Yes, I think so!  In America we all have  known about competition in the business world.  When you have competition then you have less power over the people who you service.  If you have no competition then you have more power over the people you service.  This is what is happening in the tech world – too much power.  It has been enjoyable working with Google; but, they do have some employees who try to bully the customer if you try to publish something they don’t like – as I have found out. 

In one sense, U.S. competition law is very easy. U.S. antitrust lawyers usually worry about only three statutory provisions: Sherman Act Section 1, Sherman Act Section 2, and Clayton Act Section 7. The first prohibits agreements in restraint of trade, the second monopolization and attempts and conspiracies to monopolize, and the last mergers and acquisitions that may substantially lessen competition. With a few exceptions, that is all the statutory law one needs to know. In another sense, U.S. competition law is very hard. Those few important statutory provisions answer few questions. The courts treat competition law as a kind of common law, freely changing legal standards from time to time without Congressional guidance. Legal standards are informed by economics, moreover, so as economics evolves the law may evolve with it. Two federal enforcement agencies and numerous state attorneys general enforce the law and participate actively in trying to shape its evolution, while the strong majority of lawsuits are filed by private parties.

Sunday, 29 Mar 2015 05:15 PM

By Greg Richter

Google, the second largest campaign donor to President Barack Obama, wields enormous power in the administration that would be seen as scandalous outside the political world, writes Kyle Smith in the New York Post.

Obama’s’ technology adviser Megan J. Smith is a former Google executive, Google lobbyists have been to the White House 230 times – dwarfing the 20 visits by its chief rival Comcast in the same time period.

And Google employees gave the most to Obama’s re-election campaign than any other company’s workers except Microsoft’s.

Further, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was in Obama’s Chicago campaign office on election day 2012 working on a voter turnout system aimed at re-electing the president.

Schmidt, Smith writes, “was especially fond of a madcap corner of the Obama campaign office known as ‘the Cave,’ where, at 4:30 every day, staffers would dance madly under a disco ball to the tune of a mashup of Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ and an automated campaign phone call made to prospective voters.”

What did all those good vibes get Google in return?

The Federal Trade Commission had accused Google of abusive trade practices by burying the results for competitors’ websites in search results. But in 2012 the FTC ignored its own staff’s recommendation of a lawsuit, and, instead, dropped its investigation.

Google also got its way on the recently released net neutrality rules. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler opposed the “Title II” rules that benefit Google, but Obama favored them, and Wheeler changed his position.

The FCC also pulled out 15 pages from its report that Google didn’t approve of, Smith writes.

But the worst is yet to come, Smith argues, as Google prepares to make changes to its popular search engine.

The company recently announced that its page rankings in the future will be based on how truthful the site is.

That announcement troubled commentators on the political right.

Smith notes that if an article is bumped to the second page of search results its chances of being seen drop drastically. A 2013 study showed that 91.5 percent of users click through on the first page of results, he noted.

“Google’s idea of ranking results based on truth is an excellent one that it should implement just as soon as it comes up with an absolutely, unbiased and objective system of determining truth,” Smith wrote, adding, “I’m not sure the company whose employees ranked second in all of corporate America in campaign donations to Obama can be termed neutral.”

Time will tell if this ranking results based on truth will work, especially with the present administration, because they are like chewing gun – when they speak – you chew it, but just don’t swallow it.  I wonder who at Google will be the truth czar?

kommonsentsjane