Google Competitors Spitting Mad About FTC Closing Case; Promise That Europe & Texas Will Get It Right

from the we'll-see-about-that dept

With the FTC closing its antitrust case against Google, the group of Google's competitors who were the main instigators behind the effort aren't giving up easily. Gary Reback, the lawyer whose entire persona is wrapped up in being "the lawyer who gets the FTC to attack big companies" (he also led the charge against Microsoft a decade and a half ago) issued an incredibly combative statement:

“I've been doing this almost 40 years, and I've done dozens if not scores of government investigations on both sides, and I have never seen a more unprofessional, incomplete, incompetent investigation,” said Gary Reback, a Silicon Valley lawyer who represented some of Google's complainants before the FTC.

Really, now? In the briefing the FTC gave about the situation, FTC boss, Jon Liebowitz, indicated that the Google competitors' strategy of attacking the FTC when it was suggested that there might not be enough evidence for antitrust didn't help convince the FTC to suddenly create evidence out of thin air. Apparently, Reback would prefer that the FTC do stuff just because he says so, even as the evidence for Reback's claims are completely lacking.

Meanwhile, the laughably named "FairSearch" group -- a collection of Google competitors, who teamed up to create a publicity campaign solely with the goal of attacking Google over antitrust claims, came out with its own hilarious statement, which could be summarized as "it's not over yet! There's still Europe! And Texas!"

“The FTC's decision to close its investigation with only voluntary commitments from Google is disappointing and premature, coming just weeks before the company is expected to make a formal and detailed proposal to resolve the four abuses of dominance identified by the European Commission, first among them biased display of its own properties in search results.

The FTC’s settlement is by no means the last word in this case, leaving the FTC without a major role in the final resolution to the investigations of Google's anti-competitive practices by state attorneys general and the European Commission. The FTC’s inaction on the core question of search bias will only embolden Google to act more aggressively to misuse its monopoly power to harm other innovators.

State attorneys general who reportedly disagreed with today's announcement by the FTC have an important role to play in ensuring both that Google is not allowed to continue practices that hurt every American business through artificially high advertising costs, and to demand that whatever changes Google is forced to make in Europe also apply for U.S. consumers who risk losing innovation because of Google's aggressive abuse of its dominance.

It is true that the EU Commission is still doing its own investigation, and given the EU's general feelings that "big" (and "American") must somehow be "bad," it's likely that they'll come down a bit more harshly on Google, as they did on Microsoft. Similarly, some state Attorneys General (mainly Texas) who have been grandstanding against Google and other tech companies for years will likely grouse about this -- but their ability to do anything about it may be fairly limited, given the lack of any actual evidence of harm.

In the end, this is coming off as even more sour grapes from companies who chose to focus on whining to government, rather than competing in the marketplace. In the future, instead of spending so much on lobbyists and lawyers, perhaps they could focus on building better products that the market wants.

Filed Under: antitrust, attorneys general, competition, eu commission, ftc, gary reback, texas
Companies: fairsearch, google

Complaints Against Google Book Scanning Project Reach Ridiculous Levels

from the did-you-really-just-say-that? dept

There's a tremendous amount of opposition to Google's "settlement" with authors and publishers over its book scanning project. I'm on the record as being very much against the settlement, but for very different reasons than most people. Frankly, I think Google's book scanning project is an incredibly useful and culturally valuable project, that will help expand culture and knowledge sharing. It's a way to not just preserve culture, but to share it. I can't see how that's a bad thing. In effect it's really no different than Google's search engine in how it works. It's basically building a giant index so that people can search on it, and be pointed to the results that they want. Think of it as the most effective and useful card catalog you could ever have. Did people think the library card catalog violated book copyrights? Of course not...

So my main complaint with the "settlement" is why it's needed at all. Google had a strong fair use case in how it was running the book scanning project, and I saw no reason to cave. In caving, it's only set up plenty of other copyright battles -- with music companies, the press, video companies and more -- all demanding their share of Google's profits, for no reason other than that Google has scanned their works and points more people to it. There are, certainly, other objectionable parts to the settlement, but my main objection is the idea that it's even needed at all.

However, many others are objecting to the settlement for a series of increasingly ridiculous reasons, that make little sense. Gary Reback, the famed anti-trust lawyer who helped bring the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft a decade ago, is working with the Open Book Alliance -- a group that most certainly has admirable goals in terms of its own book scanning project, but which is clearly complaining about the "settlement" because it will give Google a leg up over its own efforts. Reback's filing over the matter makes the claim that that the agreement represents an antitrust issue:

"Google could never have achieved through free-market competition the dominant position in digital books it seeks through the proposed settlement," reads Reback's filing. "Unwilling to compete for share in the open market, Google chose instead to use court process to achieve dominance."

Really? As Danny Sullivan points out, despite Reback's claims, Google's dominant position in the digital book market was achieved via free market competition. To claim that it couldn't have been is simply wrong. It's then flat out misleading to suggest that Google "chose to use court process to achieve dominance" because it wasn't Google that used the process. Remember, it was the Authors Guild and various publishers who sued Google.

Next up, we have the Europeans, who are complaining about the Google book settlement as well. This is hardly a surprise. After all, it's been nearly five years since officials in France declared Google's book scanning project a threat to national French culture, and then got together with other European governments to dump billions of dollars into a ill-defined "competitor" that has produced little of consequence (and, indeed, seemed to have no direction). The competitor has been so useless that the French National Library -- whose boss first raised the alarm about the book scanning project five years ago -- has thrown in the towel and signed a deal with Google to allow the company to scan its books.

So, what's their complaint? Well, it's the same old complaint, that Google's book scanning project is somehow a threat to their culture:

European officials fear that if the Google project goes ahead in the US, a yawning transatlantic gap will open up in education and research.

James Boyle unleashes his wit in response:

"Oh my God! The Americans are about to create a private workaround of the enormous mess that we regulators have made of national copyright policy! They will fix the unholy legal screwups that leave most of 20th century culture books unavailable, yet still under copyright! They will gain access to their cultural heritage -- giving them a huge competitive advantage in education. This MUST BE STOPPED!! No one can be allowed to fix this for any other country because then we would be left alone stewing in our own intellectual property stupidity! We must forbid their progress in order to protect our ignorance."

Again, the settlement deal has tons of problems, and I still can't see how it's necessary or how it helps -- but many of the complaints about it are simply ridiculous.

Filed Under: antitrust, book scanning, europe, gary reback
Companies: google