Inside Google

Consumer Watchdog condemned the increased lobbying by web services. Google “has abandoned its idealistic ‘Don’t Be Evil’ roots and has bought into Washington’s corrupt ‘cash and carry’ political system,” the consumer group said. “Facebook, relatively new to the Washington lobbying scene, now appears headed down the same morally bankrupt path as Google,” Consumer Watchdog said. Facebook declined to respond. Google didn’t answer a request for comment.

“What these unilateral decisions by Google and Facebook demonstrate is a complete disregard for their users’ interests and concerns,” says John Simpson, spokesman for Consumer Watchdog. “It’s an uncommonly arrogant approach not usually seen in business, where these companies believe they can do whatever they want with our data, whenever and however they want to do it.”

A consumer group on Wednesday penned a letter to European regulators asking them to block the pending merger of Google and Motorola Mobility on anticompetitive grounds.

A U.S. consumer advocacy group has written to the European Commission asking it to block Google’s deal to acquire Motorola and to launch an investigation into the Internet giant’s alleged anti-competitive behavior.

BRUSSELS – Consumer Watchdog, a U.S.-based consumer advocacy group, today called for the EU’s antitrust regulators to block Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility and ultimately issue a formal antitrust complaint against the Internet giant’s ongoing business practices.

WASHINGTON, DC – Internet giant Google spent nearly $10 million lobbying federal policymakers in 2012, showing that the company has abandoned its idealistic “Don’t Be Evil” roots and has bought into Washington’s corrupt “cash and carry” political system, Consumer Watchdog said today.

WASHINGTON, DC – Consumer Watchdog today called on President Obama to use the State of the Union message to endorse baseline privacy legislation and support Do Not Track regulations that would give consumers control of whether their information is gathered while they use the Internet.

Google’s latest change to its search engine, dubbed “Search plus Your World” apparently has drawn the scrutiny of the Federal Trade Commission because of antitrust concerns, according to Bloomberg News.

The top Senators on the Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee are expressing concern to the Federal Trade Commission over Google’s business practices and the Internet giant’s impact on competition in Internet search and commerce.

The issues surrounding the Google Apps deal with Los Angeles came to a head in October, when Santa Monica, Calif.-based Consumer Watchdog released on its website a letter from Los Angeles CTO Randi Levin to systems integrator CSC that formally requested that CSC refund to Los Angeles money spent on seat licenses and migration costs associated with moving its law enforcement and criminal justice personnel to Google’s cloud product.