Ira Brodsky.com

As Walter Isaacson recounts in his best-selling biography, Steve Jobs promised to “go to thermonuclear war” over Google’s Android smartphone. But it wasn’t merely because Jobs was a fierce competitor. One of the greatest entrepreneurs in U.S. history, Steve Jobs was painfully aware that Google does not respect others’ intellectual property rights, and he understood that Google’s practices are a threat to innovation.

Jobs’ attitude toward intellectual property rights could not have been more different from Google’s. Steve Jobs didn’t manufacture and sell products at low prices. And he certainly didn’t dump free products on the market as does Google. Steve Jobs used his natural good taste and high standards to imbue products with added value. Based on his innate sense of functionality, ease of use, and elegance he was able to command significantly higher prices than his competitors.

Steve Jobs saw Google’s Android as the result of intellectual property theft. And he probably understood how Google expected to get away with it. Google can make more money using others’ intellectual property to sell advertising than its owners can make using the intellectual property to develop and sell products. That’s why Google is confident that if push comes to shove it can always purchase a settlement. But as Steve Jobs told Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, “I’m not interested in settling. I don’t want your money.”

There are other examples of how Jobs’ attitude toward intellectual property rights was the opposite of Google’s. Jobs made a habit of keeping new products secret until they were ready for a big, splashy launch. Google routinely introduces beta versions of products. Steve Jobs was a perfectionist; he expected Apple products to work flawlessly from Day One. Google offers its products “as is” and tells users, in effect, “don’t bother calling our customer service department—we don’t have one.”

Steve Jobs created the iTunes store so that consumers could buy music rather than steal it, and so that music producers could receive fair compensation. Google, in contrast, has aided and abetted online pirates. Google scans books without the copyright holders’ permission. Google has even asked artists to supply it with artwork in exchange for exposure rather than pay—as if Google were the starving artist.

The independent-minded Jobs swam against the current of “open systems” and demonstrated convincingly that end-to-end proprietary systems offer significant benefits to consumers. Nor was Jobs intimidated by widespread attempts to disparage proprietary solutions by labeling them “closed.” Jobs proved that he could consistently deliver great products and services using proprietary systems, and he also proved that proprietary systems are not an obstacle to multi-vendor support.

Google’s advocacy of “open systems” is hypocritical. Google urges others to use open systems because open systems are less private. Meanwhile, Google zealously guards its search engine and ad auction secrets—resisting all calls to make these systems more transparent.

Steve Jobs dismissed Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” mantra because he understood that it was pure theater. He judged Google not by their slogans but by their actions. He saw Android as brazen theft and was determined to prevent Google from getting away with it.

Ira Brodsky is co-author with Scott Cleland of the new book Search & Destroy: Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc. Visit SearchAndDestroyBook.com.

An OpEd in today's Wall Street Journal by Stan Liebowitz on the recent SOPA/FIFA furor is spot on. Most of the opposition to SOPA/PIPA is misguided. The "free speech" argument originated with people who either oppose intellectual property rights or want to substantially weaken existing copyright law. If you really believe piracy (stealing) is wrong but that SOPA/PIPA are flawed, then suggest a better way to combat piracy.

Critics of these proposed laws claim that they are unnecessary and will lead to frivolous claims, reduce innovation and stifle free speech. Those are gross exaggerations. The same critics have been making these claims about every previous attempt to rein in piracy, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that was called a draconian antipiracy measure at the time of its passage in 1998. As we all know, the DMCA did not kill the Internet, or even do any noticeable damage to freedom—or to pirates.

What have been damaged are industries susceptible to piracy—that is the unlicensed reproduction and/or sale of music, movies, books and other products that belong by law to the people who made them. For example, my analysis of statistics from the Radio Industry Association of America clearly reveals the decimation of the sound-recording industry since 1999. The cumulative sales losses, since the ascendancy of the music-sharing site Napster, amount to $70 billion (inflation adjusted) in the U.S. and about twice that amount for the entire world. In percentage terms, inflation-adjusted yearly sales are down more than 50% in the U.S. and the rest of the world. Any industry experiencing a decline of this magnitude would consider it a catastrophe. And it has been brought about by theft, not creative destruction from a superior product.

The OpEd is here.

Similarly, people such as Declan McCullagh make the argument that privacy demands are just a cover for squelching free speech. But keep this in mind: people are making money tracking you, selling advertising keywords to pirates, and even running ads on sites featuring pirated content. It's disingenuous to describe such activity as innocent free speech.


P.S.: See Scott Cleland's column about how Google led the fight against SOPA/PIPA. Google is masterful at skirting copyright and other IP laws as described in our book Search & Destroy: Why You Can't Trust Google Inc.

There is a great OpEd in today's Wall Street Journal by Daniel B. Botkin: Absolute Certainty Is Not Scientific.

As a student of the history of science, I can say with confidence that Mr. Botkin is right and the Science Establishment and its defenders are wrong. Most great scientific theories evolve over time amid passionate but honest debate. Today, we are confronted by people who have appointed themselves the enforcers of true science. These people demonize anyone who dares to challenge current science orthodoxy. For example, they call people who dispute or even just question man-made global warming "deniers"--a term most often associated with Holocaust denial.

One of the changes among scientists in this century is the increasing number who believe that one can have complete and certain knowledge. For example, Michael J. Mumma, a NASA senior scientist who has led teams searching for evidence of life on Mars, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, "Based on evidence, what we do have is, unequivocally, the conditions for the emergence of life were present on Mars—period, end of story."

Botkin twice calls on one of my heroes, Richard Feynman, to rebut this harmful attitude:

Reading Mr. Mumma's statement, I thought immediately of physicist Niels Bohr, a Nobel laureate, who said, "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." To which Richard Feynman, another famous physicist and Nobel laureate, quipped, "Nobody understands quantum mechanics."

and

...How about a little agnosticism in our scientific assertions—and even, as with Richard Feynman, a little sense of humor so that we can laugh at our errors and move on? We should all remember that Feynman also said, "If you think that science is certain—well that's just an error on your part."

My OpEd at the Daily Caller:

Google recently agreed to forfeit $500 million to avoid prosecution for knowingly accepting illegal advertisements from online Canadian pharmacies. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Google knew as early as 2003 that the pharmacies were promoting illegal importation of drugs, yet it continued to accept the ads and provide customer support to the advertisers through 2009.

However, this isn’t an isolated incident. Google has repeatedly been accused of violating privacy laws, facilitating copyright infringement and aiding online piracy. Google consistently demonstrates disregard for the rule of law — a disregard stemming from Google’s radical political beliefs.

Google’s radical ideology consists of five key ideas:

Information should be free: Google and its political allies want to turn the Internet into an “information commons.” To that end, they seek to weaken copyright, trademark and patent protections. This “what’s yours is mine” philosophy is used by Google to monetize others’ information and content without paying for it. For example, Google allows its customers to use others’ trademarks as search advertising keywords.

Access to information should be unfettered: Google aims to replace user privacy and data security with radical transparency and openness. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt wants us to believe that omnipresent surveillance is simply a modern fact of life: “If you’re online all the time, computers are generating a lot of information about you. This is not a Google decision, this is a societal decision.” What Schmidt doesn’t mention is that Google uses its free products and services to track and profile users. That’s why Google has earned the moniker “Big Brother Inc.”

Innovators don’t need permission: Google believes that if you are developing innovative solutions, you shouldn’t require others’ permission to use their property or violate their privacy. Put another way, innovators provide a service to society and should be exempt from laws that get in their way. For example, Google appointed itself to scan and digitize the world’s books without first obtaining permission from copyright holders.

Everything that’s technically possible is allowable: Google believes that if something is technically possible, it should be done, because inevitably it will be done. Therefore, the development and use of technology trumps all other values. This idea can be used to justify everything from tracking and profiling users against their wishes to cloning human beings.

Our information-based society should be run by engineers: Google believes that technology is too sophisticated and complex to be managed by non-experts. Therefore, the Internet should be run by elite engineers (many of whom work at Google). This idea places Google above the laws, rules, norms and standards of accountability that apply to everyone else.

Google’s radical ideology poses a number of dangers. Google is the dominant provider of Internet search service, handling about 80% of Internet searches worldwide. Google has the power to determine what information gets found and what gets lost in the crowd. Google claims that its search engine is “unbiased” but has admitted to using human raters, regularly adjusting its search algorithm and placing its own content at or near the top of search results. If Google manipulated search results in subtle ways for political purposes, would we even know it?

As the world’s biggest data-mining operation, with more than one billion users, Google knows more about influencing people than anyone in history. That may explain why Google’s dominance of search advertising is even more pronounced than its dominance of search. With this knowledge, Google has acquired unprecedented power to sway public opinion — should it choose to do so.

In fact, Google’s leaders have repeatedly said that they are not in business to make money but to “change the world.” As they stated in their 2004 IPO letter, “We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place.” Eric Schmidt is even more emphatic: “The goal of the company is not to monetize anything … The goal is to change the world — and monetization is a technique to do that.”

As the Internet’s lone superpower (consuming more electricity than Salt Lake City), Google has the wherewithal to influence elections, trade favors with government agencies and meddle in international disputes. Eric Schmidt publicly boasted that Google is on track to develop “truth predictor” software to keep politicians honest. Google’s free Political Campaign Toolkit promises to help candidates win elections. It all sounds non-partisan until you consider the evidence to the contrary. For example, Google removed Republican Senator Susan Collins’s AdWords ads countering television ads by Moveon.org based on a company policy that (as Brit Hume showed) Google only selectively enforces.

Google wants to change the world by destroying privacy, abolishing property rights and putting its engineers in charge of the Internet. With that attitude, it’s no surprise that Google felt justified hosting advertisements by pharmacies promoting the illegal importation of drugs. As the dominant provider of search and search advertising services, armed with its radical ideology, Google could cause far worse damage. It’s up to the rest of us to make Google obey the law, respect the rights of others and be more accountable.

Ira Brodsky is co-author with Scott Cleland of the new book Search & Destroy: Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc. Visit SearchAndDestroyBook.com.

My recent OpEd at American Thinker:

One of the few bright spots in the current economy is sales of smartphones, tablet computers, and e-readers. Led by three U.S. companies -- Apple, Google (Android), and Amazon -- the worldwide market for these gadgets is expected to reach $190 billion this year. Driving much of the growth is a rapidly expanding universe of "apps" that offer exciting new capabilities such as helping patients manage their diabetes and letting physicians pull up CT scans from any location.

Now the U.S. Food and Drug Administration wants to apply the brakes to this growth market. The FDA released draft guidelines for regulating mobile medical applications on July 19, 2011 and is giving the public ninety days to comment. If the FDA goes through with its plan, it could undermine the very things that make mobile medical apps so attractive to small developers: low entry cost and quick time-to-market.

The FDA portrays this attempt to expand its fiefdom as uncontroversial. The FDA's Dr. Jeffrey Shuren told MobiHealthNews.com, "These are the devices we have been regulating all along and just because they are on a mobile platform doesn't mean we should be regulating differently." But that's not quite true. While some of the first mobile apps merely emulate products already on the market, most deliver added functionality. The ultimate goal is to create something that didn't exist before -- to transform the mobile device into an Internet gateway for a body area network of health sensors.

Or as the FDA's Bakul Patel explains it: since standalone stethoscopes are already regulated, apps that turn iPhones into stethoscopes should also be regulated. But that should raise questions about whether FDA regulation of stethoscopes is even necessary. It's hard to conceive of someone being injured by a stethoscope. And surely FDA officials aren't better-qualified to evaluate stethoscopes than the medical professionals who use them day in and day out. Besides, if we don't think physicians are competent enough to purchase decent-quality stethoscopes, then why should we think that they are competent enough to use them properly?

The FDA knows how crucial the first regulations are to conquering new markets. In 1989, the FDA proposed to regulate PC-based medical applications, but the market took off so quickly and in so many directions that the effort had to be abandoned. So this time around, the FDA is trying to establish a regulatory regime for mobile medical apps earlier in the market's evolution.

Once regulations are established, they spread like weeds. The FDA downplays the proposed regulations as only affecting a tiny slice of the larger mobile health apps market. "We are starting off with the very small tip of the pyramid," said the FDA's Bakul Patel. The draft guidelines focus on mobile apps that work with already regulated medical devices, mobile apps that turn handheld gadgets into medical devices, and mobile apps that generate recommendations about a patient's diagnosis or treatment. But notice that the FDA has not ruled out regulating mobile apps for fitness, medical reference, or hospital billing further down the road.

The FDA hasn't identified a single case in which a patient has been harmed by a mobile medical app. Instead, the FDA is warning that small screen size, lower contrast ratio, uncontrolled ambient light, and use of the apps by ordinary consumers pose new risks. That may be true, but all products and users have limitations, so there are always going to be risks. The purpose of regulation should be to eliminate only clearly unacceptable risks. Because it's also true that one size does not fit all: the mobile platform's limitations may be acceptable to customers for whom mobility and low price are more important.

The FDA should seize the opportunity afforded by mobile medical apps to try a completely different approach. Instead of deciding which products live and which products die, the FDA should focus on testing and reviewing mobile medical apps. By running products by panels consisting of vendors, medical professionals, and consumers, the FDA could provide timely, valuable, and balanced feedback.

We've been hearing about how the U.S. has fallen behind Europe and Asia in key technologies for the past two decades, so it's gratifying to learn that we are leading the burgeoning smartphone, tablet, and e-reader markets. The worst thing the FDA could do now is slap mobile medical app developers with new fees and regulations.

Ira Brodsky is the author of The History & Future of Medical Technology.

The White House and the Media continue to misrepresent the deficit controversy. They say that we must raise the debt ceiling or very bad things will occur. But they have it backwards. Raising the debt ceiling at a time when we are spending way more than we can afford is irresponsible. It can only lead to even worse consequences down the road.

A family budget analogy is useful here. Imagine a family with a modest income goes on a spending spree using credit cards. The cards have all reached their spending limits. The family is able to pay the monthly interest on the cards and other living expenses. But the family wants to continue its spending spree. So it demands that the credit card companies increase the cards' spending limits. And not to worry, the family promises it will get its spending under control later.

There are two key questions here. The first is whether a family budget is a reasonable analogy to a government budget. The second is whether it is reasonable to trade an immediate increase in the debt limit for a promise of future spending reductions.

Some economists insist that a large federal budget deficit is not necessarily bad. In fact, my Economics 101 professor, the late Robert Eisner, was among the most vocal proponents of large federal budget deficits (though with some caveats). According to his theory, the analogy doesn't work because unlike an individual family the federal government can stimulate the nation's economy through targeted spending.

That certainly hasn't worked lately. (Has it ever?) While a federal government has more potential sources of future income than a family, it has fewer options for obtaining assistance should things go wrong. No family or government can continue to spend more than it can afford without eventually suffering the consequences. (Arguably, we already are suffering the consequences in the form of high unemployment and a complete absence of private sector growth.)

Raising the debt ceiling is like allowing an alcoholic just one more drink. Anyone can promise to change their ways mañana.

If we truly understand the dangers of a massive and growing federal deficit then we can only reach one conclusion. We must resist calls to raise the debt ceiling and start reducing our spending immediately.

An article in Today's Wall Street Journal describes how Google has been using customer reviews from other sites to beef up its Google Places service:

Google Inc. has made changes to the way its search engine displays information about local businesses, a move that follows the disclosure of a U.S. antitrust investigation of its business practices.

The company said it removed snippets of customer reviews that were taken from other Web firms for its Google "Places" service, which has millions of pages for local businesses. Google's practices have drawn fire from some of those Web companies, and is believed to be among the issues the Federal Trade Commission is investigating.

Since last year, TripAdvisor, Yelp and Citysearch—sites with local-business reviews generated by their visitors—have complained Google effectively stole their content and posted it on Google's own pages. Google Places competes with those sites and provides information on millions of restaurants, hotels and other businesses, including store hours, location and photos.

Following Thursday's change, Google Places showed a marked decline in the number of reviews listed for some businesses. For example, Keens Steakhouse in New York displayed 60 reviews Friday, compared with more than 3,000 last month.

While some rivals welcomed the change, they continued to support the antitrust investigation into Google and complained the company still gives preferential placement to Google Places over links to their sites in search results.

I don't know how to describe this as anything other than stealing. Note also the allegation that Google manipulates search results to favor Google Places. (That Google doctors what it claims to be "unbiased" search results was publicly admitted by a top Google executive quite some time ago.) You can read the rest here.

This is the third in a series of posts about Search & Destroy: Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc.


Steve Jobs said that "Don't Be Evil" is BS. But he either couldn't or wouldn't say why. Hope my Op-Ed at the American Thinker helps:

Google is once again demonstrating that it treats others in ways that it does not want to be treated. Google is requiring users of its latest social networking service, Google+, to have public profiles. Meanwhile, top Google executives are taking advantage of a hidden Google+ feature to enjoy greater privacy.

Google wants Google+ users to disclose the number and identities of their friends. But top Google executives are hiding the very same information. Technology writer Ed Bott learned how when he visited socialstatistics.com, a website that tracks thousands of Google+ users. [The site has since been modified.] Bott observed that four of the top ten users (ranked according to number of "followers") were Googlers. He also noticed something different about them: each displayed a "0" in the "friends" column. Exploring Google+'s user interface, Bott discovered what he describes as a "useful but hard-to-find privacy feature that is disabled by default." He found that clicking on an unlabeled icon opens a dialog box and unchecking one of the settings makes information about your friends private.

In theory, any Google+ user can hide the number and identities of their friends. But Google+'s designers went out of their way to discourage most users from doing this. As the world's biggest data-mining operation, Google knows more about user behavior than anyone else. Most users presume the default settings are best and won't try to change them. Still, other users might be curious, so Google hid the dialog box behind an unlabeled icon. Those users who do manage to find it would have to uncheck a box; Google knows that some users would never think to do that while others would worry about unintended consequences. In the end, only insiders and power users get privacy.

Unfortunately, this isn't an isolated case: Google routinely treats others in ways that Google does not want to be treated. Google advocates open systems -- particularly in markets Google does not control. But Google's search engine and ad auctions are closed systems. Google claims that it cares about users' privacy. But Google's previous social networking service, Google Buzz, outraged users by publicly disclosing their Gmail contacts. And Google's Street View cars eavesdropped on users' wireless networks. Google tells users they should accept the loss of privacy as a modern fact of life while Google zealously guards its search, ad auction, and infrastructure secrets.

How does Google get away with treating others in ways that Google does not want to be treated? Google's founders crafted a brilliant public relations strategy (pretending all the while that they don't engage in PR). They insist that Google isn't in business to make money but to make the world a better place. And they said, "You can make money without doing evil." These claims were used to convince people that Google is the world's most ethical company. And it worked: Google has gained the trust of one billion users.

To wit, Google gets away with violating the Golden Rule by claiming it has invented something better. By touting its "Don't Be Evil" motto, Google brushes aside a principle that has been universally recognized as the single best guide to ethical behavior for well over two millennia.

It's hard to argue with Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto; everyone agrees that companies should not be evil. However, as a guide to ethical behavior "Don't Be Evil" is seriously flawed. In fact, it may be the lowest business ethics standard ever devised. Most people think of evil as the worst extreme on the ethical continuum. Evil is what we fear most. When asked for an example of a truly evil person, most people will think of someone such as Adolph Hitler or Osama bin Laden. It goes without saying that businesses should not be evil.

Most unethical business practices fall short of evil. Lying and cheating are wrong, but few people would consider someone who makes false claims on a job application to be evil. By promising not to be evil, Google leaves room for infringing copyrights, falsely claiming that its search engine is unbiased, and misrepresenting the purpose of its free products and services.

"Don't Be Evil" is a clever slogan that skips right past the kinds of ethical decisions businesses must make every day. If Google's leaders agreed to being treated the way they treat others, then rest assured that they would be more respectful of others. The Golden Rule is still the best guide to proper behavior. It's time for Google to admit what ethical people have known since antiquity.

Ira Brodsky is co-author with Scott Cleland of the new book Search & Destroy: Why You Can't Trust Google Inc. Visit www.SearchAndDestroyBook.com.

This is the second in a series of posts about Search & Destroy: Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc.


I am amazed at how willing some people are to totally ditch their privacy for "more relevant ads." I'm willing to give up a little privacy for more relevant ads in specific areas. But forfeiting all privacy means forfeiting safety, individuality, and even free expression. And always receiving "more relevant ads" is like donning blinders.

I confess that during the 1990s I was leery of privacy activists. At that time the issue was whether individual websites should be allowed to recognize returning users and track how they used their sites. It struck me as counterproductive to prevent websites from leveraging personalization technology. Plus, privacy activists seemed to be calling for government intervention in a market offering consumers more and more choices.

However, things have changed. With retail and wholesale search, embedded YouTube videos, and Google Analytics—to name just a few—Google can track you almost everywhere you go on the Web. I don't mind being recognized by Amazon.com and being presented book recommendations. But I don't want to be tracked everywhere and at all times. Nor do I only want to see ads that reinforce my existing interests and likes. (Advertising is a great way to spur new interests.)

I've learned that privacy is important. Without privacy, you can’t be who you want, because you are forced to reveal everything. Without privacy, there’s little opportunity for independent thought or dissent, because your ideas are immediately subjected to public scrutiny. Without privacy, there can be no human dignity, because others can barge in on you whenever they like.

Here's the kicker: You cannot establish and maintain your personal identity without privacy. Your account numbers, user IDs, passwords, and phone numbers are your private property. Keeping that information confidential is not only legitimate, it’s necessary for your safety.

I also reject Eric Schmidt's creepy argument: “If you're online all the time, computers are generating a lot of information about you. This is not a Google decision, this is a societal decision.” The fact that a decision is a "societal decision" does not make it right.

From my Op-Ed today at The Daily Caller:

With data breaches and cyber attacks littering the news, Google’s mission, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” is proving increasingly dangerous. By purposely storing all of the world’s information in one place, putting everyone’s eggs in one basket, Google exposes Internet users, content producers and even governments to huge and unnecessary risks. The utopian vision behind Google’s mission — that all information (including private property) should be centralized in the hands of one unaccountable entity — can only lead to a series of disasters and ultimately tyranny.

Read the whole thing here.