Google and a level playing field?

In Eric Schmidt's letter to Google's AdWords customers last week, he talked about the need for a level playing field for all online competitors, and looking out for small and medium sized businesses. Yeah right. As long as those businesses aren't competing with Google! 
 
Does Google really want a level playing field? Doesn't seem that way, especially when you read today's article in the New York Times.

Here's one of the money quotes:
"Google wants to raise the barriers to entry by competitors by making the baseline service very expensive," said Brian Reid, a former Google executive who is now director of engineering at the Internet Systems Consortium in Redwood City, Calif.
 
And how's this for open and transparent:
Google's inclination to secrecy began in its days as a private company in an effort to keep its rivals from determining the profits it was making from Web search advertising. But its culture of secrecy has grown to pervade virtually all of its dealings with the news media and even its business partners.
 
In no way am I saying that Google or the other ecommerce giants should not have the freedom to behave like this in a competitive market. That’s the rough and tumble side of competition. I am only highlighting Google’s public policy hypocrisy in professing to support net neutrality on principle and not to protect their market leadership position and their 89% gross profit margins.

Public interest groups… where are you on this one? Isn’t this precisely the type of corporate behavior that you allege potentially threatens Internet freedom and competition as you have defined it? Let’s see if the public interest allies of Google, like Common Cause, Public Knowledge, MoveOn and others, are operating on principle, or if they expediently look the other way for corporations on their side of the issue.