Open access

Where's the free speech outrage when Google, the Internet's Ultimate gatekeeper, blocks free speech on the Internet in clear violation of the FCC's net neutrality principles?

• Many bloggers "received a notice from Google last week saying that their sites had been identified as potential “spam” blogs. “You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog,” the Google e-mail read" per the New York Times Bits blog by Miguel Helft.      

Google's well-known dominant share of the search market makes Google the Internet's primary gatekeeper and self-appointed organizer of the world's information. As I have written repeatedly, Google has more unaccountable power over the world's information than any entity in the world, see here, and here.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has booked a flight as a space tourist on Russia's Soyuz space shot according to the New York Times today.

• The story behind the story is that Google is finding the earth market too limiting and is planning to expand its mission from organizing all the world's information, to organizing all the universe's information.
• New Googlers in order to fit in with the "think big" Google culture have recently begun scoffing at the puny size of Earth's wireless market and are itching to conquer new more challenging frontiers in space where an android could be more useful.   
• One Googler was overheard saying that Jupiter is the next big market on Google's radar screen.

Previously, it was widely reported that Google is working on an inter-gallactic Internet.

I wanted to follow up and build upon my post of last week: "The logic of Internet Pricing Diversity and the Fantasy of free limitless bandwidth."

•  I keep hearing this backward-looking refrain from net neutrality proponents that because some people characterize dial-up and early broadband bandwidth as unlimited or as an all-you-can-eat usage model -- that that model should never evolve or change.
  • Balderdash! This is some people's wishes being presented as analysis.

I believe U.S. Internet access consumers have come to understand at least two truths: 

Given that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is delivering a major speech at the Economic Club of Washington Monday June 9th lunch, given that Google's business model is all about delivering "relevancy" to users, and given that Google's public policy mantra is "openness," I have assembled some suggested Washington-relevant questions for reporters and others to ask Dr. Schmidt at and after this open forum.

• The subjects of the questions are: antitrust, privacy, consumer protection, good government, transparency, openness, tax, net neutrality, and broadband Universal Service. 

Antitrust: 

I had to chuckle when I saw the headline: "Google CEO: Get Ready for Cellphone Ads" on the US News and World Report Blog.

• Google can't help but salivate over how valuable "targeted" ads could be on the most personal of devices -- the cell phone.

While Google's standard line is that Google is all about the "user" -- stories like this shed light on the truth -- it's really all about Google.

Google's self-centered, megalomaniacal mission to organize the world's information to be accessible and useful to Google -- blind Google to the very different privacy reality of the cellphone world:

Please read the brief and to the point editorial in the Las Vegas Review Journal on Net neutrality. They understand its a solution in search of a problem.

When I blogged yesterday wondering how long it would take Google to fully respond to Senate Homeland Security Chairman Lieberman's request for YouTube to pull down "Internet video content produced by terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda", even I didn't think Google-YouTube would respond so immediately and uncooperatively to Chairman Lieberman.    

Google-YouTube's response is remarkable because the United State's final arbiter of what is constituionally-protected free speech, The United States Supreme Court, just handed down a new ruling on free speech on Monday that further limited harmful free speech in its United States v. Williams decision. That decision concerned free speech limitations involving the pandering and soliciting of child pornography.

Given that Google began offering online personal health records to the public yesterday, I thought it would be timely and helpful to repost in its entirety a previous post of mine from February 21, 2008 on why Google being in the business of storing personal health records is a really bad joke.

• The post has over twenty useful and illuminating links, and many of them contain mainstream documents that underscore why the public should be extremely wary about entrusting Google with its most intimate, private and personal information.

Below is my 2-21-2008 post in its entirety -- if you missed it, or care about this issue, it's a online privacy must-read post: 

AP reports "Google to Store Patient's Health Records." Let's count the reasons why Google storing Americans' private health records is a really bad joke.

Senate Homeland Security Chairman Joe Lieberman "Monday called on Google to remove Internet video content produced by terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. The videos – readily available on YouTube –show assassinations, deaths of U.S. soldiers and civilians, weapons training, incendiary speeches by al-Qaeda leadership, and other material intended to encourage violence against the West."

The 2008 World Competitiveness Yearbook just came out and the U.S. is ranked #1 in world competitiveness again -- for the fourteenth year in a row.