Posted on 11/20/2007 8:15:13 AM PST by george76
A letter from the top two ranking members of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, Democrat Herb Kohl and Republican Orrin Hatch, seeks to chill Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick on antitrust grounds:
Antitrust regulators need to be wary to guard against the creation of a powerful Internet conglomerate able to extend its market power in one market into adjacent markets, to the detriment of competition and consumers.
This might not have seemed like much of a threat, even a year or two ago, but as the online world increasingly merges with the offline world, the threat becomes more palpable.
My primary concern with the deal isn't about advertising market share, but rather about privacy, as the senators also call out:
DoubleClick collects an enormous quantity of information on individual Web users' preferences, and privacy advocates have expressed very serious concerns regarding the consequences of this data coming under the control of Google due to the fact that Google is the dominant Internet search engine and can also track individuals' search requests.
Therefore, we believe that this deal raises fundamental consumer privacy concerns worthy of serious scrutiny.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.cnet.com ...
A cell phone is tied to the user’s name, address, date of birth, and phone number.
The primary goal of Android, is for Big Brother Google to harvest information for it’s Advertising Database.
by john55440
Don’t think much of Google, but even at their worst, they have folks far, far more intelligent than anyone in our congress. A pox on congress.
This makes my brain explode. Hatch shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near anything IT related, for the survival of the 1st amendment. On the other hand, it’s very likely that Doubleclick’s fat profit margins through invasive ads will subsume Google’s non-invasive ad placement strategy if the merger goes through.
>>A cell phone is tied to the user’s name, address, date of birth, and phone number.
The primary goal of Android, is for Big Brother Google to harvest information for it’s Advertising Database.
by john55440<<
That’s true. And that’s why I don’t use any Google service that requires being logged in.
But its funny to the Senate lecturing Google on privacy after what the government has done to our privacy in the last 6 years.
Let's see, so far we have him saying that copyright holders should be allowed to hack into and destroy the systems of anyone suspected of copyright infringement. He wants all tools that make copyright infringement possible to be made illegal, killing any fair use and making the media conglomerates our masters (all under the guise of "It's for the children!").
Yep, he needs to stay far away until he can be put out to pasture.
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