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Getty gets photographers on board to battle Google

October 5, 2016

GETTY ENLISTS PHOTOGS AGAINST GOOGLE — Getty Images, the stock photography giant, is trying a new tactic as it ramps up its effort to get antitrust officials to crack down on Google: rallying the sort of photographers and small photo agencies whose images they license to complain that they feel the pain of Google’s design choices. In the last week, the company has collected more than 3,500 signatures on a letter to European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager and another 3,300-plus on one to the Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, both of which argue that “Google’s anti-competitive business practices in image search” — that is, showing high-res photos on a stand-alone Google page, with subtle pointers to source websites — “are diminishing our livelihoods and creativity.” The campaign helps Getty, which is owned by global asset management firm the Carlyle Group, take a debate that can seem to some like the bickering of two business behemoths and recast it as a grassroots pushback against an unfair online gatekeeper.

The letter to Vestager asks her to extend her antitrust investigations into Google to include image search. When it comes to the U.S., Getty Images general counsel Yoko Miyashita told POLITICO: “We’d love nothing more than for the subcommittee to take a close look at this.”Google declined to comment. In the past it has said that click-throughs to source websites increasedafter it rolled out this way of displaying images.

ET TU, YAHOO? — Last year, Yahoo built a program to secretly scan user emails for specific phrases in accordance with a directive from U.S. intelligence services, reports Reuters. While Edward Snowden’s previous revelations about mass surveillance included the NSA’s bulk-data collection of users’ emails and phone calls, Yahoo’s program is unique in that it included real-time data searches of incoming messages, according to experts in the field. The existence of this program is also surprising because the U.S. government has taken a public stance on implementing safeguards that would curb such surveillance efforts, including passage of the USA Freedom Act. Reports show that Yahoo has previously tried to fight a data-gathering directive from the U.S. government and failed, a potential reason that the company may have opted to comply with this request instead of opposing it.

— Microsoft and Google have both definitively said they have not participated in any programs similar to the one that Yahoo developed. “We've never received such a request, but if we did, our response would be simple: ‘no way,’” a Google spokesman told MT. A Microsoft spokeswoman also noted: “We have never engaged in the secret scanning of email traffic like what has been reported today about Yahoo.” Twitter and Apple both said they haven’t received a request like this and would oppose it in court if they had. Twitter added: “Separately, while federal law prohibits companies from being able to share information about certain types of national security related requests, we are currently suing the Justice Department for the ability to disclose more information about government requests.”

— Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) voiced criticism of the Yahoo program. “If true, the government’s directive to Yahoo to write a software program and search all of its customers’ incoming emails for certain content is a gross abuse of federal power,” he said in a statement. “Private sector companies and private citizens are not an arm of law enforcement or an extension of our intelligence agencies.”

GOOD WEDNESDAY MORNING! Welcome to Morning Tech, where we’re halfway through debate season. Catch the rest of the team’s contact info after the calendar. Send your tech tips and comments to lzhou@politico.com and @liszhou. Catch the rest of the team’s contact info after the calendar.

W.H. TO ROLL OUT DIGITAL ‘OPPORTUNITY’ TOOLS — As part of its push to leverage open government data to help Americans climb the economic ladder, the Obama administration on Thursday will introduce more than two dozen new tools geared toward everything from “helping unemployed Americans build skills and find jobs” to “navigating data on school quality for students and families.” Coverage of Thursday’s launch event starts at 9 a.m. on whitehouse.gov/live.

TWITTER COMES TO CAPITOL HILL — Twitter officials recently met with Senate aides to discuss how the social network combats propaganda spread by fake accounts, a person familiar with the matter told POLITICO. The meetings followed a Sept. 8 letter from Homeland Security Committee ranking member Tom Carper to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey asking how the company dealt with bots spreading misinformation via the microblogging platform. The Delaware Democrat was concerned specifically with the possibility that the Russian government was using Twitter as part of “covert operations aimed at undermining the political process.” A Carper spokeswoman declined to comment on whether Dorsey had formally responded to the senator’s letter.

MORE HEAT ON FCC OVER BROADBAND PRIVACY — The 21st Century Privacy Coalition, an advocacy group funded in part by AT&T and Comcast, is scheduled to hold a teleconference this morning addressing the FCC’s proposed broadband privacy rules, which have encountered backlash from both traditional ISPs and edge providers, like Google. One of its leaders, former FTC Chair Jon Leibowitz, is expected to focus on the need for the FCC to adhere to the FTC’s existing standards on privacy. “If the FCC does move to harmonize its proposal with the FTC’s sensitivity-based approach to privacy, consumers will be the true winners,” he’ll say, according to prepared remarks. “Consumers will receive consistent and robust privacy protection where they need it most — for sensitive information — and also be allowed to continue to use all the other beneficial data they have come to expect and depend on in the internet age.”

FINTECH GETS FED SCRUTINY The Fed announced Tuesday that its national task forces will take a closer look at 19 proposals related to electronic payment technology, with plans to issue two reports on the subject in 2017. The reports will focus on evaluating the security and privacy of services like Venmo, which enable users to transfer money to one another, as well as identifying methods through which the speed of such transactions can be further improved.

AIRBNB SLAMS HOTEL LOBBY — In a memo it sent to congressional leaders on Oct. 4, Airbnb calls out the American Hotel and Lodging Association for both its opposition to home-sharing as well as its attempts to counter hotel workers’ efforts to raise the minimum wage.Airbnb levied the attack amid an increasingly heated conflict between the home-sharing site and the hotel lobby (yes, we know this is a pun), which has taken an active role in pushing laws that would make short-term home-sharing illegal in major cities like New York City and Los Angeles. It also follows an announcement Monday that highlighted a partnership between the Unite Here union and AH&LA. As part of its memo, Airbnb paints the hotel group as far from a champion for workers’ best interests, citing its history of consistently blocking labor’s efforts to unionize, and stymieing movements for overtime pay. An AH&LA representative called these claims “utterly baseless.”

GOOGLE SETS THE STAGE FOR HARDWARE The new Google Pixel smartphone was unveiled Tuesday and comes equipped with a brainy artificial-intelligence “Assistant,” one the company argues offers superior smarts compared with Siri and Alexa. The phone, together with Google Home, a new and improved Chromecast, the VR Daydream Headset and a Wi-Fi router, comprise some of the company’s significantly more coordinated hardware efforts, developed under the leadership of former Motorola president Rick Osterloh. “This is a coming-out party for us, without a doubt,” Osterloh, who was hired earlier this year, told The Verge. Verizon has signed on to be the exclusive carrier partner for Pixel phones, but unlocked versions of the devices are also compatible with the Project Fi network, which includes T-Mobile, Sprint and US Cellular.

ABC, CNN MINING SOCIAL NETWORKS FOR TOWN HALL DEBATE — Both networks posted on their respective Facebook pages earlierthis week, soliciting questions from followers on the most pressing topics they would like to see addressed in the second presidential debate, on Sunday. These questions may wind up under consideration by moderators running the town hall-style forum, which will include submissions from voters. For the first time, the debate will also use a website, PresidentialOpenQuestions.com, where people can enter their queries and vote on the ones they’re most interested in hearing answered. The top 30 entries from the site will be reviewed by ABC and CNN, along with additional data on discussion trends that Facebook and Google are slated to provide.

SOME OF THE INTERNET’S VP DEBATE ACTIVITY Gov. Mike Pence was the subject of a majority of the debate conversation on Facebook and Twitter (54 percent and 60 percent, respectively) on Tuesday night, but Sen. Tim Kaine generated more search interest on Google, with 55 percent of related queries. Abortion and implicit bias were other search terms that spiked during the debate.

OF ANTITRUST AND TECH — The outgoing French competition chief, Bruno Lasserre, sat down with Pro Europe’s Nicholas Hirst to talk about how antitrust regulation has changed during his 12-year reign, and what the rise of the sharing economy and other tech platforms means for competition. “We need to intervene more quickly. ... We were the first to open an inquiry into Google,” he says, arguing that regulators need to better monitor the impact of policies on consumers and keep pace with tech developments. “After three to four months we required Google to change its global AdWords policy to say clearly what content was acceptable and, once that was done, to ensure it treated all companies equally.” Read the full interview, for Pros, here.

TRANSITIONSTechNet, a coalition of innovation-focused CEOs and executives, added seven new members, including DoorDash, FWD.us, General Motors, LoanGifting, Thumbtack, Turo, and Zenefits. … Pinterest has brought on Twitter VP of Finance Todd Morgenstern as its first CFO. … As it grows its hardware endeavors, Google has hired David Foster as its VP of Production Engineering. Foster was previously a VP of Hardware Engineering at Amazon, and also was involved in the development of the Kindle and Echo.