Google Takes On FCC Over Wi-Fi, Street View Investigation

Google rose to prominence on the strength of its slogan, "Don't Be Evil," but a recent fine by the FCC cast some doubt on the veracity of that particular motto. Google is therefore returning with a strike of its own, not in a bid to overturn the fine, but rather in a bid to show that Google did no wrong in the first place.

The fine the FCC leveled against Google likely means little to Google itself; the dollar value of the fine is $25,000, and to a company with a market cap of just shy of $200 billion, the phrase "pocket change" comes to mind.

The fine itself follows FCC contention that Google "deliberately impeded and delayed" a probe the FCC conducted into Google's handling of sensitive user data via unsecured Wi-Fi connections, while creating their Street View feature on Google Maps.

But Google's response, a 14-page letter sent to the FCC, suggests the impeding and delay were generated by the FCC itself, who regularly dawdled as part of its investigation. The investigation, meanwhile, ran fully 17 months, during which Google says the FCC would take anywhere from seven to 12 weeks to respond to information that Google had submitted to the agency.

Google voluntarily handed over more than 800 pages of information to the FCC, and that it had also cooperated with a U.S. Justice Department investigation, as well as a Federal Trade Commission investigation about Street View, neither of which resulted in charges.

Moreover, Google asserts, the FCC almost impeded itself out of the investigation entirely, taking so long to accomplish anything that the agency's legal window to conduct the investigation in the first place would have closed. The only thing that gave the FCC the ability to conclude its own investigation was Google's willingness to agree to an extension giving the FCC an extra seven months under which to operate.

Google basically had a prime opportunity to permanently impede and delay the investigation by simply not allowing them more time to operate past that proscribed by law.

Meanwhile, the FCC seems satisfied with the results of its own investigation, saying through spokeswoman Tammy Sun that "in promising to pay the bureau's penalty, [Google] has rightly admitted wrongdoing."

And Google's willingness to cooperate reportedly hasn't spared it attention from the Federal Trade Commission, who is hiring an outside lawyer to investigate Google's business practices in general.

All things considered, it's not the best time to be Google, but considering how downright courteous Google seems to have been during the FCC's investigation, the fine itself, however minor, can almost be viewed as churlish in light of Google's extreme efforts to cooperate with the FCC. But at least for Google, one major government problem is now a thing of the past.