Watchdog exposes Google antics
Doing a bit of evil
AN ANONYMOUS TIPSTER who alerted the Australian competition watchdog about Ebay's proposal to force its users onto the Paypal payments system was none other than Google.
Ebay had applied to get immunity from prosecution under the Trade Practices Act ahead of the Paypal changes.
The watchdog had received a 38-page anonymous report from a whistleblower in which the move was dubbed 'anti-competitive'.
However, when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) website printed the report it took David Bromage, a disgruntled Ebay user and model train enthusiast from Canberra only a few seconds to discover who the complaint was really made by.
Peering at the meta data in the downloaded submission, which was posted as a PDF document, he found this nugget: "Microsoft Word - 204481916_1_ACCC Submission by Google re eBay Public _2_.DOC".
The ACCC received the submission as a Word document, removed the author's name as requested, and converted the file into a PDF for posting on the website.
When Bromage started to tell world + dog about Google's involvement, the document was pulled and has since been replaced by one less revealing. µ
L'Inq
Sydney
Morning Herald
Comments
Plan in UK too
This same paypal only plan now applies in the UK come next Monday! Let's hope Google also sends that report on to the OFT.Good for Google!
...I've not been a huge fan of Google, although they irritate me a lot less than many companies. But in this case, I feel they're on the right side of the fence...my personal appraisal of Google has shot up exponentially.Great Dae Kno wEvils' Googlie!
That watchdog seas everything, and Evils was not a peeping Tom. Ozzy's baywatch is the yabo they should chuck a wobbly at! I'd say he was leaving his playpal exposed, and Evils should be barracked for being a cobber what's bottling his blood's worth! Nut it out, and this is the strange case of John Locke and Jeremy Bentham! What a ripper! indignation at the pettiness of such 'powers that be' as a Presbyterian minister in Honolulu named Rev. Dr. Hyde. I guess they may get voted off the Island for being anticompetitive. Ebay may just roo the day they jeckled it all down under for a jacked zack sixth cents of a pretty Penny. "Ice, Sea, Dead People!" I expect so. You've been LOST on that bloody island, mate! Even Evils knows a Talisker teller when he hears one.Evilness
Well, its evil that they attempted to do this in an underhanded manner by having someone else submit it for them. But its good they are aligned themselves against the evil that Ebay is trying to do by making everyone aware of it.On the whole I'd say the evil and the good of this act cancels out, leaving Google no more or less evil than they were before. Yes, they are somewhat evil, but they are certainly less evil than Ebay!
hah!
that's not evil... monopoly is evil i tell ya!ebay keep tryin to squeeze more out of us, so now they're makin us use paypal too!
Not necessarily
Just because the metadata says "Google submitted this" doesn't mean that, well, Google submitted it. If I were working at Google, I probably wouldn't call the file "Google's submission blah blah blah". I'd call the file "fight ebay" or some such thing.Looks dodgy to me.
Grow some balls
If Google is doing the "right thing" here, why don't they grow some balls and post their name all over the doc instead of hiding it?Every company is so quick to accuse others, but when it comes to their own business... hmmm... "double-click"