Watchdog exposes Google antics

Ebay had applied to get immunity from prosecution under the Trade Practices Act ahead of the Paypal changes.

The watchdog had received a 38-page anonymous report from a whistleblower in which the move was dubbed 'anti-competitive'.

However, when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) website printed the report it took David Bromage, a disgruntled Ebay user and model train enthusiast from Canberra only a few seconds to discover who the complaint was really made by.

Peering at the meta data in the downloaded submission, which was posted as a PDF document, he found this nugget: "Microsoft Word - 204481916_1_ACCC Submission by Google re eBay Public _2_.DOC".

The ACCC received the submission as a Word document, removed the author's name as requested, and converted the file into a PDF for posting on the website.

When Bromage started to tell world about Google's involvement, the document was pulled and has since been replaced by one less revealing.

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