Marketing Pilgrim

While this is an admittedly small sample size and may not be representative of antitrust lawyers on a more widespread basis, a poll taken at an American Bar Association event at Stanford University reveals that nearly 3/4 of the antitrust lawyers present didn’t feel that Google was hurting competition.

The event was a debate and polling before the debate had attendees of the debate set at 61% not feeling that Google has hurt competition.

Those on the other side of the debate? Before it got underway 19% felt that Google was hurting competition and that number lowered slightly to 17% following the exchange.

So what’s this prove? Well, nothing really. Since this group of lawyers is more likely to be from the Silicon Valley region there could be more bias toward protecting one of the biggest players not only in the region but the entire planet.

In yet another example of where the legal barriers that pop up are often more disruptive than technology itself, Facebook’s rollout of its Timeline service may be delayed until a court gives them the all clear.

paidContent reports

A federal judge refused late on Friday to grant a temporary restraining order to Timelines.com, a Chicago company that says Facebook’s timeline service may “eliminate” it. In return, Facebook has promised to limit access for now and to hold back on a full launch.

In refusing to grant the temporary restraining order, Judge Edmond Chang noted that Facebook has pledged not to broadly launch the feature before the parties appear in court again on Tuesday.

Google is hoping that this one gets caught up in the news cycle real fast and flushed down the proverbial news john. It’s not so much that the US Department of Justice is making Google pay $500 million for allowing advertising for online Canadian pharmacies to sell drugs illegally in the US. As with most things and Google, money is not the issue. They have plenty of that.

What does happen is that when people start to peel away the onion layers on this one the whole thing starts to stink real bad, real fast. Why? Well, it seems hard to believe that Google would be able to get away with what they did by just paying some cash to make it go away.

Groupon has an exciting new idea. They’re going to track you through your cell phone at all times so they can send you the most relevant deals exactly when you need them. Out to lunch on Main Street — get 50% off a sandwich at the deli on the corner. Buying tickets at the movies? Here’s a discount on popcorn. No matter where you are. No matter what you’re doing, Groupon is going to find you. And did I mention you don’t have to have have their mobile app running at the time?

Two congressmen, and possibly several thousand mobile users, want to know more. According to an article in Reuters, House Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus: Joe Barton from Texas and Edward Markey from Massachusetts have asked Groupon to clarify its data collection and privacy policies. Some of their curiosity stems from Groupon’s recently filed $750 million initial public offering. After that, it’s mostly sheer amazement that Groupon would be so cavalier about wholesale tracking.

It’s been almost two years since I warned of a potential scenario that involved the US government taking over Twitter.

I portrayed one scenario where things would escalate enough that the POTUS would have to take action….take over Twitter. Well, it appears the UK government is pondering something similar, in light of the riots in England.

According to TNW, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said in a statement:

“Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media.  Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

If part of a company’s game plan to defend against a perceived wrong doing against them involves firing off allegations, one would guess that those said allegations should be bulletproof, right?

Maybe Google’s SVP and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond should have done a little more homework before he accused some big names of playing patent pranks on the search company. Here’s the gist of his claim from the Google blog

But Android’s success has yielded something else: a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.

According to a published report in the Wall Street Journal, Google is getting some unwanted attention from the three lettered agency that may actually be worse than the IRS: the FTC.

The WSJ reports:

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is poised to serve Google Inc. with civil subpoenas, according to people familiar with the matter, signaling the start of a wide-ranging, formal antitrust investigation into whether the search giant has abused its dominance on the Web.

The five-member panel is preparing within days to send Google the formal demands for information, the people said. Other companies also are likely receive official requests for information about their dealings with Google at a later stage, the people said.

Representatives for both Google and the FTC declined to comment.