June 12, 2008
Microsoft learns how to play the EU competition card
There was something sweetly ironic in the not-so-veiled threat that a Microsoft-led lobbying group flashed at Google today. The message: Microsoft is learning how to turn the European anti-trust apparatus that has caused it so much grief to its own advantage.
The group in question, called ICOMP, claims to be an industry association formed to address “concerns related to online marketplaces.” Its close links to Microsoft were once less transparent, but these days it carries the following disclosure on its Website: “Microsoft is ICOMP’s initial sponsor. Burson-Marsteller [PR advisers to Microsoft] acts as its Secretariat.”
This was the group through which Microsoft directed much of its lobbying effort in both Washington DC and Brussels against Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick. So when the European Commission today published its detailed reasoning for allowing the deal to go ahead, ICOMP was quick to respond. Its most telling comment:
In its decision, the Commission identified several market segments where Google has a high and even increasing degree of market power… ICOMP will seek to help build a consensus of views as to how this will affect the market going forward and in particular what forms of behaviour may give rise to competition concerns.
Sounds familiar? That’s exactly the approach taken by ECIS, the IBM-led consortium that has been so successful in stirring Europe’s trust-busters into action against Microsoft.
This is a good example of how a crucial issue for the future of the Internet can be reduced by journalists to a rather trivial fight between two large companies.
Google has found a way of tricking us all into providing them with often very personal data, which they then exploit (or should I say abuse) for purely commercial reasons, without letting me know. When they then use part of their huge profits to purchase yet another company to know even more about me all the European Commission can say is that privacy is not their concern. Thank you very much!
I dont care who exposes that or why. If the newspapers including the FT fail to let their readers know about this I am very pleased that an industry association draws everyone’s attention to it. That Microsoft is behind it has certainly a lot to do with the fact that they have been out-tricked by Google. But as a user of the Internet I can only applaud them for having told me about this. Would be good if others, including Ms. Kroes at the European Commission would also pay attention. Perhaps there is still time to avoid that the entire Internet becomes one big advertising gimmick to send me targeted adds I dont want based on information about my personal life and habits I never wanted others to know about.
Posted by: george lelong | June 12th, 2008 at 8:21 am | Report this commentRe: George’s comment - before we delve into complicated terms like “targeted ads”, I’d like to take a step back and apply a bit of common sense here:
Let’s imagine that Google isn’t a company of thousands of employees, but it is actually just one human person, Larry Page, sitting at his computer, and answering your search queries one at a time. Over time, wouldn’t you expect Larry to pick up a little bit about your habits, what you’re interested in, and based on that information, give you more sensible answers next time you have a question? Isn’t that actually a GOOD thing? And if he’s answering your internet search questions time and time again without asking you to pay a penny, do you think it’s too much to ask that sometimes he presents, in an unobtrusive manner, some product advertisements which he thinks you might find interesting? Isn’t it a GOOD thing that he filters out the advertising to only those that he thinks you might be interested in, and not just a GENERIC set of spam ads (e.g. like the viagra and other related ads that we seem to always get spammed with by email)
I think there must always be a balance here - just by the act of interacting with another person, or interacting with a company providing you with some service, you will always inevitably be disclosing SOME information about yourself. The only question is how much they can keep, and how long they can keep it for. If you absolutely must hide ALL your information, then you can - just don’t use their service at all.
Personally, I think Google haven’t done too bad a job in this area; compared with other companies - e.g. Facebook. I love both services, but I just feel that I know where I stand in terms of my information with Google, compared with someone like Facebook, who seem to have no consistent practice when it comes to privacy.
Posted by: Tim Cheung | June 12th, 2008 at 1:31 pm | Report this comment