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The fateful policy decision by the FTC/DOJ to exclude privacy as a factor in antitrust enforcement has fostered a perverse market dynamic where many online advertising companies now effectively compete on the basis of who can most take advantage of consumer privacy fastest, rather than compete on the basis of who can best protect consumer privacy. 

In ominous cross-pond agreement for Google, the Financial Times and the New York Times agree that Google needs more antitrust accountability:

• See the FT editorial; "Google should be watched carefully"
• The the NYT editorial: "The Google Algorithm."

Google itself has put the issue of "search neutrality" on the map with its FT op-ed and Google blog post and by saying they are for now for search bias after being against it.

Google's proposed acquisition of ITA software to beef up the Google Travel vertical, has put on everyone's radar screen the anti-competitive potential of Google continuing to extend, tie,and leverage its global search monopoly into content verticals like travel.

Google strongly legitimized the problem of "search neutrality" in arguing in detail in an FT op-ed today why Google's search should not be neutral. 

The evidence mounts that Google is increasingly throwing its monopoly weight around anti-competitively without much apparent fear of antitrust enforcement. This Google antitrust update will spotlight:

1. New evidence of Google's unfettered "kingmaking" power (lack of search neutrality) to anti-competitively self-deal with highest search rankings and sabotage competitors' rankings;
2. Google's latest anti-competitive pattern of behavior, i.e. Google's wholesale-retail vertical squeeze play; and
3. Why the antitrust risk Google faces comes from the EU and the DOJ, not from the FTC.   

I. Latest Evidence of Google's Anti-competitive Search Discrimination:

Viacom is likely to ultimately prevail in its appeal of the lower Court decision in the seminal Viacom vs. Google-YouTube copyright infringement case.

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt, dismissed the notion that Google was "arrogant" in an FT interview.

• Mr. Schmidt: "The arrogance comes across because we trying to do things for end-users against organised opposition from stakeholders that are unhappy -- and they paint us as arrogant. But I am sure that all successful organisations have some arrogance in them."  

It seems to me that "the arrogance comes across" with Google because Google operates, and expects to operate, under a double standard -- where rules, laws and expectations apply to others, but do not, and should not, apply to Google -- because Google is somehow special.

The latest example  of Google's expectation to be treated differently and better than Google treats everyone else -- is Google's "permissions" policy.  (See the Goobris Series below for other examples.)

To help you picture both the enormity and unprecedented power of what Google knows about you and the world's information: public, private and proprietary, I have organized all the world's information types that Google collects onto a one-page chart/PDF: "Google's 'Total Information Awareness' Power."

For those who really want to understand Google and its impact on most everyone and most everything, please read and study this one-page chart/PDF, because much valuable work and insight has gone into it.

(Click here for one-page PDF version of the Google Privacy Fact Sheet)

What Private Information Google Collects

Google's core search advertising monopoly is understated substantially by many for several reasons.

1. Most cite second best source: Media reports tend to report the most frequent and publicized ComScore 65.1% retail market shares for Google in the U.S., not the more accurate and comprehensive Hitwise 70% retail market shares in the U.S. that the DOJ/FTC rely upon, (because Hitwise's sample size is much bigger than ComScore's.)

2.  Most don't cite total share: Media reports almost never use Google's total market share because they almost always miss or forget to add in Google's wholesale share of searches to its retail share of searches.

Google's latest privacy-killing act of privacide is "Google's roving Street View spycam," which is not only taking pictures, but is also scanning to log WiFi network addresses and unique Media Access Control (Mac)addresses per Andrew Orlowski's excellent scoop at the Register.