FTC chief fends off critics over THAT Google decision The propriety of the US Federal Trade Commission's decision not to take action against Google over allegations of search bias has repeatedly been questioned, after FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz recently confirmed that the multi-billion dollar corporation would not face anti-trust charges. He has now defended that finding by …
'We went after a company [Google] where the law required us to do so, and forwent bringing a case where the law required us not to bring one.'
Does that actually make sense? They went after Google because the law told them to, then dropped the case when the law told them to drop it. If so, why did the law tell them to go after Google in the first place? And how much did all this going after then backtracking cost the taxpayer?
Of course, it might be easier to understand if this putz stopped using lawyerspeech crap like 'forwent'. I'm not even sure that's a real word.
In UK English, the past perfect form of "go" is "went". So, unusual though it may seem, "forwent" is correct as it means that the judges decided to forgo bringing a prosecution. Another, commoner grammatical form is "forgone", as in, "a forgone conclusion". I think it is commendably short and accurate.
Well, they do say American is English spoken by foreigners; but sometimes it just keeps forms that are anachronistic in modern English ("gotten" is a particularly ugly example that, I am glad to say, English speakers dropped a couple of hundrend years ago). Of course, legal language, as with much formal jargon, has to be very precise and so tends to retain older, specialised usage longer than lay language as "modern" expressions have not existed long enough to have well defined meanings in a legal context. Even when they have, look at how argumentative people can be, about the USA constitution for instance.
Perhaps you need to broaden your reading and listening a little.
Lobbying has become so huge becasue...it doesn't work? It just makes those companies doing the lobbying feel better? No one leans on agencies or committees? Despite the millions paid for influence, doing favours, etc, lobbying isn't effective?
Oh look, unicorns gambolling past my window...
I think part of the problem is that everyone lobbies, so they effectively cancel each other out. It also forces everyone to lobby. If you wanted to get rid of lobby groups, you would have to lobby the government for it.
It brings to mind something I was told about tobacco companies. Apparently, they were glad when they were banned from advertising. Adverts hadn't been bringing in that many new smokers (that was mainly peer pressure behind the bike sheds), but because all their competitors were advertising, they had to or loose customers to other brands. Banning advertising barely affected their sales, but hugely reduced their expenses, leading to much greater profits.
The same would be true if lobbying was stopped. Companies would save a lot of money, but the overall effect would probably be the same.
Without knowing how much *both* sides spent we can't begin to guess if:
It doesn't work
It does work and you can buy a win
It does work to really piss off the target and buy a loss
Or the most probably correct answer: it works right up to the point the FTC realise a court will crucify them for proceeding with no evidence supporting the charge.
Microsoft,Oracle and their hangers on threw an unknown amount of money at inciting the FTC to act, seem to have got good value for it as well given the non-stop leaks from insiders and general anti-Google public position given to the press. It just wasn't enough cash to make them piss away careers on a doomed trip to court.
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