102. Brody Mullins, “Google Makes Most of Close Ties with White House,” Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2015, https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-makes-most-of-close-ties-to-white-house-1427242076.
103. Jim Rutenberg, “Data You Can Believe In: The Obama Campaign’s Digital Masterminds Cash In,” New York Times, June 20, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaigns-digital-masterminds-cash-in.html.
104. Rutenberg, “Data You Can Believe In.”
105. Lillian Cunningham, “Google’s Eric Schmidt Expounds on His Senate Testimony,” Washington Post, September 30, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/googles-eric-schmidt-expounds-on-his-senate-testimony/2011/09/30/gIQAPyVgCL_story.html.
106. “Google’s Revolving Door Explorer (US),” Google Transparency Project, April 15, 2016, http://www.googletransparencyproject.org/googles-revolving-door-explorer-us; Tess VandenDolder, “Is Google the New Revolving Door?” DC Inno, September 9, 2014, http://dcinno.streetwise.co/2014/09/09/is-google-the-new-revolving-door; “Revolving Door | OpenSecrets—Employer Search: Google Inc.,” OpenSecrets.org, February 23, 2017, https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/search_result.php?priv=Google+Inc; Yasha Levine, “The Revolving Door Between Google and the Department of Defense,” PandoDaily (blog), April 23, 2014, http://pando.com/2014/04/23/the-revolving-door-between-google-and-the-department-of-defense; Cecilia Kang and Juliet Eilperin, “Why Silicon Valley Is the New Revolving Door for Obama Staffers,” Washington Post, February 27, 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/as-obama-nears-close-of-his-tenure-commitment-to-silicon-valley-is-clear/2015/02/27/3bee8088-bc8e-11e4-bdfa-b8e8f594e6ee_story.html.
107. Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, How Google Works (New York: Grand Central, 2014), 255.
108. Deborah D’Souza, “Big Tech Spent Record Amounts on Lobbying Under Trump,” Investopedia, July 11, 2017, https://www.investopedia.com/tech/what-are-tech-giants-lobbying-trump-era; Brodkin, “Google and Facebook Lobbyists”; Natasha Lomas, “Google Among Top Lobbyists of Senior EC Officials,” TechCrunch (blog), June 24, 2015, http://social.techcrunch.com/2015/06/24/google-among-top-lobbyists-of-senior-ec-officials; “Google’s European Revolving Door,” Google Transparency Project, September 25, 2017, http://googletransparencyproject.org/articles/googles-european-revolving-door.
109. “Google Enlisted Obama Officials to Lobby States on Driverless Cars,” Google Transparency Project, March 29, 2018, https://googletransparencyproject.org/articles/google-enlisted-obama-officials-lobby-states-driverless-cars.
110. “Tech Companies Are Pushing Back Against Biometric Privacy Laws,” Bloomberg.com, July 20, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-20/tech-companies-are-pushing-back-against-biometric-privacy-laws; “Biometric Privacy Laws: Illinois and the Fight Against Intrusive Tech,” March 29, 2018, https://news.law.fordham.edu/jcfl/2018/03/20/biometric-privacy-laws-illinois-and-the-fight-against-intrusive-tech; April Glaser, “Facebook Is Using an ‘NRA Approach’ to Defend Its Creepy Facial Recognition Programs,” Slate, August 4, 2017, http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/08/04/facebook_is_fighting_biometric_facial_recognition_privacy_laws.html; Conor Dougherty, “Tech Companies Take Their Legislative Concerns to the States,” New York Times, May 27, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/28/tech nology/tech-companies-take-their-legislative-concerns-to-the-states.html.
111. Schmidt had joined the board of the New America Foundation in 1999. As of 2013, he was chairman of its Board of Directors, and his financial contribution remained in the top tier, matched by only three other donors: the US State Department, the Lumina Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The secondary level of contributors includes Google. See http://newamerica.net/about/funding. The foundation is a fulcrum in Washington policy discourse, and its board members constitute a who’s who of the policy establishment. See http://newamerica.net/about/board.
112. Tom Hamburger and Matea Gold, “Google, Once Disdainful of Lobbying, Now a Master of Washington Influence,” Washington Post, April 12, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-google-is-transforming-power-and-politicsgoogle-once-disdainful-of-lobbying-now-a-master-of-washington-influence/2014/04/12/51648b92-b4d3-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html.
113. For additional sources, see David Dayen, “Google’s Insidious Shadow Lobbying: How the Internet Giant Is Bankrolling Friendly Academics—and Skirting Federal Investigations,” Salon.com, November 24, 2015, https://www.salon.com/2015/11/24/googles_insidious_shadow_lobbying_how_the_internet_giant_is_bankrolling_friendly_academics_and_skirting_federal_investigations.
114. Nick Surgey, “The Googlization of the Far Right: Why Is Google Funding Grover Norquist, Heritage Action and ALEC?” PR Watch, November 27, 2013, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/11/12319/google-funding-grover-norquist-heritage-action-alec-and-more. PR Watch is a publication of the Center for Media and Democracy. I encourage the interested reader to access this article for a full list of Google’s antigovernment funding recipients and an analysis of their positions and research agendas.
115. Mike McIntire, “ALEC, a Tax-Exempt Group, Mixes Legislators and Lobbyists,” New York Times, April 21, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/us/alec-a-tax-exempt-group-mixes-legislators-and-lobbyists.html; Nick Surgey, “The Googlization of the Far Right: Why Is Google Funding Grover Norquist, Heritage Action and ALEC?” PR Watch, November 27, 2013, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/11/12319/google-funding-grover-norquist-heritage-action-alec-and-more; “What Is ALEC?—ALEC Exposed,” Center for Media and Democracy, February 22, 2017, http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/What_is_ALEC%3F; Katie Rucke, “Why Are Tech Companies Partnering with ALEC?” Mint Press News (blog), December 13, 2013, http://www.mintpressnews.com/tech-companies-partnering-alec/175074.
116. “2014 Fellows—Policy Fellowship—Google,” https://www.google.com/policy fellowship/2014fellows.html.
117. Brody Mullins and Jack Nicas, “Paying Professors: Inside Google’s Academic Influence Campaign,” Wall Street Journal, July 14, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/paying-professors-inside-googles-academic-influence-campaign-1499785286.
118. Kenneth P. Vogel, “Google Critic Ousted from Think Tank Funded by the Tech Giant,” New York Times, August 30, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-google-new-america.html; Hope Reese, “The Latest Google Controversy Shows How Corporate Funding Stifles Criticism,” Vox, September 5, 2017, https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/9/5/16254910/google-controversy-new-america-barry-lynn.
CHAPTER FIVE
1. “Google Management Discusses Q3 2011 Results—Earnings Call Transcript About Alphabet Inc. (GOOG),” Seeking Alpha, October 14, 2011, http://seekingalpha.com/article/299518-google-management-discusses-q3-2011-results-earnings-call-transcript (italics mine).
2. See Ken Auletta, Googled: The End of the World as We Know It (New York: Penguin, 2010).
3. Here are some of Edelman’s articles and works: Benjamin Edelman, “Bias in Search Results? Diagnosis and Response,” Indian Journal of Law and Technology 7 (2011): 16–32; Benjamin Edelman and Zhenyu Lai, “Design of Search Engine Services: Channel Interdependence in Search Engine Results” (working paper, Working Knowledge, Harvard Business School, March 9, 2015), Journal of Marketing Reseach 53, no. 6 (2016): 881–900; Benjamin Edelman, “Leveraging Market Power Through Tying and Bundling: Does Google Behave Anti-competitively?” (working paper, no. 14–112, Harvard, May 28, 2014), http://www.benedelman.org/publications/google-tying-2014-05-12.pdf; Benjamin Edelman et al., Exclusive Preferential Placement as Search Diversion: Evidence from Flight Search (Social Science Research Network, 2013); Benjamin Edelman, “Google Tying Google Plus and Many More,” Benedelman.org, January 12, 2012, http://www.benedelman.org/news/011212-1.html; Benjamin Edelman, “Hard-Coding Bias in Google ‘Algorithmic’ Search Results,” Benedelman.org, November 15, 2010, http://www.benedelman.org/hardcoding.
4. Ashkan Soltani, Andrea Peterson, and Barton Gellman, “NSA Uses Goog
le Cookies to Pinpoint Targets for Hacking,” Washington Post, December 10, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10/nsa-uses-google-cookies-to-pinpoint-targets-for-hacking.
5. Michael Luca et al., “Does Google Content Degrade Google Search? Experimental Evidence” (working paper, NOM Unit, Harvard Business School, August 2016), http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2667143.
6. Alistair Barr, “How Google Aims to Delve Deeper into Users’ Lives,” Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-aims-to-delve-deeper-into-users-lives-1432856623.
7. See Erick Schonfeld, “Schmidt: ‘Android Adoption Is About to Explode,’” TechCrunch (blog), October 15, 2009, http://social.techcrunch.com/2009/10/15/schmidt-android-adoption-is-about-to-explode.
8. Bill Gurley, “The Freight Train That Is Android,” Above the Crowd, March 25, 2011, http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/03/24/freight-train-that-is-android.
9. Steve Kovach, “Eric Schmidt: We’ll Have 2 Billion People Using Android Thanks to Cheap Phones,” Business Insider, April 16, 2013, http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-on-global-android-growth-2013-4 (italics mine); Ina Fried, “Eric Schmidt on the Future of Android, Motorola, Cars and Humanity (Video),” AllThingsD (blog), May 8, 2013, http://allthingsd.com/20130508/eric-schmidt-on-the-future-of-android-motorola-cars-and-humanity-video.
10. See Ameet Sachdev, “Skyhook Sues Google After Motorola Stops Using Its Location-Based Software,” Chicago Tribune, August 19, 2011, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-08-19/business/ct-biz-0819-chicago-law-20110819_1_google-s-android-google-risks-google-spokesperson. See also the May 2011 in-depth analysis of more than 750 pages of unsealed court documents: Nilay Patel, “How Google Controls Android: Digging Deep into the Skyhook Filings,” Verge, May 12, 2011, http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-lawsuit-motorola-samsung.
11. “Complaint of Disconnect, Inc.—Regarding Google’s Infringement of Article 102 TFEU Through Bundling into the Android Platform and the Related Exclusion of Competing Privacy and Security Technology, No. COMP/40099,” June 2015, https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2109044/disconnect-google-antitrust-complaint.pdf.
12. Among other noteworthy studies, a 2015 study by Harvard researcher Jinyan Zang tested 110 of the most popular free apps in both Android (Google) and iOS (Apple) environments. Researchers found that 73 percent of Android apps compared to 16 percent of iOS apps share personally identifying information (PII) with third parties. The researchers also found that many mobile apps share sensitive user information with third parties “and that they do not need visible permission requests to access the data” (italics mine). See Jinyan Zang et al., “Who Knows What About Me? A Survey of Behind the Scenes Personal Data Sharing to Third Parties by Mobile Apps,” Journal of Technology Science, October 30, 2015, http://techscience.org/a/2015103001.
Another detailed study, by Luigi Vigneri and his colleagues at EURECOM in 2015, looked closely at the 5,000 newest and most popular applications in the Google Play store. Researchers found that 500 of these apps connect to more than 500 distinct URLs, and 25 connect to more than 1,000 URLs. Multiple URLs can connect to the same “domain.” So the researchers also examined the domains that were most often the source of these connections. Nine of the top twenty domains behind these hidden connections are web services run by Google. Of the remaining eleven, three are owned or affiliated with Google. The other eight are Google competitors in behavioral futures markets, including Facebook, Samsung, and Scorecard Research, a data broker that sells surplus behavior to its customers.
The researchers then took another valuable step. They characterized each of the URLs visited by these apps as either “ad-related” or “user-tracking related” and found that 66 percent of the apps contact an average of 40 ad-related URLs, although in some cases it’s more than 1,000. Of the five top domains represented by these URLs, three belong to Google. When it comes to tracking, the data suggest that the competition for behavioral surplus is even more contested. Among the apps in the study, 73 percent did not connect to tracking sites, but 16 percent connected to 100 or more tracking sites. Google remains the dominant force here, with 44 percent of the tracker-related domains, followed by 32 percent operated by AT Internet, a privately held “digital intelligence” firm that specializes in “behavior analysis.” Four of the ten most-intensive tracking apps in Google Play were also awarded Google’s “Top Developer Badge.” See Luigi Vigneri et al., “Taming the Android AppStore: Lightweight Characterization of Android Applications,” ArXiv:1504.06093 [Computer Science], April 23, 2015, http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.06093.
A team of researchers from the University of Washington led by Adam Lerner and Anna Simpson studied the growth of web trackers from 1996 to 2016. Not surprisingly from our point of view, web tracking increased in tandem with the rise and institutionalization of surveillance capitalism, as did third-party connections. The researchers note that although earlier trackers recorded routine data oriented toward product stability, the more recent rise in trackers is of those that capture and analyze personal information. In 2000 only about 5 percent of sites contacted at least five third parties, but by 2016, 40 percent of sites sent data to third parties. Among trackers with the “most power to capture profiles of user behavior across many sites,” google-analytics.com is cited as a “remarkable outlier,” gathering more data from more sites than any other entity does. The researchers conclude that despite the privacy concerns that have received so much attention in recent years, tracking has substantially expanded in “scope and complexity” on a clear upward trend line. In other words, there is more tracking now than at any time since the launch of the internet, even as citizens and governments try to protect individual privacy. See Adam Lerner et al., “Internet Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Trackers: An Archeological Study of Web Tracking from 1996–2016,” in Proceedings of the Workshop on End-to-End, Sense-and-Respond Systems, Applications, and Services: (EESR ’05), June 5, 2005, Seattle (Berkeley, CA: USENIX Association, 2005), http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id=1072530.
13. Ibrahim Altaweel, Nathan Good, and Chris Jay Hoofnagle, “Web Privacy Census” (SSRN scholarly paper, Social Science Research Network, December 15, 2015), https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2703814.
14. Timothy Libert, “Exposing the Invisible Web: An Analysis of Third-Party HTTP Requests on 1 Million Websites,” International Journal of Communication 9 (October 28, 2015): 18.
15. Altaweel, Good, and Hoofnagle, “Web Privacy Census.”
16. Mengwei Xu et al., “AppHolmes: Detecting and Characterizing App Collusion Among Third-Party Android Markets,” Association for Computing Machinery, 2017, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/appholmes-detecting-characterizing-app-collusion-among-third-party-android-markets.
17. See “Press | Yale Privacy Lab,” https://privacylab.yale.edu/press.html; and “Exodus Privacy,” Exodus-Privacy, https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/. See also Yael Grauer, “Staggering Variety of Clandestine Trackers Found In Popular Android Apps,” Intercept, November 24, 2017, https://theintercept.com/2017/11/24/staggering-variety-of-clandestine-trackers-found-in-popular-android-apps/.
18. “Complaint of Disconnect, Inc.,” 2.
19. “Complaint of Disconnect, Inc.,” 3.
20. Vigneri et al., “Taming the Android AppStore”; “Antitrust/Cartel Cases—40099 Google Android,” European Union Commission on Competition, April 15, 2015, http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.cfm?proc_code=1_40099.
21. “European Commission—Press Release—Antitrust: Commission Sends Statement of Objections to Google on Android Operating System and Applications,” European Commission, April 20, 2016, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1492_en.htm.
22. “Complaint of Disconnect, Inc.,” 40.
23. Marc Rotenberg, phone interview with author, June 2014.
24. Jennifer Howard, “Publishers Settle Long-Running Lawsuit Over Google’s Book-Scanning Project
,” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 4, 2012, https://chronicle.com/article/Publishers-Settle-Long-Running/134854; “Google Books Settlement and Privacy,” EPIC.org, October 30, 2016, https://epic.org/privacy/googlebooks; Juan Carlos Perez, “Google Books Settlement Proposal Rejected,” PCWorld, March 22, 2011, http://www.pcworld.com/article/222882/article.html; Eliot Van Buskirk, “Justice Dept. to Google Books: Close, but No Cigar,” Wired, February 5, 2010, http://www.wired.com/2010/02/justice-dept-to-google-books-close-but-no-cigar; Miguel Helft, “Opposition to Google Books Settlement Jells,” New York Times—Bits Blog, April 17, 2009, https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/opposition-to-google-books-settlement; Brandon Butler, “The Google Books Settlement: Who Is Filing and What Are They Saying?” Association of Research Libraries 28 (2009): 9; Ian Chant, “Authors Guild Appeals Dismissal of Google Books Lawsuit,” Library Journal, April 16, 2014, http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2014/04/litigation/authors-guild-appeals-dismissal-of-google-books-lawsuit.
25. “Investigations of Google Street View,” EPIC.org, 2014, https://epic.org/privacy/streetview; David Kravets, “An Intentional Mistake: The Anatomy of Google’s Wi-Fi Sniffing Debacle,” Wired, May 2, 2012, https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation; Clint Boulton, “Google WiFi Privacy Breach Challenged by 38 States,” eWeek, July 21, 2010, http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Search-Engines/Google-WiFi-Privacy-Breach-Challenged-by-38-States-196191; Alastair Jamieson, “Google Will Carry On with Camera Cars Despite Privacy Complaints Over Street Views,” Telegraph, April 9, 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/5130068/Google-will-carry-on-with-camera-cars-despite-privacy-complaints-over-street-views.html; Gareth Corfield, “‘At Least I Can Walk Away with My Dignity’—Streetmap Founder After Google Lawsuit Loss,” Register, February 20, 2017, https://www.the register.co.uk/2017/02/20/streetmap_founder_kate_sutton_google_lawsuit.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism Page 71
