back to article Judge gives Google until Friday to dish on paid media

Judge William Alsup has said that Google "failed to comply" with his August 7 order to disclose any paid relationships with the media as part of its ongoing patent litigation with Oracle, and has given the search giant five days to resubmit. In his original order, Judge Alsup had asked that both parties in the case reveal any …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google

    Fantastic, amazing, wonderful, brilliant, innovative, cutting edge, doesn't do evil, great to work for.....

    And the reader actually believes this?

    You can understand why they have foggy recollections.....

  2. Craigness

    Mueller

    No surprise there.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Mueller

      Of course not. It is public knowledge that he published himself. Doh

  3. Turtle

    "Impossible"

    "'Please simply do your best but the impossible is not required,' the judge wrote."

    Oh well, in that case Google need not reveal any names at all, because it seems to be *impossible* for Google to do anything that will be to its disadvantage in any way whatsoever, including complying with any laws, statutes, court orders, or accepted norms of any kind, anywhere in the world.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Impossible"

      Why the down-voting? it's perfectly true. They were criticized for all their lobbying in the UK.

      They're pushing their agenda of changing UK laws to suit them, at the expense of UK tax payer.

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/23/google_lobby_why/

      1. Tom 13

        Re: Why the down-voting?

        Because you either failed to read the article, or failed miserably at reading comprehension. This bit at the end is very, very telling:

        Oracle did not mention any relationships with industry trade groups in its own statement, and Judge Alsup has not asked it to resubmit.

        First, I don't trust Google and I don't trust Oracle. Both they both need to be held to the same standard. If Google said they haven't paid anyone directly, which is the only stuff Oracle submitted, Google complied with the Judge's directive to the same extent Oracle did.

        Second, requiring either side to submit lists of all trade organizations to which either side has provided financial support, is going on a fishing trip without probable cause. The implication is that the trade group, regardless of size or independent reason for submitting comment, is somehow corrupt and attempting to corrupt the court process.

        Third, because the judge is holding Oracle and Google to different standards, this needlessly opens the case to appeal. There are enough loopholes already in place without this kind of malarkey.

    2. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
      Joke

      Re: "Impossible"

      "'Please simply do your best but the impossible is not required,' the judge wrote."

      Could they just not Google for the information, might take some time to go through all 79,400,000 results though

  4. ElReg!comments!Pierre

    Impossible

    Google funds the open sorce community heavily. The moving landscape in open source means that almost everyone could have benefitted directly or indirectly from Google's mony. Almost all of the community is also composed of (occasionnal) bloggers and commenters. Any or all of them may have commented on the case.

    Hell, if you really want to go that way, anyone having used Chrome or any Mozilla-derived software, or any piece of modern open source software, may be considered as having benefitted indirectly from Google's mollah.

    Even further: virtually every blogger or commenter used (knowingly or not:thing servers and network) at least a piece of open source software partially funded by Google (via the Google summer of code or other studentships for example, if not by direct donation). So you could consider that every single blogger or commenter on the case indeed benefitted fron Google's money. So where do you draw the line? The judge is being clueless here.

    Either Google directly paid people to comment on the case (as Oracle does with Mueller) or they don't. It appears that they do not. End of.

    1. Turtle

      "Cluelessness in re: Impossible"

      "Google funds the open sorce community heavily. The moving landscape in open source means that almost everyone could have benefitted directly or indirectly from Google's mony."

      Yup.

      "So where do you draw the line? The judge is being clueless here."

      The "cluelessness" - as usual, I must add - is strictly yours. The judge said "Oracle managed to do it. Google can do it too by listing all commenters known by Google to have received payments as consultants, contractors, vendors, or employees." You can complicate it as much as you like but the judge's statement is pretty straightforward. If Google's methods of buying influence means that they have developed highly ramified and convoluted means of dispersing money, well then that's just too bad for Google.

      1. Mark C Casey

        Re: "Cluelessness in re: Impossible"

        Or maybe, shock horror.. Google doesn't pay anyone off to write dirt on their competitors? Unlike Oracle.

        Simple fact is Google has a relatively good reputation for the most part in comparison to Oracle. Look at it from their perspective, do they really want to be seen paying off someone to talk dirty about others?

        They'll have PR people no doubt, but they'll be paid employees of Google. Paying off "journalists" like Mueller makes you look frankly childish, why would Google want to do that? Oracle/Ellison may be that insecure about themselves but from Googles past behaviour they'd rather just compete.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Megaphone

          Google does pay people to write pro-Google stuff

          Or maybe, shock horror.. Google doesn't pay anyone off to write dirt on their competitors? Unlike Oracle.

          It appears that Google actually do pay at least a Mr David Balto, antitrust attorney and for FTC ex-DoJ and ex-FTC, otherwise I'd expect GigaOM to be now defending a libel suit, because as they say:

          "Editor’s note: Before publishing this article. we asked a representative for the author whether the author had ever had a commercial relationship with Google, paid or unpaid. The representative said no. It turns out that was untrue. The author, in fact, has been paid by Google to write pro-Google white papers. Had we known of that fact, we would never have published this piece. We apologize to our readers."

          http://gigaom.com/2012/08/05/apple-and-microsofts-patent-troll-spells-trouble-for-smartphone-innovation/

          You can also see Mr Balto fiercely defending Google policies on some of his other articles:

          http://antitrustconnect.com/author/davidbalto/

          Or in this video where he charmingly defends his masters' settlement against book authors:

          www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGMgJNQtGnE

          It amuses me that some people are so naive as to think Google pays no one to write things for them, when Google already publicly spent more than $9 million in lobbying just this year.

          1. Tom 35

            Re: Google does pay people to write pro-Google stuff

            You quote some one saying Google doesn't pay anyone off to write dirt, then provide links that say someone writes nice things about Google.

            Don't see anything about paying for people to write dirt.

            Of course you don't have to pay people to write dirt about Oracle, I'm sure you could find hundreds who will do it for free!

            1. Anonymous Coward
              WTF?

              Re: Google does pay people to write pro-Google stuff

              Don't see anything about paying for people to write dirt.

              What do you call that GigaOM article if not dirt? The whole article is dirt, starting with the title.

              You may want to look again.

        2. Turtle

          Re: "Shock, Horror"

          "Or maybe, shock horror.. Google doesn't pay anyone off to write dirt on their competitors? Unlike Oracle.

          Look at it from their perspective, do they really want to be seen paying off someone to talk dirty about others?"

          Here's what. Mueller gets money from Oracle. If you want to assume that this means that he is paid specifically to "talk dirty" about Google, then we are going to assume that *any* blogger, journalist, writer, commentator, analyst, who accepts money from Google corporation is *also* paid to "talk dirty" about Google's competitors (or maybe even getting paid simply to refrain from criticizing Google) - and that includes, for example, everything emanating, like a suffocating stench, from the Berkman Center at Harvard and the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. And if you agree to that, then that's fine.

          In fact, the matter is even worse for Google because this is not just one guy who takes their money. There are whole organizational ecosystems parasitic on Google money - so anyone who is part of any one of these organizations not only has to resist the Google money in the first place - which is obviously impossible if they are part of one of those parasitic organizations, but risk the anger of his colleagues who do accept Google money by doing anything not in conformity with Google's agenda and putting that money at risk. (But I am certainly not saying such principled people exist these parasitic organization in the first place.)

          1. Richard Plinston

            Re: "Shock, Horror"

            > by doing anything not in conformity with Google's agenda and putting that money at risk.

            What evidence do you have that anyone writing whatever they like puts that Google money at risk ?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Oracle didn't do it

        Oracle listed one commentator - that's not even close to "all". And they picked one that was a known shill, so they hardly revealed anything.

      3. This post has been deleted by its author

      4. ElReg!comments!Pierre

        @Turtle Re: "Cluelessness in re: Impossible"

        > The "cluelessness" - as usual, I must add - is strictly yours.

        Somehow I don't think so. As usual, I might add. Just to fit in with the clueless-ad-hominem-attack-fan-kiddie crowd. I heard it's hip these days amongst tech-illitterate kids.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Impossible

      Self-interest. They rely on the open source community for their products.

      1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

        Re: Impossible (re:self interest)

        "They rely on the open source community for their products."

        Indeed, they do, heavily, both of them (and Oracle more than Google, actually). But only one of them is giving anything back, and that ain't Oracle.

  5. Turtle

    Li'l Mistake.

    "Judge Alsup was apparently more satisfied with Oracle's statement, which acknowledged that Oracle had a paid consulting relationship with blogger Florian Mueller. Mueller himself had disclosed his relationship with the database maker in an August 18 blog post."

    Mueller disclosed this relationship on 18 APRIL, not 18 August, as written in the paragraph cited here, but contradicted by the link in that paragraph.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All we need now

    is for Lucy Koh to ask Apple who they pay to spew their bile all over the internet...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Go

      Re: All we need now

      Google lobbying this year: $9.000.000

      Apple lobbying: $400.000

      Would very much welcome that move, if reciprocated by Samsung and Google, but I'm not sure if you'd be happy with the results.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's good that the unscrupulous shills are outed

    This unsavory bunch should be exposed and punished for their fraud and deception.

  8. Isn't it obvious?

    It's all about goodwill

    I was going to point out that at least Google had tried to be upfront about the fact that there are a lot of people (though apparently none here) who are friendly towards Google, for whatever reason, at companies or organizations where Google spends or contributes money. Lotsa people still like Google (except here). Whereas Oracle just ignored the whole issue of favourable comments from people with indirect financial interests.

    But then it occurred to me that Oracle probably doesn't have any goodwill it doesn't buy outright.

    (Disclaimer: I know people who work for Google. They're a whole lot more open about stuff that's not explicitly private, and honest about mistakes and failures, than any of the people I know who work for Microsoft or Apple. I don't know anyone who works for Oracle. I've never worked for any of the above, but they've all complicated my job, in various ways, at different times.)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oracle does this all the time

    Oracle has many "analyst" groups in their pocket providing the best analysis money can buy regarding their software and hardware. Not only that, but they misrepresent benchmarks way more often than other vendors. The national advert council just fined Oracle for claiming that independent benchmarks meant things which they did not at all mean.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Like:

      "Independent from reality"? ;)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Like:

        Oracle was fined for stating that Sparc systems outperform Power at a lower cost (total nonsense on both counts). They were fined again for their ads stating that Exa outperformed Power (possibly true on a very specific workload, Oracle DB, tuned perfectly) at a lower cost (total nonsense, Exa is silly expensive). Both ads were pulled.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If the law applies to Financial Instutions plugging IPO's...

    ... then it should also apply to journalists who plug these companies, their products and their prospects for IPOs.

    Funny that this story has been raging for weeks but the Guardian Newspaper has only just picked up on this 2 minutes ago and is still not allowing comments against it.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/aug/21/oracle-google-paid-bloggers

  11. toadwarrior

    Of course google pay people but admitting that will make their fanboys all butt hurt.

    The company specialises in taking people's data even when they have no right to it and they can query that in mere milliseconds. But they want me to belive they can't figure out who their shills are?

    The judge should bitch slap them if they comeback empty handed.

  12. Gordon Pryra

    Notice of Unnatural Links

    Any webmasters out there see the funny side of this?

    The Judges response to Google is almsot exactly the same word for word as Googles response to webmasters who are asked to remove any unnatural links.

    Funny stuff

  13. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
    Holmes

    The phrase you're looking for is....

    ...Astroturfing

    Did <insert name of company here> pay bloggers, journalists, commentators, or other media representatives to make positive comments about themselves negative comments about their competitors?

    Of course not, they employ PR firms to do it for them.

    It's called Plausible Deniability

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