1. Today it's all about Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, the committee that handles antitrust. Hearing starts at 10am. Some thoughts. judiciary.house.gov/hearing/transp…
2. Google is in serious trouble. The company is thuggish, corrupt, and monopolistic. Its employees are upset. Its programmatic advertising is fraud-ridden and Youtube subsidiary is an extremist factory. It has of late, however, hidden behind Mark Zuckerberg, who is far clumsier.
3. CEO Sundar Pichai is testifying for two reasons. One, he wants to frame this hearing around the Republicans talking about conservative bias, so the Democrats come to Google's aid. And two, he wants to say 'I already testified' when Democrats are in charge and ask for him.
4. I'm watching @RepJerryNadler, the incoming chairman, to see how he talks about Google. Nadler's a throwback liberal, old school anti-monopolist. I'm also watching @davidcicilline, who is the chair of the antitrust subcommittee.
5. Google wants this hearing to be about the GOP talking about political bias against conservatives. But if it's not about that, Google wants this to be about privacy, because privacy's the big dodge. What Google does NOT want this hearing to be about is advertising money.
6. Google is an ad company. That's it. The execs take money that should go to journalism and publishing and use it to buy fancy meals for their employees and drive up Palo Alto property prices. That's what Pichai doesn't want to talk about.
7. I don't expect a lot of talk about ad money. There's going to be some chatter about competition, a lot more talk about privacy, and some bashing of the GOP over bias. The mirror image on the R side will be the same thing, except sub in 'whining about conservative bias.'
8. There are many smart members on Judiciary. The committee handles antitrust, but that's been a backwater for years. The committee is more liberal, and less fluent in commercial questions than Energy and Commerce, which handles key aspects of privacy and internet regulation.
9. This dynamic showed when Zuck testified. E&C members were just much savvier about business questions, while Judiciary members, being cultural liberals and conservatives, had cursory knowledge about the underlying businesses. They are interested in immigration, impeachment, etc
10. Google is extremely concerned about being broken up. The company should be broken up. It's a roll-up of mergers in the first place (YouTube, Maps, AdMob, DoubleClick, etc). It panders and bribes conservatives to avoid that. See here. wired.com/story/leaked-a…
11. Here's Google's leaked audio of Google's lobbying team justifying their funding of the far-right conference CPAC, saying hey this helped us get conservatives protect us from being broken up. 
12. But the company dumps money into every organization and law firm in DC. And elsewhere. From the the Cato Institute to the NAACP to MIT to Mothers Against Drunk Driving to the American Library Association and on and on. Here's their public list. google.com/publicpolicy/t…
13. A lot of Google's money buys support. A lot of it buys silence from those who otherwise would be openly skeptical. Fundamentally Google, like Amazon and Facebook, is a creature of a legal context allowing it to overwhelm the public. It has to suppress democracy to exist.
14. I don't expect a lot from this hearing, so any skepticism will pleasantly surprise me. Congress is learning, and that takes time. This hearing is part of a worldwide set of investigations about how the tech platforms operate and how to make them fit into our democratic order.
15. Also, regulating Google is a way of entrenching its monopoly. That's what Google wants, a regulated monopoly protected by state power. The key is to break-up Google and then regulate the markets in which its component parts operate.
Last thing. The problem with Google is about its *business structure," not its technology products. The technology is often great, and, though hard to believe, its business model actually holds back far more great tech from the market than it would in a competitive market.
