The hypocrisy and situational ethics of "Google's Poodles", SaveTheInternet and FreePress is obvious for everyone to see.

SaveTheInternet on the top of its homepage has a call to "Take Action: Protect Free Speech Everywhere"! 

• "Stop the gatekeepers" "It's time Congress demanded free speech over all 21st century communications – on the Internet, on cell phones, on the streets, everywhere."
  • What part of "everywhere" does not include the most dominant gatekeeper on the Internet, Google, and does not include the free speech of a sitting U.S. Senator Susan Collins who is trying to respond to being targeted for election defeat by a political organization -- Moveon.org?
    • Are we to interpret that SaveTheInternet only believes free speech is warranted for people who agree with SaveTheInternet's chief patron -- Moveon.org? That's not very "neutral."
    • Or are we to interpret that because SaveTheInternet believes that Google's "don't be evil" "heart" is in the right place, they can do no wrong?
    • Like Google, do you not do what you say?

FreePress, runs the same "Stop the gatekeepers!" call at the top of their page in a rolling ad.

Robert Cox, the Founder and President of the Media Bloggers Association, a non-partisan professional standards group, reports that Google has blocked the running of U.S. Senator Susan Collins' anti-Moveon.org ads on Google.

•  "Internet giant Google has banned advertisements critical of MoveOn.org, the far-left advocacy group that caused a national uproar last month when it received preferential treatment from The New York Times for its “General Betray Us” message."
• "The ads banned by Google were placed by a firm working for Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ re-election campaign. Collins is seeking her third term."

  Google has a particularly tortured concept of "free speech" if it is willing to editorially ban Republican speech that opposes its most important and high-profile lobbying ally in the net neutrality fight.

  • It is painfully ironic that Google CEO Eric Schmidt just gave a major policy speech in August on Google's main public policy priorities and stated that:

    • "We need to defend freedom of speech as more speech comes on line."

    • By banning opposing political views, is Google defending free speech or practicing "Internet censorship" as the "Ultimate Internet Gatekeeper?

Listening to Google's General Counsel testify at the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on the Google-DoubleClick merger  which I also testified at, one would think everyone loves Google and all was just "teddie bears and rainbows" for consumers in Googleland.

Reed Hundt's Frontline Wireless,  is reportedly forming a high-profile "Open Access Advisory Council" for the 700 MHz spectrum auction, which includes "net neutrality" term-coiner and celebrity Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu.

I have two pieces of unsolicited advice for Frontline's new advisory council."

Google's long rumored Google phone
or GPhone project has attracted a lot of comment and chatter, but not a lot of
good analysis to date. One big exception is a very good article last week by
Miguel Helft of the New York Times: "For
Google, Advertising and phones go together."

Google just can't seem to get on the right side of copyright law -- or the law in general for that matter.

• Google's MySpace partner, News Corp clearly doesn't believe Google is doing enough to protect copyrights. 
• Peter Chernin, President of News Corp., in an interview with the Financial Times yesterday, chided Google that ""they could do a better job" at preventing illegally copied video from appearing on its YouTube site."
  • FT asks: "Do they have the technology to do it?"
  • Chernin: "It's pretty safe to say that they have the technology available, that if we [MySpace] have the technology available, a) it's publicly available, and b) I haven't yet heard a lot about Google being technologically constrained."

The point here is that Google clearly has the wherewithal to not violate copyright, but they are making a business decision that it is better or more profitable for Google to disrespect copyright law rather than to respect copyright law.

Kudos to Professor Joseph Turow on his spot on editorial "Don't give Google double the power" about the very troubling implications of the Google-DoubleClick merger.

• Don't miss reading it.   

The Google blog continues to essentially argue: what's good for Google is good for America and consumers. We have all heard that self-serving hubris and bunk before...  

• Mr. Rick Whitt, in the latest post on the Google Public policy Blog  concluded:
  •  "We think the Internet offers the optimal model for what best serves the interests of all consumers. To that end, we hope the FCC sticks to its guns as it tries to introduce the open ethos of the 'Net to a small segment of the closed wireless world."

Let's unpack the hubris and deception behind these assertions.

• Google is implying that anything that occurred in wireless in the past (B.G. -- "Before Google" entered the wireless world) did not serve consumers well -- and that we should scrap the existing competitive wireless model and adopt the Internet model that... surprise... most benefits Google.

Given Google's assault on the supposed failures of the current system, it is important to review the facts of what the existing competitive model actually has produced for American consumers.

Someone needs to call the SaveTheInternet/FreePress/net neutrality crowd on their outrageous hypocrisy in politically claiming that being for "net neutrality" is being for more "free speech" protections.

When the SaveTheInternet organization and their net neutrality allies were offered very specific legislative language that would explicitly protect "free speech'' on the Internet -- they actively blocked it from passage in the Senate Commerce Committee in August of 2006 and from it passing into law last Congress. 

The legislative text below was in the HR5252 Amendment proposed by then Chairman Stevens in the telecom reform bill in June of 2006.

• SaveTheInternet and the net neutrality movement opposed that protection of free speech language (Sec. 904. Application of the First Amendment) because what they really wanted was to make broadband subject to common carrier regulation.

 "SEC. 904. APPLICATION OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

I continue to be surprised and saddened that the mainline consumer groups, Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America remain completely AWOL on arguably one of the most important privacy issues threatening consumers --the pending Google-DoubleClick merger.

I can't seem to square the following facts.