Open Source

January 27, 2010

For Immediate Release

Contact: Scott Cleland

703-217-2407

Media@GoogleMonitor.com

GoogleMonitor.com Launches Today

While I generally disagree with ZDNet's open source columnist, Dana Blankenhorn's views, I regularly follow what he writes and respect his analysis and clarity of thought. 

Given all the talk of Google's many antitrust issues and Google's own denials that it is a monopoly, Mr. Blankenhorn's candor as a Google ally, was refreshing in his piece: "Open source and the Google Cloud:"  

Google posted its treatise on "The meaning of open" designed to redefine the word "open" in Google's image. It is an important read because it is a bay window view into the altruistic way that Google yearns for the world to perceive it.

• Like most all of Google's PR, however, Google's Treatise on "The meaning of open" may be "the truth" as Google sees it, but it is certainly not "the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

I.   Google's  Open Double Standard

Simply, Google is for "open" wherever it does not have a monopoly or dominant market position, however where it does, as in AdWords, AdSense and search advertising syndication, it is closed, to ensure that its dominance remains impregnable to competitors.

Craig Newmark of Craigslist, a leading net neutrality proponent, posted another strong support of net neutrality on Huffington Post where he shared Consumer Reports definition of net neutrality.

In another tech elite case of "Do as I say, not as I do," it is particularly ironic that Mr. Newmark is publicly championing how important it is for dominant players to not block traffic on the Internet, at the same time, Craigslist, the most dominant online classified ad site in the U.S., is blatantly blocking a new mashup called Flippity and "every single project built on Yahoo Pipes," per TechCrunch's post yesterday:

I kid you not. Google's latest antitrust defense, from the mouth of Dana Wagner, Google's lead antitrust lawyer, is: "We want to be Santa Claus. We want to make lots of toys that people like playing with. But if you don't want to play with our toys, you've got us."

• See the quote for yourself at the very end of a Globe and Mail article entitled: "Google: we're not evil and we're not a monopoly either."
  • Google's Mr. Wagner continues: “In a West Coast company run by engineers, I don't think there was much attention paid to being in Ottawa, being in D.C. and telling your story,” Mr. Wagner says. “If you don't tell your story, other people do it for you.”

Let me attempt to unpack the irony of this new story/metaphor of which Google has taken ownership. 

Most companies when they tell their corporate "story" try to "put their best foot forward," but no one but Google would think to try and slip jolly megalomaniacal corpulence down the narrow chimney of public credibility.  

For those trying to better understand some obvious, important and necessary reasons why networks need to engage in "reasonable network management" and prioritize Internet traffic to ensure quality of service for all -- please read a great post by George Ou over at Digital Society. 

Traffic prioritization is not anti-competitive or anti-openness -- its simple common sense network management.  

Jonathan Zittrain's NYTimes Op-ed today, "Lost in the Clouds" ironically captured three of my big concerns/themes about the Internet and its natural outgrowth -- cloud computing.

• I recommend this op-ed because it pulls together a whole host of converging Internet issues that others generally treat separately.
• The problem with writing about these issues separately is that much of the richness of how these inter-related issues interact -- is lost.  

  Zittrain: "The cloud, however, comes with real dangers."

  • I agree. That has been much of the point of my 13 part series since the first of the year:
    • "The Open Internet's Growing Security Problem"

  Zittrain: "Worse, data stored online has less privacy protection both in practice and under the law."

Google's launch of a new PC operating system on the heels of its announcement ending the "beta" phase for its popular gmail, Calendar, Docs and Talk applications, is happening in the midst of a new era where cyber-security has been made a new national priority and internet security breaches are increasingly serious and commonplace.

Kudos to Saul Hansell for his post at the NY Times Bits Blog which ably spotlights the growing clash between those who publicly advocate for more privacy on the web and those who behind-the-scenes are opposed to more privacy on the web. 

• From Hansell's post: "...There is a split, he told the conference, between the typical view of privacy among technology experts and the emerging view of people brought up in the social networking, Web 2.0 world.
• “The Web 2.0 movement is opposed to the privacy movement,” he said. Traditionally, privacy advocates have pushed for a policy of “data minimization,” he argued. ....
• The new ideology revolves around what Mr. Swire called “data empowerment.”

This privacy-publicacy tension that I have been writing about for months -- is obviously very real indeed. 

How can free have a cost? Well a lot of different things are converging in Washington that could bring much more focus to -- "the costs of free" on the Internet.

• Last month's Revised Behavioral Advertising Principles from FTC Staff are largely about making more transparent the privacy "costs" of "free" Internet products and services funded by online behavioral advertising.
• This month's NYT news that House Internet Subcommittee Chairman Boucher now supports passage of new Internet privacy legislation requiring consumer "opt-in" permission in order to exploit consumer information, implicitly recognizes the substantial hidden privacy "cost" of behavioral advertising.
• This week's privacy and security-related complaint to the FTC filed by EPIC against Google's free cloud computing services, further brings to the forefront the hidden "costs" of free on the Internet.