Recent revelations indicate that the seriousness of the FTC's antitrust investigation of Google's proposed acquisition of AdMob will be ramping up.

Only eight months ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt claimed Google and Apple were not "primary competitors" when a shareholder asked Mr. Schmidt to step down from Apple's board, because of an FTC antitrust investigation of Google for engaging in anti-competitive interlocking directorates per an AP story.

• Only four months ago did Mr. Schmidt actually resign from the Apple board under pressure from the FTC.

While everyone is distracted by the front-page news of Google launching its own Google-manufactured smartphone called Nexus One, what I find most  interesting is that Google outbid Apple for AdMob by paying an exceptionally-high "multiple of up to ~16.7 times sales, the sort of price rarely seen in takeover deals since the heady days of the dot-com boom" per Reuters reports.

The foundation of American Democracy for over 200 years has been respect for the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law. The advent of the mainstream Internet in the 1990's created a new and exceptional medium for free expression, much as telephone, radio, movies, TV, faxes, dial-up, email, texting, etc. have created new technological mediums for free expression.

• The argument that the Government must regulate broadband providers in order to preserve 200 year-old First Amendment rights is disingenuous, duplicitous, and dystopian.  

Current justifications for new net neutrality regulations to implement a "21st Century First Amendment" via three votes by un-elected FCC commissioners as net neutrality proponents like Marvin Ammori advocate, could not be a more radical assault on America's real institutions of democracy. 

 If net neutrality supporters really cared about   advancing American Constitutional Democracy, they would respect that the U.S. Constitution is designed to prevent Government tyranny of the people by creating powerful institutional checks and balances, a Bill of Rights, and definitive processes to change laws or amend the Constitution.

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt told Forbes: "Our model is just better." "Based on that, we should have 100% share" -- per Forbes cover story: "When Google runs your life."

This is a remarkably ill-advised admission when Google is:

• Seeking FTC antitrust approval to buy the leading mobile advertising marketplace and direct Google competitor Admob;
• Seeking DOJ and court approval of the Google Book Settlement;
• Seeking to avoid FTC privacy regulation and congressional privacy legislation;
• Seeking to gain special treatment and an exemption from the FCC from pending net neutrality regulations supposedly designed to address anti-competitive behavior.   

I strongly recommend Barbara Esbin's excellent PFF white paper that systematically debunks many of the core assertions of net neutrality proponents. 

Barbara's clarity of thought, and her reasonable and well documented analysis proves that so many assertions of supposed "fact" made by net neutrality proponents simply can not withstand close scrutiny.

In a new development highly pertinent to the FCC's proposed open Internet regulations, the Guardian reports that: "BT and Google in talks over creating video delivery network for ISPs; BT Wholesale developing Content Connect to deliver online video stored on an ISP's network rather than the internet."

Federalist Society Forum:

“Is Google Monopolizing Something and If So What?”

National Press Club, Washington D.C., December 7, 2009

Remarks of Scott Cleland, President of Precursor LLC

Why Google is a Monopoly -- Presenting the Case before the Federalist Society

I am participating in a four-person debate today at noon sponsored by the Federalist Society on: "Is Google Monopolizing Something and if so what?" at the National Press Club in D.C. for anyone interested in attending. 

Panelists:

• Mr. Scott Cleland, President, Precursor LLC and Chairman, NetCompetition.org
• Ms. Susan Creighton, Partner, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, PC
• Prof. Geoffrey Manne, Founder and Executive Director, International Center for Law & Economics and Lecturer in Law, Lewis & Clark Law School
• Mr. Rick Rule, Partner, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP

I am looking forward to having the opportunity to directly debate a Google representative for the first time on all the Google anti-competitive issues I have written about in my Googleopoly I, II, III, IV, white papers, which can be found at www.googleopoly.net.   

For those interested in learning more about the net neutrality policy differences between the broadband sector and the applications sector, tune into my first debate with Mr. Markham Erickson, the Executive Director of the Open Internet Coalition, on the C-Span show "The Communicators" which first ran on 12-5-09 at 6:30 EST and will re-air on 12-7-09 at 8am and 8pm EST.

It is instructive to see the very wide gulf between us on what the FCC open Internet regulations would do.   

Google's mission to organize the world's information also increasingly makes Google the World's self-appointed Supreme Information Authority. When politics, facts, science, whatever... are in dispute... Google's engineers and secret algorithms will provide the world with the answer, the "truth." 

Who needs a society of Cartographers when there literally is:

• "The World According to Google."
  • See Google's latest post to see where Google is taking the world's information and the world's boundaries.  

The big implication of all this is why will there need to be any non-Google input into how the world's information is organized when Google's all-knowing engineering elite can much more efficiently decide for us all?

• Information may be power, but Google assures the world that Google, would never would take sides on any type of information dispute... or could they?
• Wait a minute isn't a ranking implicitly taking sides on what is the best information and what is not?
• The subtext here is don't get on the wrong side of Google, or your information may get sent to "the back of the arena," as one Google Sr. VP so aptly put it in a prominent Google blog post.

Please don't miss Steve Forbes outstanding clarity of thought on net neutrality in his op-ed: "net neutrality rules would dilute the concept of ownership on the Internet."

Mr. Forbes gets to the crux of the problem with the FCC's proposed open Internet regulations, that they are very anti-property and a hidden form of "price controls."