Mar 21 2008
The EU’s odd priorities
Today's column:
EU scoring Micropoints? KARLIN LILLINGTON Fri, Mar 21, 2008 NET RESULTS:I'VE ALWAYS believed that Microsoft has more or less got what it had coming to it in terms of legal challenges. Go through the evidence from the US anti-trust trial for example, and the judge's findings of fact, and you can see that few would have nominated the company for the Miss Congeniality award. The EU's various cases also have had some merit - at least, way back when it all started. Indeed, many felt that the EU was following through with some proper financial "remedies" after the US huffed and puffed and then, well, merely smacked the company's wrist. But in light of the extraordinary fact that the same EU just okayed search giant Google's acquisition of online advertising monolith DoubleClick, competition commissioner Neelie Kroes's latest fine for Microsoft - a hefty €899 million - is beginning to look like an ultimately meaningless EU vendetta against the company. Does the European Commission honestly think that bundling a browser is more harmful to EU citizens than permitting unprecedented consolidation and mining of personal information about practically every move you make on the web? And why is it okay for Apple to give me its Safari browser when I purchase a Mac in Europe, but getting Internet Explorer (IE) bundled with Windows is a shocking limitation of consumer choice? Yes, I know there was lots more in the EU case, which centred on whether Microsoft had complied with an earlier order to unbundle IE and also open up some Windows code to expand competition (Kroes determined Microsoft hadn't, hence the fine). And I also know from various reports that the fine, large as it is, amounts to about two weeks' operating profit for Microsoft. Whoop-de-do. But many observers feel that the EU is chasing after Microsoft on points that might have made sense a decade ago, but are increasingly nonsensical. The success of open-source operating system Linux has long since demonstrated that Microsoft has some aggressive competition out there and that it can come from the most unexpected places. Maybe opening up that Windows code will change the computing world, but somehow, I think not. And Microsoft has already been releasing code into the open-source space anyway and built up a lively community around this initiative. In that respect, the company has done a lot of rethinking. The cynical might say they've only done this to get off the commission's anti-trust hook, but the company surely isn't that blinkered. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are nothing if not shrewd, and like their competitors Sun and IBM, they have had to take stock of the upheavals in computing, technology and business over the past decade. The growth of the internet, the rise of open-source development, the expansion of social networking - all have forced these companies to remake themselves in different ways, to become more open, to let go of the closed platform. And, as Michael Arrington of tech blog TechCrunch wrote last month, in a post entitled 'Microsoft: the EU's ATM Machine': "Google, Apple and Mozilla, among others (including Germany's SAP), seem perfectly able to compete against Microsoft without crying for help every time users decline to use their products." Ironically, days after fining Microsoft, the commission was busy approving Google's $3.1 billion takeover of DoubleClick for the European market, stating it didn't feel competition would be hindered or EU citizens adversely affected. Yet privacy advocates and Google competitors have been expressing concerns about this merger for ages. DoubleClick drops a tiny program called a cookie onto computers, which then sends back information to DoubleClick on what websites an internet user is visiting, causing "relevant" ads to show on some of those sites. It is almost impossible to browse the web and avoid DoubleClick cookies. Flushing them out of one's browser cache like so many marine parasites in the bilgewater has become the norm for anyone not wishing to be on a kind of web activity CCTV. Given that Google is used by nearly all of us, and that the company stores all our searches for 18 months, and can now link those searches to DoubleClick's knowledge about what we do, the company has unprecedented scope to peer into the online activity of individuals. On the competition side, DoubleClick and Google competitors argued the combination could also make ads served up by Google's AdSense program more attractive than competitors'. Google already controls 40 per cent of the online advertising market. Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said this of the approved merger: "By failing to impose safeguards, EC regulators have helped strengthen a growing digital colossus that will now be in the dominant position to shape much of the global future of the internet and other online media." But thanks to our diligent commission, at least I won't be forced to look at that future on an Internet Explorer browser. © 2008 The Irish Times
4 responses so far
Hey Karlin.. Your explaination of what cookies do is misleading and sensationalist. They do not “sends back information to DoubleClick on what websites an internet user is visiting” or anything like it. Cookies are NOT the cause for concern- the issue is (as you intimate at) that google, through various sources (search, analytics, doubleclick, adsense) have a good deal more information on all of us that perhaps we would be comfortable with if we actually knew (although at least they’re not as bad as facebook).
You’re right, though, MS are probably being given exceptional treatment but then so did Al Capone being given long sentences for tax offences. As with all kinds of stuff (Finglas?) at some point folks who simply refuse to be good neighbours should be reminded what the point is.
Completely agree with the reticence re G, tho, a world of G vs (MS+Y) is one where I’ll be watching my back just a little bit more (hey maybe it’ll be a boost to independents?).
It is simply fact, not misleading and sensationalist. Any basic spyware program removes DoubleClick cookies precisely because they are able to gather info on you wherever you go, to serve up ads targeted at you based on your past surfing habits (tracked by the cookie). From spywarinfo.com:
* Cookies are text files stored on your computer that web sites use to keep track of information their site requires. This can be as simple as a placeholder that indicates for you what you have already seen on that page (usually by changing the text color) or remembers your preferences. These cookies have no contact with anyone since the info they contain is meant solely for your benefit.
However, some companies use those cookies to track where you have been and what you have done. The difference depends on whether the cookie is first party or a third party cookie. Third party cookies are set not by the web site you are viewing, but rather by a site located elsewhere. This is the case with most advertising banners. Of course, there are also companies that outright abuse the technology in order to track web surfers all over the internet.
One such company is advertising giant DoubleClick. Cookies, by design, are meant to be accessible only by the site that sets them. This is to keep one web site from reading the cookies set while a person is on another site. DoubleClick exploits a loophole by running ad banners from its own servers, and using those servers to set and read cookies.
DoubleClick has ads on thousands of web sites and can read any cookie set by any of them. In this manner, DoubleClick uses these cookies to track web surfers from one web site to the next the same way a rancher brands his cattle and tracks their movement across on the plains. *
This capability coupled with Google’s search info and ad program is what worries privacy advocates.
LA Times:
* Google Inc.’s purchase of DoubleClick Inc. would create the world’s single largest repository of details about people’s behavior online, an unnerving prospect for some privacy experts… *
CNET:
*There is growing unease among consumer privacy advocates over Google’s proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick…
“This is bringing together two very large advertising networks. To the extent that information is being centralized raises concerns that it could become a target” for hackers or overzealous government investigators, said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a legal advocacy group. “Google said it has no plans to integrate the two services…but that doesn’t mean that later, you might not develop those plans.” *
Er, no Karlin. There’s worrying aspects to the merger, but I think you’re way off the mark: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/googles-trojan-horse-let-the-free-ad-serving-begin/.
On IE vs. Safari, the big difference is that IE is hardwired into the underlying OS, whereas Safari isn’t. MacOS works just fine with or without Safari. The other big problem was with the way that MS’s products used unpublished Windows APIs to give them an advantage in the market over those of third parties.
And where did you get the idea that MS have been releasing code as open source? They’ve released very little as open source (the likes of WIX and WTL being minor exceptions). Are you sure you’re not thinking of their “Shared Source” Initiative? That’s the umbrella under which MS make the source selected libraries, products, or section thereof openly viewable, but not usable or forkable. For instance, take the release of the source for the .NET foundation libraries. The source was released purely as a reference. A project like Mono can’t use any of this code under any circumstances whatsoever. There’s nothing wrong with MS’s Shared Source Initiative other than its slightly deceptive name, and it’s to be lauded, but it’s most definitely not to be confused with Libre software.
A cookie is not a program – it does not execute. It’s a bit of information that the webserver sends to a browser that the browser then sends back unaltered.
As it happens, it’s quite easy to block most DoubleClick cookies, at least in browsers other than IE. For instance, there are Firefox plugins that specifically block advertising content from being fetched (e.g., Adblock). And even without them, most modern browsers allow cookies from certain domains to be blacklisted. This might be non-trivial as it requires you to know what a cookie really is and where to find the configuration panel, but it’s far from impossible.
You are absolutely right, the word ‘program’ was an error and I should have caught this — better to have called it a small file that sends information to server for example. That’s what I get for writing this at 4am with jet lag and then not carefully rereading before it went to print! A poor choice of language that I will rectify at a future point; next week if I can work it in. Thanks for pointing this out.
And of course, I do know it is relatively easy to block DoubleClick cookies — if you know how to set your browser to block them, or have the right software program — but most people do not know this. Therefore, the vast majority remain open to having the info these cookies relay used in exploitative ways. I consider the way they work now to be deceptive — and the way they may be used in future as part of the merger, worrying.
But I think we differ in perspective and point of view on the remainder, not ‘accuracy’ (you are of course free to call what I write ‘inaccurate nonsense’ as you do on your blog
but there’s a difference between inaccuracy and point of view. I was, as you correctly say, inaccurate in calling a cookie a program, but as for the rest, I stand by it as opinion you are more than welcome to disagree with). For example, I do not accept that in 2008, the way in which the IE browser is connected to Windows is a major issue (maybe an academic issue, but who cares?). The way in which it appears to the user is no different than the way Safari appears to me — I start my Mac and the default settings are all to have Safari used as my browser. Apple controls its platform just as — perhaps more tightly that — Microsoft once did — always a major irony but when you aren’t the monopoly it doesn’t become as heated an issue, but still annoys a LOT of people. I use Firefox and Safari on my Macs, but for most actions the machine automatically opens Safari though I never myself made it the default for those actions… anyway the majority of people don’t care what browser they use. For those that do, it is simple these days to download whatever of many you wish to use and set it as default. Hence my point that I consider the privacy and competition concerns about the Google-Doubleclick merger to far outweigh the horror that I am nudged to use IE if I run Windows. I accept this isn’t how others may see the case.
I also fully accept Microsoft’s code initiative isn’t going to make Richard Stallman happy — but I think it gets into fine definitions to argue they are not operating in the general open source area and I think the initiatives coming from them indicate they are aware they cannot just hope this movement will go away. I’m well aware of the wide church and varied politics of open source having sat in (and even chaired once or twice ) conference sessions on this topic — and talked about it with Stallman when he visited UCD a couple of years ago.
He was so angry (or came across as so) in the opening session on copyright issues, that he seemed to have scared off everyone else from talking to him at the coffee break! I remembered from a mutual friend that he’s very into folk dancing, so that provided a good opening for a chat over stale biscuits.