Google doesn't need to answer to its shareholders...

[HalationEffect]

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) effectively now falls under the “permanently controlled entity” status after the most recent share split announcement earlier in 2012. Founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, along with ex-CEO Eric Schmidt, control roughly 65% of the voting interest due to Class B stock. Google was the great Internet growth story of the past decade, but now the founders are getting into more and more areas not tied to the core search business and many of these efforts are not at all obvious money-making efforts for shareholders. While its informal corporate motto is “Don’t be evil,” it is amazing how many regulatory, oversight agencies, and foreign governments have had inquiries into the company because of privacy issues and business practices. It has been said over the past year that Eric Schmidt was the adult supervision at Google, but he is no longer in charge of the day-to-day operations. While Google tried to pass its stock split as nothing more than traditional, in effect, the move will lock in power for the founders permanently. They can effectively ignore every single call from shareholders for the rest of their lives.

http://247wallst.com/2012/06/04/comp...-power-at-all/

Other computing / technology / IT companies on the list are VMware, Broadcom and Zynga.

[GreyGeek]

What showing on the stage doesn't reflect what is going on behind the curtains, and so one does not always know who is pulling the strings.

For example, Microsoft and Apple were leading the charge (via their public announcements and rallying their sycophant "journalists" in the media) in making accusations that Google was unethical or even illegal in capturing GPS coordinates and wifi ESSIDs with their Street View crews. They were even making the ridiculous claim that Google "could be" breaking into secured wifi's and "spying" on the public. What they didn't reveal is that they, themselves WERE doing those things, and worse. Apple, for instance, was tracking movements of Apple smartphone and tablet users by storing GPS data and uploading it on a regular basis. Microsoft has been tracking users use of Windows users for for over 10 years! (Search for f**kmicrosoft.com on the Internet Achives to learn about the hidden directories and files that stored users personal info and computer uses and uploaded it to Redmond.) It's obvious that their "righteous indignation" and concern for public privacy doesn't extend to their own activity.

The typical speed limit in residential areas is 25mph. I've shown in other posts that for any given ESSID the Google Street View vehicle would be in range for 30 seconds or less, depending on the transmitting power of the Wireless router. For WPA2 encryption 30 seconds isn't enough time for anyone to break the encryption and capture the password, much less capture any significant amount of data. On unsecured wifi APs with typical bandwidths the number of captured packets would be around 600, which amounts, at the most, to around 500,000 bytes of useful data. Most users watching movies or reading web pages like this would spend more than 30 seconds and the data picked up by monitoring them would be useless.

So, what is the likelihood that during any 30 second period the StreetView vehicle would pick up, on an open wifi, the login information for an email, shopping or bank account? Now, what are the odds that of all the pages that the user could be browsing they would happen to be login into their bank at that precise time? I am on line about 10-12 hours per day. I log into my bank about twice a week for, perhaps, 5 minutes. The odds would be 1 out of a 1,000. An extremely poor way to collect data on a person. With their back doors, Apple's and Microsoft's methods are more direct and reliable.

IMO, the big problem that Apple and Microsoft have with Google is that Google gives away for free services that A & M would LOVE to monetize. As long as Google is doing that they can't charge access fees to look at satellite maps or view locations at street level, or plan trips by comparing various routes, or for trend research, or for searching scholarly works, etc...

[GreyGeek]

Oh, I forgot about your thesis.

Anyone who would purchase non-voting shares in a publicly traded company has no valid reason to complain that they can't vote on company issures. IF the shares were, because of stock manipulations, to lose their voting power then they have a complaint, and a class action lawsuit is the cure.