehicle, leads to inefficient utilization of our nation’s spectrum resources, and impedes the introduction of new technologies. A large percentage of these frequencies service the thousands of government systems that provide the essential functions for our national security. And, in most cases, even if it were possible to reallocate their spectrum for new commercial uses and technologies, the process of doing so is extremely expensive and incredibly slow, taking on the order of a decade or more – far too slow to keep up with our fast-paced digital economy. For these reasons, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recently recommended a new approach to federal spectrum management. With a new approach, we can transform the availability of a precious national resource – spectrum – from scarcity to abundance, and do so rapidly. It is time to start building the first shared-use spectrum superhighways.
[The authors are all members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology]
America has plenty of wireless spectrum – we just need a new way to allocate it
Wireless chip maker Qualcomm Atheros unveiled StreamBoost, which intelligently manages your home's broadband connection on routers based on Qualcomm's 802.11ac technology. StreamBoost stops devices and applications from hogging more bandwidth than they need, preventing slowdown for other devices and apps.
Most of what this technology does happens locally on the router, with a detection engine that analyzes what application is running and a policy engine that allocates however many kilobits or megabits per second the application needs. For example, the detection engine will sense that Netflix is playing a video at 1080p or some other resolution and apply the correct policy. While detecting applications and applying policies happens on your router, there's an optional cloud component that uploads data about application usage to Qualcomm Atheros. The chipmaker wants to crowdsource information about the bandwidth usage of applications such as video streams and use that data to more accurately determine how much bandwidth each application needs.
A wireless router that tracks user activity—but for a good reason
[Commentary] We just keep waiting for the widespread deployment of mobile digital television. What we need is for the broadcast networks to make a real commitment to the new technology. If mobile DTV were real, don't you think Chase Carey, Les Moonves, Steve Burke and Bob Iger would be talking it up wherever and whenever they could? Jessell has no evidence that any of those executives even know what mobile DTV is.
Networks Should Energize Mobile DTV Push
Employers in Illinois and California cannot ask for usernames and passwords to the personal social media accounts of employees and job seekers under laws that took effect on Jan. 1.
Gov. Patrick Quinn (D-IL) in August signed legislation amending the State's 'Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act.' Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) signed legislation adding the prohibitions to the State's Labor Code in September. The two states join Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, and Delaware in implementing such privacy laws. The state laws were prompted by privacy and worker advocates concerned that some employers were asking job seekers and employees for access to their personal social media accounts as a condition of hiring and employment.
New laws keep employers out of worker social media accounts