The Oracle Shoe Drops ⇥ bloomberg.com

As state after state filed lawsuits against Google last week — plus the U.S. federal government earlier this year — I had to wonder about the timing. Why those states? Why launch this campaign now? Well, it turns out that those attorneys general heard from an oracle, whi— I’m sorry, I am being told now that they heard from Oracle, with a capital O.

Naomi Nix, Bloomberg:

Officials in more than a dozen of the states that sued Google received what has been called Oracle’s “black box” presentation showing how Google tracks users’ personal information, said Ken Glueck, Oracle’s top Washington lobbyist and the architect of the company’s antitrust campaign against Google. Glueck outlined for Bloomberg the presentation, which often entails putting an Android phone inside a black briefcase to show how Google collects users’ location details — even when the phones aren’t in use — and confirmed the contours of the pressure campaign.

“I couldn’t be happier,” said Glueck about the barrage of lawsuits. “As far as I can tell, there are more states suing Google than there are states.”

It’s like a three year echo.

To be clear, a company lobbying against its competitor does not invalidate the issues that it is raising. It just makes them smell a bit funny.