Google's $900m deal with NewsCorp for exclusive (non-neutral) search from Myspace -- as reported in the WSJ highlights Google's competitive double standard. This deal is similar to the search-opolist Google's $1b (non-neutral) search arrangement and investment in AOL/Time Warner. This deal is also the same as search-opolist Google's exclusive (non-neutral) arrangement with DELL to be the default search engine on DELL computers when they are shipped.
Make no mistake, I fully support Google's competitive right to commercially negotiate these "non-neutral" Internet arrangements. That's what competition and free markets are all about. Free and open Internet competition best serves everyone.
What galls me is the search-opolist's blatant competitive double standard and unprincipled public policy. In other words, Google stands for complete freedom for itself, while lobbying hard for NN regulatory prison for ALL of Google's potential broadband competitors -- with no due process and -- with no chance for parole.
How can the "search-opolist" Google continue to say with a straight face that "non-neutral" deals with the Nation's increasingly dominant search engine and the nation's most dominant social networking site are fine, and maintain in the same breath that similar "non-neutral" arrangements with competitive broadband providers would destroy the Internet as we know it?
I guess the rarified air of stratospheric ~$115b market cap has gone to the search-opolist's collective heads. They apparently think that NN rules are only for those without king-size beds and hammocks in their custom-built 767 party planes.
When Google's market capitalization comes back to earth like valuations always do, Google will rue the day it pushed for Internet regulation. Inviting regulation into a previously unregulated market is remarkably undisciplined and naive -- like playing with a loaded gun and being surprised when you shoot yourself in the foot, or worse.
