ftc

Government often seems quite adept at solving yesterday’s problems, building or protecting systems that are irrelevant today.

“The Responsibility Reckoning” that everyone has been witnessing over the last year evidently is finally coming to the FTC with the Senate confirmation of a clean slate of FTC commissioners.

There must have been a time, a moment, in each instance when freedom and liberty triumphed that the people exclaimed “Finally!” Today is such a day for internet freedom.

After Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told reporters in May that net neutrality wasn’t a priority for his company, Netflix’s public-relations department announced the company would participate in the July 12 “Internet-Wide Day of Action.”

What’s quintessential illegal monopoly behavior?

Reportedly the EU will rule Google has abused its search dominance this summer, putting the growth and profitability of the ~30% European part of Alphabet-Google’s revenue base at risk.

After years of investigations, lawsuits, and fines, a checkered past of patent abuse and exploitation appears to have caught up with a major U.S. chip developer.

The FCC’s proposed broadband privacy rules are haphazard and have more random and conflicting “gaps” than Swiss cheese has holes.

The FCC’s Open Internet order and proposed Title II privacy rules divided what was unified. For privacy, it broke what was working. Confused what was clear. Complicated what was simple. Unprotected what they sought to protect. Created more costs than benefits. Since the Internet’s beginning the FTC has had privacy authority over information services.

Recently, the Federal Communications Commission has proposed to construct a new, additional regulatory apparatus, asserting, without any factual support, that creating untested and discriminatory rules for internet service providers (ISPs) will be the silver bullet for protecting consumers’ privacy.

Why does the company that by far collects the most private information that the FCC claims it wants to protect, and that also has the worst consumer privacy protection record with the FTC, (Google), get 99% exempted from the telecom and cable privacy protections expected of telephone, broadband, cable and satellite providers?

The European Commission has charged Alphabet-Google with abusing its dominance in the market for “general Internet search services,” by implementing an Android “strategy of mobile devices to preserve and strengthen its dominance in general Internet search.” The EU objects to a variety of secret Google contract conditions to manufacturer licenses to leverage the dominant (>90% share) Android OS to secretly restrict and foreclose competition in ways that ultimately harm consumer choice and innovation. The EU effectively charged that Google has already anticompetitively extended its >90% dominance in search to dominance in the >90% share of the “licensable smart mobile operating system,” and to dominance in the >90% share of the “app stores for the Android” market.

And that, in a nutshell, is the lion’s share of Google’s business model. And business – is booming. Google is worth a net $350 billion. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Denmark – is $342 billion.