I testified this morning on Internet Privacy issues before Chairman Markey's Internet Subcommittee. My Testimony.

My message was straightforward:

Anyone interested in Google's increasing dominance or the Google-Yahoo partnership should read Andrew Orlowski's great piece in The Register: "Google the mother of antirust battles?"

• It is always helpful to get an insightful and different perspective from "across the pond."   

Blogging from the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing, there was a very surprising development several minutes ago.

• Chairman Kohl characterized as "pretty explosive stuff" how Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith recounted what Yahoo Ceo Jerry Yang told Microsoft last month in a meeting with several witnesses.
• Per Microsoft's Smith: Jerry Yang said that the search market was "bi-polar" with Google on one pole and others on the other pole.
  • Yang indicated that Yahoo was going to join the Google "pole" because the other pole was not viable. 

Under oath, Senator Spector followed up on the Chairman's interchange and asked Brad Smith if he stood by this characterization of CEO Yang's "bipolar" comments -- and he replied "absolutely!"

• When Senator Spector asked, in a prosecutor's style, if Yahoo's General Counsel  was at that meeting, he said he was but that he did "not recall" Yang's "bi-polar" comment and disagreed with Microsoft's characterization. 

As anyone in Washington appreciates, and Senators Kohl and Spector certainly appreciated, someone was not telling the truth.

A recent study by the Leichtman Group found 70% of American broadband subscribers are very satisfied with their service, and relatively few are actually seeking faster Internet access.

• This suggests the drumbeat for a national broadband industrial policy, because America's Internet is too slow and falling behind the rest of the world, is just empty rhetoric and wishful assertions by Big Government types.
• As I have blogged before, the facts are not the friends of those screaming for de facto nationalizing the Internet.  

Bottom line:  The more one learns about the facts about what benefits American broadband consumers actually enjoy, and what they demand in the future, it is not what the Big Government folks claim.  

eBay sellers are complaining that eBay's change in its business model discriminates in favor of Buy.com with a special no-fee selling tier and also violates eBay's longtime commitment to a "level playing field" -- per an article in the New York Times:  

• "Many believe that eBay has violated the sacred tenet of the “level playing field,” which its founder, Pierre Omidyar, established as one of the company’s basic principles."...

• "“As an independent seller, I felt betrayed,” Mr. Libby said. “I’ve paid eBay many hundreds of thousands in fees over the past several years and believed them when they talked about a level playing field. And they just plain and simple are going back on their word.” “There is fair, and there is outright stabbing you in the back,” he said."

As an ardent free market proponent, I strongly defend eBay's freedom to price discriminate, and offer more than one selling tier in their Internet model.

In advance of the Senate and House antitrust hearings on Google-Yahoo, I thought it would be useful to debunk some of the primary antitrust myths you will likely hear.

Myth #1: There can’t be an antitrust problem as long as consumers are just one click away from a competitive search engine.

I got to wondering why so many supposed "public watchdogs" are AWOL on Google's threat to privacy, when I was reading the LA Times excellent editorial where they ponder the question: "Why is Youtube Hoarding Data?" 

Other than the New York Times last year taking Google to task for StreetView in "Watching your every move?" the editorial boards around the country have be uncharacteristicly silent on Google's unprecedented collection of more private information on more people than any time in history, while being ranked worst in the world on privacy by Privacy International.  

The FCC is reportedly considering putting "the burden on the network operator to prove that its network practices are reasonable" in its net neutrality proceeding on Comcast's network management, according to today's top story in Washington Internet Daily.

• Assuming that this report is accurate, and assuming that an FCC majority would approve such a shift of the burden of proof, let me explain why such an FCC ruling would be a profound assault on the freedoms that Americans hold most dear.   

It would be supreme irony, if in the supposed name of "Internet Freedom," the FCC somehow ruled that network operators had no freedom to manage their private property, enter into contracts or pursue business without prior permission from the FCC.

• Freedom from Government is central to the U.S. Declaration of Independence which declares "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." 
• The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the presumption of innocence: No person shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."   

Why would it be bad to put "the burden on the network operator to prove that its network practices are reasonable"?

Drudge flagged an interesting article in the British Mail Online: "Big Brother: The Google cars that will photograph EVERY front door in Britain." 

• Seems like Google has struck a nerve in Britain, a country that normally tolerates more public surveillance than most because of such a long history with fighting terrorism.
• The Brits appear to be deeply offended with Google's massive attempt at private surveillance.
  • It's viewed as Google needlessly making it more efficient for bad guys, terrorists, burglars, stalkers, pedophiles, etc. to find your home/hearth and more easily do private citizens harm.
  • Google is unwittingly creating a dashboard and operating system for stalkers, criminals and terrorists -- and Big Brother.   

Google is rapidly becoming George Orwell's 1984 BIG BROTHER ENABLER.

• And how does this comport with Google's motto: "Don't be evil"?
• I wouldn't be surprised to see neighborhoods start to organize and post signs -- Google "Spycars" Prohibited/Unwelcome.

New facts from independent sources continue to undermine the political charge that the U.S. is falling behind in broadband, the thinly-veiled charge that Big Government proponents use to justify the need for a national broadband industrial policy to replace the current free-market national Internet policy.

• A new report by Nielsen, the independent market research firm: "Critical Mass: The worldwide state of the mobile web"
  • Ranks the U.S. #1 out of the 16 countries they measure in mobile Internet usage penetration -- ahead of the UK, Germany, France and Italy and others. 
  • The report also concludes that penetration of 3G-broadband-capable handsets is greater in the U.S. than in the EU (28% vs 25% of consumers respectively.)

Why are these new independent findings important?

First, broadband mobility is as important to Americans as stationary broadband speed.