If you’ve done a Google search recently, you’ve probably noticed the search engine’s nifty new feature. Just to the right (and sometimes indented below) your search results is a prominently featured panel featuring relevant social media listings related to your search.

A search for “sports”, for instance, might return a social listing for soccer star David Beckham; “politics” might yield a social link for Newt Gingrich, and “cooking” might get you the latest from celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. It’s a thoughtful and timely functionality, clearly developed in response to the increasing role that the Social Web plays in business, politics, and interpersonal communications.

But there is a tiny catch.

The only social results returned by Google are ones on Google’s own social networking site.

The only social results returned by Google’s nifty new tool are ones contained on Google’s own social networking site: Google+. The new social search tool won’t net you results from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, or any other social network. The new tool is a one-network show, and Google+ is the star.

This is quite a change for Google, who has long promised it would:

“Never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank.  Our users trust our objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.”

But Google’s overnight adjustments to search results shows the company abandoning its prior promise never to favor its own service.

Nonetheless, as a business tactic, you have to give Google credit for its latest invention. With Google+ languishing far behind other social media options, this new tool has the potential to be a game changer.

A Google+ page instantly goes from being something a marketer might very well ignore, in favor of more effective methods of social interaction, to something that they can’t live without. If you want to play in the new social search world, a Google+ account represents the minimal cost of entry.

For entrepreneurs and marketers who have spent considerable time and resources building up their presences on more popular social networking sites, Google’s decision to return only Google+ results in its new tool might be disappointing, but it also represents an unprecedented opportunity.

As any search engine optimization (SEO) expert can tell you, up until now the meritocratic Google algorithm has proven exceptionally difficult to manipulate. The Google search engine stubbornly returned results based on relevancy, rather than the efforts of marketers.

Now, turning the system to your advantage seems almost comically easy. In a recent search for the term “entertainment” the top social result was for a basic cable show called “106 & Park,” that averages fewer than a million viewers.  The one thing it does have going for it: more than 400,000 Google+ followers.

So while we may shed a wistful tear for the lost days of Google meritocracy and transparency, or think how useful a Google social search tool might have been if it included results from other engines (as detailed in this excellent video), we should at least acknowledge what a good day it is for the marketing community, where everyone now gets to have their very own Holy Grail.

Related articles

• Facebook engineer purifies Search Plus Your World (techradar.com)
• Google’s Social Search Move and How it Applies to Your Marketing (socialmediatoday.com)

Market middlemen who cling to old ways are headed for the dustbin of business history.  Just consider a few examples:

• Online travel sites lifted the curtain on the mysterious world of booking airline seats and hotel rooms.  Travel agents who add real value for customers are soaring, but those who just book flights have crashed and burned.

• Optometrists used to make big bucks marking-up contact lenses to their patients.  But those markups disappeared in the blink of an eye once consumers could buy their lenses online. Optometrists who saw this coming focused on their services and helped patients find the best deals on lenses.

• Ticket brokers who believe they alone should control secondary markets for sports and concert seats are finding themselves on sidelines as ticket holders turn to the Internet to sell seats they can’t use.

• Real estate agents are finding fewer homeowners are still willing to pay a $30,000 commission to sell a $500,000 home, especially when Internet-savvy buyers do most of their own legwork using online real estate sites.

Now, the Internet is happening to auto dealers too.

As we emerge from this long, awful recession, there’s a lot of pent-up demand for new cars.   America’s car industry sold nearly 13 million vehicles last year, up 10 percent over 2010. The number of auto dealers actually rose in the first half of 2011 — for the first time in many years.

70 percent of consumers use the Internet to help them buy a car.

But are more dealers really what’s going to help American consumers buy more cars?   According to a 2011 study, 70 percent of consumers use the Internet to help them buy a car.   Websites like Kbb.com and Edmunds.com provide loads of data on car costs, retail prices, quality, and features.

Some dealers are catering to Internet buyers, by posting their own websites, buying qualified leads from lenders like Capital One, or providing guaranteed discounts through websites like TrueCar.com.

But a lot of car salesmen hate dealing with informed buyers and competing based on price.   They want to stick with the old ways, where consumers were in the dark as they entered the dealer showroom.  You know the drill — a salesman begins the price negotiation with manufacturer’s suggested retail price, and ends with the buyer wondering whether he paid anything close to a market-based price.

Well, the Internet genie isn’t going back in the bottle.  And the Internet generation won’t go back to the old days of ignorance.  Like it or not, tomorrow’s car buyers will be armed with information about dealer invoice cost and what others paid for the same car. And these buyers will use social networks to learn how other consumers feel about a dealership’s service department.

Therein lies the good news for dealers: most car buyers make their decision based on factors other than simply price.  These buyers also care about dealership location, service facilities, and reputation.

The challenge for the best dealers is how to get the word out about their outstanding service and stellar reputation, since that’s the way to attract qualified and well-informed consumers who will become long-term service customers and repeat buyers.

It’s time for America’s auto dealers to decide how they want to drive on the information superhighway: grab the steering wheel and press the accelerator … or just crawl into the back seat and be taken for a ride.

In neither of these sales did I need the permission of J.K. Rowling or George Lucas.  They were my books and my DVDs to resell and not subject to the approval of the author.

The reason I did not need to get the author’s permission is because of the “first-sale doctrine” of the Copyright Act.

The first-sale doctrine basically allows you to resell something you bought without getting the author’s permission and without violating copyright law.

To maintain your right to resell your products, NetChoice joined several other tech companies in filing an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court.

But the US Second Circuit court says that the first-sale doctrine, i.e. your right to resell, doesn’t extend to anything manufactured outside the US.

So, if I went into my local bookstore and bough a copy of one of the Harry Potter books printed in the US, I could freely resell the book.  But if that same bookstore sold a version printed in the UK, I could not resell it without Rowling’s permission.  That’s just not right.  Moreover, I don’t even know how I would get her permission to resell the books.

So, to maintain your right to resell your products, NetChoice joined several other tech companies in filing an amicus brief to ask the US Supreme Court to overrule this US Second Circuit court decision and give you back the right to resell your stuff — no matter where it was made.

Let’s hope the Supreme Court makes the right decision.  Otherwise J.K. Rowling and George Lucas will be getting lots of phone calls, emails, letters, and tweets asking for resale permission.

Related articles

• NetChoice Amicus Brief for Kirstaeng v Wiley & Sons (netcoice.org)

So what is COPPA?  Well, COPPA regulates the online collection and use of information about a child (a child is anyone under 13).  While a noble goal, COPPA has unfortunately discouraged many services from developing appropriate content for kids.

That’s because COPPA exposes any online service for those under thirteen to potential legal liability.  As a result, many services forbid those under 13 from using their services. For example, YouTube forbids those under 13 from using its service.  Likewise, Pandora music service is only available to those over 13.

This past September, the FTC proposed changes to COPPA, expanding its scope and legal liability.  When we heard about the changes we worried about the effects.  CCOPPA current rules already discourage most online services from serving those under 13, so what will happen if the rules get tougher and the liability greater?  How many more sites will just avoid serving kids?

To ensure that kids have access to online services, our comments suggest ways the FTC could modify its proposal to keep online services that benefit kids, their parents, and teachers.

A few things we asked the FTC:

Related articles

• Trying to Put Children in an Online Oasis is Just a Mirage (netchoice.org)
• Hi, My Name Is … (netchoice.org)

At the same time, the Irish Commissioner declared that his planned audit of Facebook’s privacy practices was, “likely to be the most detailed, challenging and intensive audit ever undertaken by his office.”  The announcement was good for generating headlines, but as the results of his audit show, the alarming headlines were unjustified and, in some cases, wrong.

Fast-forward to today’s news about the audit findings where the Commissioner concluded that, “The audit has found a positive approach and commitment on the part of Facebook Ireland to respecting the privacy rights of its users.”

Well, that conclusion was unexpectedly un-alarming.

Just like last month’s FTC consent agreement, Facebook emerged from an engagement with government auditors without dramatic revelations of plots to build dossiers on every person on the planet.

The audit declared that, as a rapidly changing service used by millions of people around the world there is room for improvement, but no malice.  It went on to suggest changes to how Facebook users tag people in photographs and how long browsing meta-data is retained.

Even more interesting than the suggested improvements are what the investigation revealed about the social network’s data usage practices.

The audit found that:

• Facebook does not seek information on non-Facebook members
• Facebook does not create “shadow” profiles
• Information collected from third party sites is not used for targeting advertising
• Facebook engages in data deletion

Importantly, the Irish audit found Facebook’s use of cookies, which we addressed a couple of weeks ago, “innovative” since they “identify unusual or suspicious activity on an account.”

The report basically confirmed what Facebook has been saying, and disproves much of the fear-mongering from privacy zealots.

The audit declared that, as a rapidly changing service used by millions of people around the world there is room for improvement, but no malice.

So perhaps Facebook is not the evil, dossier-devising, giant that some would have you believe.  In fact, it seems as though with each government audit prompted by the privacy industry, we learn more about Facebook’s priority–to build a free service where users feel safe while they share information as easily and efficiently as possible.

It’s good to see Facebook engaging with regulators, but we should be wary if every engagement ends with a set of  restrictions that could restrict  future innovation.  And the lesson learned here is, perhaps if regulators cry wolf, there ought to be an actual wolf, or at a minimum, a really large dog.

Related articles

• Facebook’s ‘Darwinian’ nature keeps users safe – Irish gov (go.theregister.com)
• Where is the Button to ‘Like’ Facebook’s Cookies? (netchoice.org)
• A Golf Clap for the FTC and Facebook (netchoice.org)
• The Facts Speak for Themselves on Privacy for Social Networking Sites (netchoice.org)

The TicketMaster paperless ticket scheme requires the purchaser of the ticket, not the holder, to provide a photo ID and the credit card used to buy the ticket.  For  years we have tried to protect fans from the hassle that comes with TicketMaster’s paperless tickets.  But despite our ongoing battle, paperless tickets are already hassling sports fans and concert-goers across the US.

Richard Darr is the latest victim of the paperless ticket when he received tickets to Michael Buble’s Nashville concert.  However, what should have been easy ultimately required Richard to get soaked in rain, make dozens of frantic phone calls, and drive to grab a friend’s credit card and photo ID — all in the minutes before the concert began.

It all started when Richard’s friend, who was going out of town, offered Richard his tickets.  This is usually  simple enough: friend hands tickets to Richard, Richard enjoys the concert.  Easy as pie, and something we have all done dozens of times.  But because of  TicketMaster’s paperless tickets, this otherwise easy process transformed into a logistical nightmare.

While Richard had the paperless ticket, without his friend’s photo ID and credit card, the ticket was useless.  When Richard tried to get into the concert, it was a no-go.  Richard pleaded with the usher to let him in.  Richard showed a printout of  his “paperless tickets.”  But the usher demanded that Richard’s friend, the original owner of the ticket, show up with his photo ID and credit card in hand.

Because of TicketMaster’s paperless tickets, parents are having difficulty giving tickets to their children, businesses find they can’t gift tickets to clients, and people whose schedules change at the last minute must throw away otherwise good tickets.

What was Richard to do?  With only minutes left before the concert, Richard hopped in his car and drove to find his friend.  Richard collected the friend’s photo ID and credit card used to buy the tickets.  In the end, Richard got in to the concert.  But the experience was not the special experience he expected.

Unfortunately, Richard’s story, which appeared in the Tennessean, is not an isolated incident.  Because of TicketMaster’s paperless tickets, parents are having difficulty giving tickets to their children, businesses find they can’t gift tickets to clients, and people whose schedules change at the last minute must throw away otherwise good tickets.

While many of us continue to fight against  TicketMaster’s paperless tickets mandate, too many fans are being left outside when the music starts playing–because they didn’t have the ID and credit card of the original purchaser.  We need state legislators to take up the call to protect their citizens from these problems.  Otherwise, more fans will be left  standing in the cold.

Related articles

• Restricted paperless ticketing hits sour note at arena events (tennessean.com)
• Minnesota Takes on the TicketMonster (netchoice.org)
• Fighting the Ticket Monster (netchoice.org)

Unfortunately, after obtaining privacy sanctions against Facebook, EPIC announced today that it considered the agreement a “FAIL” and launched a campaign to demand additional sanctions on Facebook.

I visited EPIC’s site to learn more about their new demands.  EPIC demands the FTC to “prevent Facebook from secretly tracking users across the web.”  That sounds scary, but EPIC never explains what it means by “secret tracking.” I found only one reference to tracking, secret or otherwise, buried in a 2010 EPIC complaint about Facebook’s cookies.  So I can only assume that by “secret tracking” EPIC means Facebook reading their cookies when users visit other sites.  But it wasn’t until I thought more about these Facebook cookies that I realized why EPIC hid their explanation of “secret tracking.”

It’s because Facebook cookies are neither bad nor “secret.”  Rather, Facebook cookies make your online experience better.  Heck, EPIC’s own website uses Facebook cookie technology to help visitors “Like” the EPIC Facebook Page.

EPIC’s own website uses the same Facebook “secret” cookie to let its fans Like their site.

For instance, Facebook’s cookies save you from needing to remember dozens of passwords when you visit your favorite websites.  Remember a few years ago when so many sites required you to create a unique user ID and password?  Now you can use your Facebook account to access sites like the NewYorkTimes.com, HuffingtonPost.com, and FoxNews.com.

And when you visit these sites, Facebook’s cookie makes sharing your favorite articles, videos, blogs, photos, and sites with friends as easy as clicking one button.

The benefits of the Facebook cookie are not just your sharing with friends, but also your Facebook friends sharing with you.  When accessing the HuffingtonPost.com you are greeted with a list of articles your friends liked.  On FoodNetwork.com, you can see recipes your friends recommended.  And searching through the Bing search engine produces search results more likely to be what you are searching for.

What’s the “secret” to making all these features work?  They do it with … cookies.

Facebook cookies allow one-click sharing with friends, easy access to sites, and help you find the content you seek.

Once I realized these benefits of Facebook’s cookies, I realized why EPIC’s website didn’t explain what they meant by Facebook’s “secret tracking.”  It’s because these cookies aren’t secret, they’re sensational!  Before Facebook cookies, never could I so easily share so much with my friends.

Come to think of it, most of us “Like” what Facebook’s cookies do for us and will have to let the FTC know that a handful of  EPIC privacy zealots don’t speak for 800 million Facebook users.

Related articles

• A Golf Clap for the FTC and Facebook (netchoice.org)
• Hi, My Name Is … (netchoice.org)
• Just in Time for Halloween: Privacy Advocates Say Cookies are Scary (netchoice.org)
• Stay Thirsty, My Friends at Facebook (netchoice.org)
• Now It’s Facebook’s Turn For 20 Years Of FTC Privacy Audits (searchengineland.com)

First off, it’s almost always better to get private industry and federal regulators to reach a mutual agreement on resolving complaints.  Far too often, the kneejerk response from regulators and elected officials is to call for new legislation.   And those new laws usually just restrain innovation by legitimate companies, while those intent on bad behavior ignore new laws just as they ignored the old laws.

It this case, the FTC and Facebook tackled a list of complaints that were raised by a small but media-savvy industry of professional privacy advocates.

In general, the 800 million users around the globe who joined Facebook do so in order to make their information more visible to public and to their network of friends.   After all, Facebook is a sharing tool, not a privacy program.  And it boggles my mind that more ink is spilled over privacy angst with social networking –- especially when there are real benefits when attaching an actual name to online conversations, as we described here.

So now, Facebook will dedicate even more resources to ensure that users are aware of all its privacy nooks and crannies and empowered to make good decisions about their privacy options.  And like Google did in their FTC agreement, Facebook will be subject to independent privacy audits for the next 20 years.

There’s a risk with agreements that force formerly innovative companies to ask regulators for a permission slip before rolling out new features and free services.

This is all good.  But there’s a risk with agreements that are driven more by media melodrama than consumer concern: it can force formerly innovative companies to ask regulators for a permission slip before rolling out new features and free services.

Hopefully, Facebook’s agreement will make users feel more comfortable and ultimately help them to make informed decisions about sharing personal information.  Facebook should also take its new commitments seriously so that it can avoid privacy entanglements moving forward.

Because if the concerns of a few focused privacy professionals outweigh the new services and benefits received by hundreds of millions of users, then consumers really will have something to complain about.

Related articles

• Facebook Revealed Privacy Principles in FTC Memo (newyork.ibtimes.com)
• Facebook Readying FTC Settlement Over Privacy [REPORT] (mashable.com)
• Facebook, FTC Near Privacy Settlement (allthingsd.com)
• Hi, My Name Is … (netchoice.org)

Every once in a while, a rigorous debate will actually sway public opinion.

Yesterday,  the Wall Street Journal published an impressive special section on tech issues that featured arguments from both sides. And it included a debate over new sales tax requirements for online retailers.

As I described yesterday, The Journal also published survey results based on a poll conducted weeks earlier, so there were already over 2,000 votes (60%) for the position that retailers should have to collect sales tax for all states — even where they have no physical presence.

Note: Not all NetChoice members share the views expressed here.

Related articles

• Should States Require Online Retailers to Collect Sales Tax? (online.wsj.com)
• The Taxman Doth Protest Too Much (netchoice.org)
• Odd Timing to Promote “Fairness” (netchoice.org)

The article includes a debate between Michael Mazerov, who wants force all online sellers to collect taxes for all states, versus my argument in favor of the present national standard established by the Constitution and Supreme Court rulings.

Take a few minutes to compare the arguments.  And if you agree that the physical presence rule is the best way to preserve e-commerce as an opportunity for small businesses, please vote in the WSJ online poll.  (this morning’s printed poll results came over the last several weeks — before this debate was published ).

If the WSJ editors had given me just a bit more room, I’d have added this rebuttal to the “fairness” claim made by proponents of new tax collection rules:

To really make things “fair” between retail stores and web stores, we’d need to force all retail stores to change their checkout process to match what online sellers have to do now:

The clerk at the cash register would ask customers to present a drivers license or some other proof of the state and town where they live.

The clerk would have to look-up the tax rate for the item being purchased, using the definitions adopted by the state and town of residence. If the customer is purchasing a granola bar, for instance, it’ll be taxed as food in some states while others will tax it as candy.

Before entering the tax rate, the clerk has to determine whether the customer’s tax jurisdiction was currently exempting all or a portion of their item from sales tax, as part of a “sales tax holiday”.

Then the clerk can enter the tax rate and ring-out the customer.

At which point the accountants in the back office will have to record the sale for filing of returns and remittances to each customer’s home tax jurisdiction.

Sounds fairly ridiculous, doesn’t it?  But the process described above is exactly what online and catalog sellers presently do when making a sale into their  home state or any other state where they have a physical presence.

Of course, it’s not fair to force traditional retail stores to collect sales tax this way.  Just like it’s not fair to force online retailers to collect for up to 9,400 tax jurisdictions where they have no presence.

The fairest policy is the one set forth in our Constitution and Supreme Court rulings: every retailer should collect wherever it has a physical presence.

Note: Not all NetChoice members share the views expressed here.  

Related articles

• Should States Require Online Retailers to Collect Sales Tax? (online.wsj.com)
• The Taxman Doth Protest Too Much (netchoice.org)
• Odd Timing to Promote “Fairness” (netchoice.org)