YouTube

The much under-appreciated trend is how rapidly much of the Internet is effectively being supplanted by "GooglesNet," given that Google's data-centers uniquely and constantly capture and store current copies of the Internet's roughly trillion web-pages. GooglesNet is not transparent and is increasingly becoming a closed dark fiber shadow of the "Open Internet."

If the FCC's proposed Open Internet regulations turn out to be "fair" and "fact-based" as promised, the FCC won't be able to gerrymander a "network" definition that allows Google, -- the world's largest and fastest-growing Internet network per Arbor Networks' new study -- to escape from new FCC net neutrality regulation.

The facts that Google should be subject to any "fair" network neutrality regulations are overwhelming.

First, according to a just-announced Arbor Networks study, the single "largest study of global Internet traffic since the start of the commercial Internet," (involving the top 100+ ISPs, including Google)... 

My latest Google antitrust white paper, "Googleopoly IV: The Googleopsony Case," is the first antitrust analysis which connects-the-dots between Google's search advertising selling monopoly and Google's information access buying monopoly or "monopsony" by explaining and documenting how Google is harming competition in digital: news, books, broadcasting, artwork, documents, and analytics; and harming consumers seeking quality digital information that is not free.

What are the big forward-looking implications for the broader Internet-related economy of Google's announcement it is launching a new variant of behavioral advertising, called "interest-based advertising."

• Analytically, this may be one of the most significant developments in the digital economy, Internet advertising and online privacy in a long time.
• Why? 

First, it is probably a major catalyst escalating and accelerating public discussion about behavioral advertising and online privacy.

Context is always important, and this announcement does not occur in a vacuum. It has broad implications because of the pervasive reach of the issue and the market leadership of the announcer. For example:

Who buys Twitter?     

By way of background, Twitter bought the search engine Summize in July of 2008, raised $35m more in capital last month, and reportedly turned down a $500m offer from Facebook.

Why is this notable?

If Twitter's future is similar to other fast-growing technology first-movers, Twitter will eventually be bought by a large player, sooner rather than later, like NewsCorp bought MySpace, Google bought YouTube, and eBay bought Skype.

While Google may be at the top of most people's minds as the most likely buyer of Twitter, given its value as a fast-growing originator of searches,   Google CEO Eric Schmidt's much-reported dissing of Twitter as a "poor man's email" struck me as strange, and prompted me to noodle about why Google is uncharacteristically talking down such a popular first-mover app?

Google's three-year-old video subsidiary, YouTube, now generates more searches than any other site or competitor in the U.S. -- surpassing #2 Yahoo in August per Comscore's U.S. expanded search rankings.

• Another way to look at this milestone is that Google:
  • is now both #1 and #2 in search,
  • is seeking an ad outsourcing partnership with the #3 and #8 players in search -- in the proposed Google-Yahoo ad partnership,
  • to go along with Google's existing ad outsourcing partnerships with the #5, #6, #7, #9, and #11 players in U.S. search.  
• Kudos to Ms. Klaassen of Ad Age and Mr. Helft on the NYT Bits Blog and for flagging this search ranking milestone.

The new ComScore August 2008 search rankings spotlight the awesome search cartel reach Google has assembled:

Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Kohl sent a letter to the DOJ on the Google-Yahoo ad agreement stating "we conclude that important competition issues are raised by this transaction."

"These issues include: 

• Whether the agreement will lead to higher advertising prices;
• whether search and display are interchangeable and substitutable; and 
• Whether this transaction will strengthen Yahoo as a competitor or perpetuate its decline and even exit from this market; and
• whether there are significant barriers to entry impeding new competitors in this market."   

The letter ends with the thought that they "...would encourage the Department to intervene to protect competition..." if this deal now or in the future were to "...cross the line into an unacceptable, anti-competitive collaboration among competitors..."

It is important to note: Ranking Republican Member Orin Hatch was not a signatory of this letter; he was a signatory of the Subcommittee's letter to the DOJ on the Google-DoubleClick merger. 

Bottom line: The timing of this letter suggests that the DOJ is close to a decision on whether it will block or bless the proposed ad agreement between Google and Yahoo.

Google's motto 'Don't be evil' appears to be more PR and folklore than real ethical guidance for Google.

How could it possibly take Google almost four months to decide to act against one of the most obvious, pervasive, and painfully real 'evils' in the world today --  hateful, unabashed, terrorist organizations like al Qaida committed to destroying America?

Does Google inherently favor its Google-owned applications over competitors in search results? The more one looks, the more it looks that way.

Saturday's New York Times article: "Some Media companies choose to profit from pirated YouTube clips" -- got me thinking about the anti-competitive nature of Google's increasing dominance of the process of locating copyrighted content online.

Does Google anti-competitively leverage its dominance in search to disadvantage its competitors, including Google's media competitors? New evidence suggests yes.

• A nod of thanks must go to GoogleBlogoscoped and innovator Timo Paloheimo who invented a derivative search engine, Google Minus Google, for the clever purpose of offering "Search with Google without getting results from Google sites such as Knol, Blogger and YouTube."
  • Mr. Paloheimo explains that he was inspired to create Google minus Google by the New York Times important article by Miguel Helft: "Is Google a media company?"
  • This suggests that a lot of people, when they connect-the-dots of Google's dominance in search and Google's aggressive competitive forays into everyone else's business, will have a similar eureka moment that Google is anti-competitively extending its dominance in search to other market segments.

The evidence shows Google is not a neutral search engine or a neutral wholesaler of search services.

As I will show below: