Google is a target now. The EU is threatening to do its people a disservice by trying to fight Google innovation as hard as they fight Microsoft innovation. Because here’s the thing: people who voluntarily use Google software are not at all the same as people who were snooped on by Google Street View vans. They’re not victims. They’re people choosing to sign their privacy away. The EU, in attacking Google, is restricting choice for Europeans.
Meanwhile, in the US, I have to disagree with Scott Cleland on Google’s FTC issues. Regular readers know I’m hard on Google when it’s warranted: in the Wi Spy mess, and in the Safari hack, I supported regulatory action against the firm. But the antitrust and Search Neutrality disputes are stupid, and are themselves political power grabs. The Obama regulators are themselves political power seekers. Google is not politicizing any process. Obama and his people already did.
PS: Larry Page, next time don’t back the big government Democrat if you don’t want big government. Good for the gander and all that.
We need to elect Mitt Romney, however, in order to push regulators like the FCC in a new direction. We need innovation to continue and that requires not only a regulatory light touch, but it requires fixing things that have grown to be in the way as innovation has continued. It’s a transformative process. And as FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai recently said, this transformation will happen with us, or without us. We need action to preserve our advantages online.
finally getting out of the way of AT&T for once on spectrum is good, letting AT&T hopefully get access to some spectrum in the WCS band from Sirius XM that may help them increase competition in the national LTE market, but this is an isolated act from the Obama regulators. It’s not consistent.
These are the same regulators that are handing out Obamaphones literally by the dozen, as Tom Coburn is blasting them for. Tell Mitt Romney we need strong, reformist regulators. We need disruption of the Obama routines put in place, not just quiet caretakers, or meek compromisers who will get intimidated or fast talked by well-funded radical activists who have grown used to getting their way in the Obama FCC and FTC.
Note to the person suing AT&T on Net Neutrality grounds: the FCC gave wireless a break in the Open Internet order imposing Net Neutrality on industry. You’re going to lose, even without the detail of the Net Neut regs being themselves illegal. Read more RedState and less Reddit.