Two consumer advocacy groups say FTC chairman Deborah Platt Majoras has no place judging the merit of their privacy complaints stemming from the proposed merger of Google and DoubleClick. Majoras’s husband, John M. Majoras, works as an antitrust lawyer at Jones Day. DoubleClick is a firm client. That’s a conflict of interest, say the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy.

The FTC said its ethics division will review the situation, but noted that Jones Day has so far only represented DoubleClick before the European Commission. John Majoras claims not to be involved in this case. But as a partner in the firm, won’t he profit from the case regardless of whether he works on it?

Source:Valleywag

What’s the matter, Jason? No bulldogs with you in France? Yes, our pal Jason Calacanis really called for all non-Internet people to die at the LeWeb3 conference in Paris, TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher confirms. When we called Calacanis for factchecking, the moonfaced rhymes-with-entrepreneur said, “You guys are idiots. I don’t even want to talk to you. Never call me again.” Then he hung up. Jason, baby, is it something we said? Nah: It’s something you said.

Source:Valleywag

In a long-overdue move, Chris Sacca, Google’s “director of special initiatives,” has left the company. Cleverly, though, he’s moving into a new career where he can continue to talk a lot and let others do the work: He’s becoming an angel investor, working with Evan Williams’s Obvious, the company which spun off Twitter, and Paul Graham, whose Y Combinator specializes in funding companies with utterly adorkable names. We figured Sacca’s career at Google might be foreshortened when Google listed an opening for a “director of other,” since that pretty much sounded like Sacca’s job. Doing anything other than work. Congratulations, Chris: In a Valley that unfairly discounts laziness, you’re now the ultimate value stock.