The Justice Department has announced its taking a closer look at the proposed $12.5 billion takeover of Motorola Mobility by Google, just one more antitrust inquiry in Google’s slew of recent acquisitions. Google has survived similar extended inquiries on those other acquisitions, but at some point antitrust authorities will likely see an acquisition as a [...]
Reuters have an article about employers wanting to fire employees over Facebook postings that criticize the employer– and the surprise those employers have that they can’t because of federal labor law. That law protects not just workers seeking to form a union but any “concerted activity” by employees, which includes complaining to another employee about [...]
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski made a major speech on Jobs and The Broadband Economy” at the offices of Living Social, touting the company and similar Internet companies as a key to jobs in the broadband economy. He cited “Facebook. Twitter. iPhones. Tablets. App stores. Android. The Kindle. The cloud” as new innovations in the last [...]
The Hill reports that an online petition proposes ending software patents: A petition on the White House’s website to end software patents has passed the number of signatures required to receive an official White House response. The petition argues that patents have become “a way to stifle innovation and prevent competition rather than supporting innovation [...]
In questions during last week’s hearing with Eric Schmidt, one key question asked was whether Google would design Android to hurt products that compete with Google apps. Schmidt seemed to argue this wouldn’t happen, which seemed to satisfy the Senators, but his wording showed the problems with the nature of a monopolist controlling an open [...]
It was always a dumb law. That teachers could be banned from communicating on Facebook with students was a paranoid overreaction to fears about student abuse. Teachers need to talk with students and policymakers should be encouraging more individualized outreach to students, not less. A judge on Friday issued a preliminary injunction against the Missouri [...]
Starting at 2pm I’ll be liveblogging the hearing 2pm– Sen Kohl opens up hearing– question of whether Google biases results towards its own interests. Notes Google’s “special obligations’ under antitrust law to bias results. [Promotes myth of Google starting in a "garage"-- ignores federal funding of computer science departments such as Stanford's where the initial [...]
Back in July, I wrote a series, The Cost of Lost Privacy: How Google and Datamining Drive Economic Inequality in Our Nation, about how advertisers are increasingly able to use demographic and behavioral activity by users to target ads at specific vulnerable groups. With Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt testifying before the Senate on Wednesday, I’m [...]
