Bells Want To Use DoubleClick Hearing As Bank Shot On Google

[David Farber <dfarber () cs cmu edu>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: September 29, 2007 1:14:09 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Bells Want To Use DoubleClick Hearing As Bank  
Shot On Google

Bells Want To Use DoubleClick Hearing As Bank Shot On Google

Submitted by Art Brodsky on September 25, 2007 - 11:13am.
<http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1199>
A Senate Subcommittee will hold a hearing Thursday on Google’s  
proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, and what the deal  
would mean for the online advertising industry. This is a complex  
transaction, with lots of issues of market competition and privacy to  
be worked out. But one witness isn’t coming to the hearing to fret  
about the ad market or the dangers to consumer privacy. He’s only  
coming to tarnish Google at the behest of other parties. Guess which  
ones?

This is one of those moments that shows how tactics work here,  
uncovering the underbelly of powerful forces in play. Call this the  
Bank Shot. The idea is not to hit a target directly on an issue of  
interest, but to hit it via a less direct route.

Here are the witnesses to testify before the Antitrust Subcommittee.  
David Drummond, a Google senior vp will be first. That makes sense.  
It’s his deal. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, will appear.  
Microsoft also tried to buy DoubleClick, got outbid by Google, and  
now claims that the deal will harm the online ad world. Microsoft has  
a direct interest in the deal, as it has started competing with  
Google across a variety of business fronts. Marc Rotenberg, exec.  
dir. of the Electronic Privacy Information Center will testify about  
the issues surrounding the storing and use of consumer information.  
That’s a legit issue.

Then there are two others. Thomas Lenard of the Progress and Freedom  
Foundation, a “free market” think tank, will testify. He has been  
interested in DoubleClick and related issues since publishing a book,  
“Privacy and the Commercial Use of Personal Information” in July, 2001.

And then there is the last, most curious witness, Scott Cleland of  
the Precursor Group. His interest in Google is recent, going back to  
last year and his interest in DoubleClick even more recent. That’s  
because he doesn’t really care about Google or its policies except  
for one aspect. Google opposes his main clients, the Bell companies,  
on Net Neutrality, spectrum auctions and a range of other issues.

Here the larger framework: Historians will note that when the Berlin  
Wall came down and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed,  
a generation of American policymakers and military officers lost  
their reason for existence. The enemy that had defined their  
existence for decades ceased to exist, and it would be a while until  
a new one was found.

The Bell companies are in a similar mode. Following the Jan. 1, 1984  
breakup of the old Bell System, the then-new Bell companies were in a  
state of war with the long-distance industry led by their former  
parent, AT&T, as well as MCI, Sprint and a batch of lesser foes. The  
conflict ranged from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to  
the hall of Congress, to state legislatures as the long-distance  
industry fought to have the Bells make conditions ripe for  
competition, and the Bells sought to prevent them while getting into  
long distance themselves. Then SBC, a Bell company, bought AT&T,  
Verizon, another Bell (plus GTE) company bought MCI, and the big game  
was over. But who would there be to fight?

For a while, they just thrashed around, but then as the fights over  
who should control the Internet started, one company gradually raised  
its Washington profile to oppose the Bell machine: Google. Google  
until relatively recently had little or no presence in Washington.  
But as the company became more prominent in Washington, to say  
nationally and globally, the Bell companies rejoiced. Now they had a  
new enemy, and a new talking point – the poor, downtrodden phone  
companies versus big, bad, freeloading Google.

Telephone company executives couldn’t wait to start throwing out  
Google’s name at every turn. They said Google was pushing Net  
Neutrality as a way of getting free or cut-rate telecommunications  
services. They said Google’s Net Neutrality policy would raise prices  
for consumers. Those are nonsense, of course, because Google pays  
millions of dollars in telecommunications charges.

When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was considering how  
to auction off prime spectrum, the Bell companies again brought  
Google front and center. It was rich Google that was trying to get  
cheap spectrum and Google that wanted advantages in the auctions, the  
telephone companies said. Never mind that a coalition of public  
interest groups, including Public Knowledge, was in the forefront of  
some of the proposals. Never mind that the wholesale issue would  
bolster innovation. Google once again and front and center as the  
target.

[snip]



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