Three times in the recent past, the Feds have fired fastballs at Google in the form of antitrust reviews. And they have very little to show for it.

First, the Feds gave a look-see at Google’s pending book-scanning settlement — a deal aimed at protecting book publishers which the Feds ardently believe have been rendered an endangered species by the search giant.

Then, government officials questioned the overlapping board membership involving the Google and another somewhat popular company, Apple.

Most recently, they’ve questioned why Google and other normally business-aggressive tech companies suddenly get all Shirley Temple-like when it comes to snapping up each other’s prized employees.

All the attention has turned Dana Wagner, a former antitrust lawyer at the DOJ who joined Google last year, into a veritable spokesperson for the company. Wagner has been talking up public officials, academics and reporters pretty much non-stop in an attempt to quiet the storm. 

After highlighting the company’s foundation and “don’t be evil” corporate philosophy, Wagner’s mantra is that his company actually owns a 2.66% share of the advertising market.

Say what?

Wagner insists Google’s market is not search advertising, where it owns a 70% market share, but the entire advertising arena which includes everything from highway billboards to Oxyclean pitchmen. 

“We need to move past intuitive market definitions and actually look at how consumers, advertisers and publishers are shifting their spending,” Wagner told the Washington Post. “Market definition is job one, and hopefully people aren’t bringing too many preconceived notions to that.”

Never mind that Google maintains a 30% operating margin, which is all but impossible if the playing field were actually level. Or that when old friend Microsoft tried a similar tactic in the 1990s, the strategy was dismissed as disingenuous. (more…)

Prospects at major research universities have improved for female scientists and engineers, although they still struggle to match male peers when it comes to salary, according to a report published by the National Research Council.

“Men and women faculty in science, engineering and mathematics have enjoyed comparable opportunities,” in recent years, the report concluded.

In particular, women who apply for university positions, promotion and tenure are at least as likely to succeed as men.

A great equalizer in encouraging women to apply for jobs, the report found, was the presence of women on the committees tasked to fill the positions.

The Council, part of the National Academy of Science, was convened by Congress. It surveyed biology, chemistry, civil and electrical engineering, mathematics and physics. It relied on faculty interviews and data from federal registries and professional societies.

It was chaired by Claude Canizares, the VP for research at MIT, and Sally Shaywitz, a learning expert at Yale.

Meanwhile, a second report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the gender-related achievement gap in mathematics has vanished of late.

“U.S. girls have reached parity with boys, even in high school and even for measures requiring complex problem solving,” reported Wisconsin University-based researchers Janet Hyde and Janet Mertz.

And, Laurence Summers take note, girls are catching up in the ranks of so-called math prodigies, a finding that undermines claims that profound mathematical talent is the biological destiny of males.

The Wisconsin researchers used data from the No Child Left Behind program and the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Gender-related differences were “close to zero in all grades,” they found, including high school where gaps had previously existed.