Amazon Web Services is a hidden jewel inside Amazon, but very little information is provided to investors to assess its financial success.

FORBES: Amazon Overvalued: Lack of Visibility

The site requires some due diligence, ferreting out hidden costs such as cleaning services, and navigating through real estate hyperbole, where "charming" is code for inconvenient.

CNN: Staying in a stranger's home: A field test

That Samsung looks determined to make the Android platform and Google vanish from users' view, hidden under its own branding and services.

BBC: Samsung's New Galaxy - goodbye Google?

That is quite true, but so far those services have not detected any hidden ties with extremism.

ECONOMIST: Global Muslim networks: How far they have travelled | The

But it turns out that, behind the scenes, Sony may also be installing invisible services in the form of a hidden directory containing cloaked files, which run when you use that media player.

ENGADGET: Sony DRM hacks your PC

Checking-account customers might have to begin paying for the services they consume rather than being a hidden beneficiary of the rents from deposit insurance.

WSJ: Jenkins: Yes, Let's 'Bail In' Depositors

The investigations my firm has undertaken on behalf of institutional investors over the years reveal that when you scrutinize financial products and services and identify conflicts of interest and hidden financial dealings, you can predict poor performance.

FORBES: On Your Own: Investing in An Era of Irrelevant Regulation (October 2009)

If conflicts of interest, hidden financial arrangements, fraud, collusion between parties providing services to pensions, or even mismanagement are contributing to the demise of our pensions, action must be taken before more plans fail.

FORBES: Consequences of the Mutual Fund Industry's History of Transgressions (November 1, 2003 )

The Microsoft and Google services don't have identical features, and Microsoft says there are hidden costs for many businesses to make Google Apps work properly.

WSJ: Microsoft Hits Back at Google