October 12, 2009

Former Genentech CEO Levinson Quits Google Board

Arthur Levinson, former CEO of Genentech, has resigned Google's Board of Directors. Levinson had been on the board for five years.

"Working with Eric, Larry, Sergey and the whole Google team has been a remarkable experience for me. I greatly admire what they've built and have no doubt that Google has a terrific future," said Levinson.

Levinson is also on the Board of Directors at Apple. The FTC has been Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently quit Apple's Board.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 10, 2009

Wake Up! - The FTC is screwing with bloggers

If you are a blogger in the US your life is about to change big-time.

You have just entered the Twilight Zone...

New FTC guidelines (read full version) described in the official press release state:

1 - "the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service."

and

2 - the revised Guides reflect Commission case law and clearly state that both advertisers and endorsers may be liable for false or unsubstantiated claims made in an endorsement - or for failure to disclose material connections between the advertiser and endorsers. The revised Guides also make it clear that celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media."

My reading of this is very disturbing.

Here is a possible scenario:

You - a "social media" "celebrity" "blogger" (this is anyone who has more than a few followers on Twitter or some number of subscribers to their blog RSS feed) reviews a book, product, or service - making it an "endorsement"
You got a copy of the book to review, or got a free trial of the product, or a free trial of the service
You did not mention the freebie in your blog post
If someone does not like your blog posting you can be sued

To try to regulate bloggers as if they were professional journalists or compensated endorsements is asinine (incidentally - these guidelines do not apply to professional journalists!) The FTC is trying a land-grab into Internet regulation so they can extend their bureaucratic tentacles and justify their continued existence and funding. All of this is being done under the slogan of their official tagline "Protecting America's Consumers". This of course begs the questions - "from whom?"

This is a screwy world we live in, but the whole premise of blogging on the Internet is predicated on the notion that anyone can have frank and open discussions about any topic of their choosing. Most bloggers do not get paid and do not make any money directly or indirectly from their blogging efforts. They try to build their reputation and disseminate information that their followers may find useful. They never claim to be "objective" and often hold very strong, peculiar, and very personal opinions.

It has always been "buyer beware" on the Internet. I don't think anyone needs to be reminded that we should carefully consider the source and reputation of any information that we encounter online. We certainly don't need a chilling effect on the whole online conversation from a huge government agency.

It is ironic that this is happening under the direction of a man who was elected with the strong support of the Internet community and specifically active social media leaders. Unfortunately typical liberal-leaning tendencies are also to regulate people's lives via the government in order to protect them against unscrupulous big-business practices.

Don't get me wrong - frankly I don't care if the assault on individual liberties comes from the left or right (the four FTC commissioners who voted unanimously for the new guideline were all appointed by Bush). But I do care when big brother injects themselves into normal Internet discourse this heavy-handedly.

Fight this unconstitutional over-reach - these are simply regulations from unelected bureaucrats within the executive branch.

Let's make our voices heard and protect the First Amendment and our ability to have unfettered discourse without fear of lawsuits online.

BTW - no one paid me to "endorse" this position on the new FTC regulations - I guess that my butt is now legally covered (at least for this blog post).

Posted by Tim Ash at 7:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

September 25, 2009

Google Books Settlement: Back to the Drawing Board

Yesterday, a federal judge delayed the October 7 hearing for the Google Books Settlement. The ruling was in favor of a motion by Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. Google didn't oppose it.

Judge Denny Chin said there wasn't a point in holding the hearing when the parties involved are negotiating to change it. (Click here to read about the original settlement.)

The negotiations come in light of opposition from a wide range of groups. The Department of Justice also raised opposition, primarily in the form of antitrust concerns.

Instead of a hearing on October 7, the authors guild and Google will meet with the judge to determine how to resolve the case, which has been going on for four years, can be solved as quickly as possible.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 26, 2009

Amazon Pulls the Plug on NC Associates while Google and Apple Enjoy Sweet State Tax Deals

This morning, Amazon Associates in North Carolina are awakening to some bitter news. As of today, their accounts are officially closed. This is anticipation - yes, anticipation, not the actual passage - of a state budget that includes a provision requiring companies with affiliate programs to pay an internet sales tax.

Just a week ago, Amazon sent a warning to NC affiliates that the accounts would be closed if the bill was passed.

The reasoning behind the provision is that affiliates are considered employees and therefore establish a physical presence in NC, which puts them in the "pay an internet sales tax" column.

But oh, if that was really the case. The General Assembly in NC has negotiated tax deals with big companies to lure them to the state. A few years back, Google was the recipient of such a tax deal when they decided to build a new data center in the western part of the state. Apple recently followed suit with a similar deal from the state. So, I guess those commissions on affiliate sales of 99 cent iTunes songs are safe, since Apple will soon have a physical location.

Since I live in North Carolina, I've been privy to efforts to stop the NC affiliate tax. I've watched people of varying political persuasions petition the General Assembly to stop the tax provision.

I've also seen comments on local sites where citizens say that companies with affiliates should pay taxes because other companies and citizens pay taxes. But that thinking is misguided. Affiliates are required to pay taxes on their earnings. The state of North Carolina essentially wants to raise taxes on affiliate sales with this new provision.

Of course, North Carolina politicians are really just shooting themselves in the foot. Many companies will follow Amazon's lead and simply stop their affiliate programs. Thousands of North Carolinians will lose their incomes and will provide less tax income to the state.

There's also a separate provision to tax downloaded music, books, and software, which affects all online businesses involved in those niches. I wonder if Apple's tax deal exempts them from that?

State politicians North Carolina has until July 1 to pass a state budget, and right now it looks like the affiliate tax will very much be included.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

February 6, 2009

Veoh Gets Another Victory in Copyright Case Brought by Universal

Online video site Veoh is enjoying yet another victory in a copyright suit brought against them by Universal Music Group. The judge dismissed Universal's attempt to include investors as part of the lawsuit.

Last month, the judge threw out Universal's argument that Veoh didn't have DMCA protection because it changed the format of videos and made them into smaller bits than the original video.

Last year, a judge in a different case completely threw out an entire case against Veoh, brought by an adult entertainment group.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 9, 2009

Yelp User Being Sued for Negative Review

A new lawsuit brought by a San Francisco chiropractor Steven Biegel is raising a very good question about online reviews. The chiropractor was none too pleased to find a negative review about his practice on Yelp.

The review was written Christopher Norberg, who has a conflict with the chiropractor over a billing issue. His review said that Biegel was dishonest.

Biegel's attorney is calling it libel, thus the lawsuit. Today, the two sides are undergoing court-ordered mediation. If it's not resolved, the suit will go to court March 2.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 5, 2009

China to Crack Down on Search Engines

Bloomberg is reporting that China plans to crack down on search engines, among other sites they deem harmful. This certainly wouldn't be the first time.

The reason this time is concerns over pornography. Of course, search engines don't host pornography on their sites, they simply provide links to searchers. If China feels it has a pornography problem, the origination of that problem begins with the searcher, not the engine.

Web sites and search engines that ignore their new found regulations will face penalties and possible closure.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

December 30, 2008

Lawrence Lessig Calls for the Demolition of the FCC

Just weeks before the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States, Lawrence Lessig has taken to the pages of Newsweek to call for the demolition of the FCC. His reasoning is that the FCC curries favor for monopolies which keeps big business and big beaurocracies in power.

Lessig wants the FCC replaced by a government regulation agency he dubs the iEPA, the Innovation Environment Protection Agency. The agency would be established by Congress and would keep a check on monopolies and the government in order to spur and protect innovation.

While Lessig makes some good points about the use of patents and copyrights, trading one government agency for another doesn't seem like a plausible solution.

Lessig's primary goal is the desire of many Americans - to rid government of corruption in order to create a level playing field for innovation, technology and business. His idea with the iEPA is that no one in the agency would have ties to the industry. But how do you find qualified individuals without ties?

Furthermore, the current FCC is already enabling some of the goals that Lessig desires, such as open spectrum. This year's spectrum auction was won by Verizon but requires, due to a big enough bid by Google, to keep the spectrum open.

If Lessig truly wanted to create change, he could have probably had the job of FCC chairman. He's been friends with the President-elect since they taught together at the University of Chicago.

Whatever the reality behind Lessig's piece, the man is a curiosity indeed. His keynote speech at SES Chicago was appropriately academic, demonstrating the obvious need for archaic federal regulations to be updated for the YouTube hybrid generation.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 3, 2008

Senator Kohl Wants Oversight of Google-Yahoo Deal

Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) is okay with the Google-Yahoo deal, but he wants the DOJ to keep a close eye on the implementation. In a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett, Kohl, Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust urges:

Recognizing the nascent and fast-changing nature of this marketplace, we encourage the Department to continue to monitor the state of competition in this industry, whatever the outcome of its current investigation. If, over time, you determine that Google is gaining a dominant market position as a result of the Google-Yahoo agreement, then we would encourage the Justice Department to intervene to protect competition. Even should you conclude at present that this deal is not contrary to antitrust law, the Department must be sure that this deal never in the future crosses the line into an unacceptable, anti-competitive collaboration among competitors which will harm consumers and advertisers.

Kohl also acknowledged both the fears of advertisers and the assurances of Yahoo and Google. I think it's prudent to let the deal go through, but to watch as the program unfolds to see if anti-competitiveness occurs.

What do you think?

h/t Reuters

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 22, 2008

To Fear or Not to Fear: That is the Question (About the Google-Yahoo Ad Deal)

As October approaches, and Google prepares to implement its advertising deal with Yahoo, more and more commentary is flowing about the pros and cons of the deal.

The New York Times is saying there's nothing to worry about. But their argument is mostly full of talking points released by Google itself last week. (Their talking points were not bad, mind you.)

Meanwhile, TechCrunch is so afraid of the deal, I'm thinking the makers of Xanax must be making a huge profit off of their anxiety alone.

Fears of price-setting do seem to be misunderstood, and the timing might only fuel those fears. Advertisers are flocking to the web in large numbers. In an unstable economy, they do so even more because search advertising is still a great deal over some traditional forms of advertising. With demand and competition higher, prices could increase. So the timing of this deal may affect how people view the prices, even though those traditional forms of advertising are a form of competition.

Still, people want competition in search.

Personally, when it comes to monopolies, I think of Microsoft (not for their search, of course). They've had so much of the operating system market for a long time. But in recent years, Apple has come along to snag some of that market share away.

This had nothing to do with regulation, but instead innovation. That innovation is based on how people want to work and what they want to do with their computers. There are other operating systems, but there are reasons why they don't appeal to the masses. It's the same in the search industry.

There's a reason Google has so much of the market share. It's because their search and Adwords program are what people want. In the future, I suspect the tides will shift. After all, how many times do you really find what you're looking for on the first search? And how many times have we heard complaints about Adwords?

But no one else has anything better - at the moment. However, perhaps letting Google dominate will be the very thing that drives innovation.

There's enough to dislike about Google to desire something better. And some genius, perhaps in a dorm room or working passionately late nights on a project after work, will come up with it.

But preventing a Google-Yahoo deal won't make that happen any sooner. Regulation in this matter will not spur innovation. Regulation will not keep prices down. Google already has too much of a market share, and hardly anyone views Yahoo as a real competitor anyway.

Oddly enough, if Yahoo were to ever become a stronger competitor, it could result largely from the increase in income generated by this deal. More revenue would provide more money to fund research into search. This, of course, can only be facilitated by a good business model and the right focus at Yahoo. And for this, we can only hope that Carl Icahn continues to give Yahoo a much needed kick in the butt.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 11, 2008

Yahoo and Google to Launch New Privacy and Ad Capping Features

Yahoo has announced that it will be offering an opt-out function for customized advertising to searchers by the end of the month.

The announcement comes as Yahoo has responded to a Congressional letter seeking information about data collecting and online advertising practices. You can read Yahoo's full response here.

Google has also responded to the letter with features expected to be rolled out in the future. One feature is ad capping, which allows advertisers to limit the number of times a user sees a targeted ad. Ad capping is a DoubleClick feature that Google will be integrating to their Content Network. They say this will benefit users, since they won't be seeing the same ad over and over again. You can read the full context of Google's response here (pdf).

Microsoft is still working on their response, and it will be largely based on Mike Hintze's testimony before congress last month.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 22, 2008

Google Sued for Ad Fraud; Another Class Action Settlement?

Today Google was slapped with a an advertising fraud lawsuit that will be fascinating – and important – for AdWords advertisers to watch.

The lawsuit, which seeks class action status, was filed by the firm of Kabateck Brown Kellner, on behalf of David Almeida, a Massachusetts-based private investigator. The lawsuit claims that Google defrauds advertisers by obscuring the fact that new AdWords campaigns are set by default to display ads on both Google's search results pages (and like pages served by partners like AOL) and pages owned by site publishers who display AdWords ads via Google's Adsense programs.

Readers of my weekly SEW Content Advertising column are familiar with this phenomenon, and my suggested best practice of creating separate search and content campaigns.

At the risk of making life harder for my friends at Google, I need to point out that the suit seems to get one important fact wrong. Reports today in CNET, Yahoo! Finance, Wired and other outlets imply that advertisers are presented with the ability to “opt out” of displaying ads on the content network during campaign creation. Here's the way Yahoo puts it:

“During this process, users encounter two adjacent boxes. Into the first, customers enter the amount they wish to pay per "click" of an ad displayed on Google.com. The second box is marked "optional." Into this box, a user can enter the amount they would be willing to pay per "click" of an ad appearing on a third party web page. But leaving the box blank does not prevent ads from appearing on third-party sites.”

The truth is, advertisers don't see this option during campaign creation. The only way for them to opt out of displaying ads on the content network is for advertisers to explicitly edit the settings of their campaign after creating it, and un-check the box labeled “Content Network” – which is checked by default. Some would reason this makes Google even more exposed to fraud charges.

Another irony: some of the reporting claims the content network is inherently flawed in some way. Here's how Yahoo! puts it:

“Ads on third-party sites are widely-acknowledged to be far less effective (and therefore less valuable to the advertiser) than ads on Google.com.”

Readers of my column know that the content network is not “less effective;” savvy advertisers realize that great, profitable results can be obtained by advertising on content sites. The rules and best practices for creating effective content campaigns are, however, much different than for search campaigns. To Google's credit, they've been trying to make these differences more clear.

I'll dig into this subject more deeply in the next installment of my column. Meanwhile, my predictions, no matter which way the lawsuit is decided:

1. Google will finally make opting out of the content network much more straightforward, with clear instructions during campaign creation.

2. Google's advertiser education efforts, via their tutorials and help files, will much more explicitly teach the differences search and content ad campaign best practices.

Posted by David Szetela at 7:53 PM | Permalink

April 7, 2008

European Group Wants to Cut Search Engine Data Storage

Almost a month after the EU approved Google's DoubleClick acquisition, officials from 27 EU nations have unanimously adopted a proposal that could force search engines to reduce the amount of time they store personal information. The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party met for 2 days in Brussels last week and agreed that six months should be the maximum amount of time data is stored.

Last year Google cut its data storage to 18 months to comply with EU rules. Microsoft and Yahoo followed suit by reducing their storage to 18 and 13 months respectively.

Experts think this could have implications for online advertising. The booming industry is expected to see tremendous growth in the coming years, but relies heavily on personal data to target ads.

In the U.S., efforts have been made by various state officials to limit the way search engines collect information but to largely no avail. Most recently, state officials in New York and Connecticut introduced bills to thwart data collection.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:50 AM | Permalink

September 17, 2007

Cybersquatting defined for search marketers

Intellectual property and ecommerce attorney David Adler discusses the legal definition of cybersquatting, and the legal remedies for search marketers.

Alder explains that cybersquatting can fall into a trademark infringement issue when a competitor purchases a domain that includes the trademark in domain, or even just similar enough to be confusing to the intended audience (whereas people will mistake the domain to be from the trademark owner).

Much cybersquatting revolves around what Adler explains as a "bad faith" intent. Evidence of bad faith includes the following:

1. Registration of the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that you have engaged in a pattern of such conduct;

2. Registration of the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or…

3. Use of a domain name intentionally to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to a web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of a web site or location or of a product or service on a web site or location.

Some unscrupulous search spammers have attempted to subvert the search engine's own guidelines against using competitor trademarks in their search ads copy, by instead including it in the domain, appearing right below.

Posted by Grant Crowell at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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