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The 2008 World Competitiveness Yearbook just came out and the U.S. is ranked #1 in world competitiveness again -- for the fourteenth year in a row.

• This ranking by the Swiss IMD is the third major, world-respected, independent ranking that concluded the U.S. is not falling behind the rest of the world in competitiveness.
• These three different independent assessments are in stark contrast to broadband critics' call for abandonment of free-market competition policies in favor of a more regulatory broadband industrial policy. 
  • In November 2007, the U.S. ranked #1 in the World Economic Forum's Global competitiveness Report for 2007-2008.
  • Last year, the Economist Intelligence Unit's latest Global Digital Rankings had the U.S. tied for second in the world.

Bottom line: Pro net neutrality and pro-regulation proponents love to jump on isolated data or studies like the OECD broadband rankings to justify a reversal of free-market competition policies in favor of more command and control government industrial policies.

However, facts are pesky things.

With respect and affection to the memory of the late great Dr. Seuss.... 

Googlehoo mocks all the boo hoos over their ballyhooed Googlehoo coup.

Get a clue.

Googlehoo pooh-poohs a collusive coup between their crews.

It's no glue to screw you.

But, who knew it would be true, that Googlehoo would rue, that Justice could see through, Googlehoo's collusion boo-boo, and eventually sue?

Can we construe Mr. Icahn's Yahoo debut, and shareholder kung fu, as a rejection of the Googlehoo view?

Will Yahoo bid Googlehoo adieu, overcome the Microsoft taboo, and renew the review of the Microsoft view?

As Google and Yahoo continue to negotiate their search outsourcing pact, pesky competitive facts keep arising that suggest that such a deal is likely to eventually be found by antitrust officials to be illegal anti-competitive collusion.

• Yahoo is running an AP story that says that Google has now surpassed Yahoo as the #1 "most popular website in the United States according to Comscore."
• This is on top of Google and Yahoo being the #1 and #2 search providers in the U.S. and the leading competitors in the display advertising market, ad tools market and ad brokering market.

The operative question is not whether Google and Yahoo can craft an acceptable search advertising outsourcing pact that can pass antitrust muster, but whether the DOJ wants to encourage such intimate  and important business "cooperation" between Google, the dominant #1 in the market, and one of the only two companies that most consider to be Google's primary competition in multiple market segments.

A Silicon Insider post does a great job of building on Richard Waters FT point that Google's search business is increasingly rivaling the size of Microsoft's Windows monopoly.

It is getting harder and harder for Google to continue to pretend to be the little vulnerable upstart -- Google is now the dominant incumbent in search and increasingly the market power in online advertising.

The numbers in Silicon Insider's analysis are quite compelling.  

The USA Today's business section cover story is on George Soros, who is notable here as probably the second biggest funder of net neutrality/information commons causes after Google.

The appropriately skeptical article, by David Lynch, has a second page-headline that sums up George Soros' government-first, economic point-of-view: "Traditional free market theory flawed."

George Soros is really the poster child for net-neutrality-ish thinking, which is that the few, the truly wise, like Mr. Soros, know what is truly best for everyone else -- and that the whole free market concept of accumulating all the actions of all market actors through supply and demand to determine prices or market equilibrium -- is all wrong and a waste of time -- according to Mr. Soros.

• Why include all this riff-raff -- like consumers and businesses -- be free to make constant decisions and adjustments, when the brilliant elite thinkers like Mr. Soros can cut through all the free-market mumbo jumbo and simply tell people what the right economic answers should be to any economic question?  

Just like the Google/Soros astroturf net neutrality army who think they can rename an issue and demagogue it into the mainstream popularity, Mr. Soros now has his very own theory of economics, which he calls "reflexivity" (think knee-jerk-ivity), that Mr. Soros proposes replace current free-market theory and thinking.

Kudos to Richard Waters of FT for his insightful analysis "Google triumphant."

Let me highlight some key takeaways:

• “The failure of the Microsoft/Yahoo merger eliminates the biggest short-term threat” to Google’s unrivalled position on the web, says David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School. For now, its momentum “seems unstoppable”.

The article also provides excellent new detail to the thesis in my Googleopoly analysis and Senate testimony that Google's real dominance is as the dominant "market maker" for online advertising.

BBC News' Silicon Valley bureau is reporting on increasing "Alarm at Google-Yahoo partnering" and is highlighting a new letter to the DOJ Antitrust Division by 16 civil rights and rural advocacy bodies:

• "In a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett, head of the Justice Department's anti-trust division, the coalition argues that such a deal would give Google almost 90% of the search advertising market and strengthen its influence over internet users' access to information.

  "We face a possible future in which no content could be seamlessly accessed without Google's permission," the letter states."

It appears others are noticing that Google's dominance of search, and online advertising threatens to control the monetization of all content on the Internet...

Last summer I wrote an op-ed for the Washington Times entitled: "The Ultimate Internet GateKeeper," which is what Google is quickly becoming...  

A Yahoo-Google search outsourcing pact arguably faces even more problems with European antitrust authorities than the reported U.S. DOJ antitrust investigation, for two reasons:

Net neutrality proponents who argue broadband competition doesn't work and see a "duopoly" in every shadow, were confronted with powerful market evidence recently that their take on the broadband competitive facts is flat wrong. 

The big Wimax consortium announcement this week by Clearwire, Sprint, Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House, is obvious evidence that:

• National broadband competition and consumer choice continues to increase; and
• Congress' and the FCC's rejection of net neutrality legislation and regulation encourages investment in broadband deployment to all Americans most quickly.

This free-market, innovative business model development, which Google has embraced with a $500m investment, takes even more wind out of the sails of the net neutrality movement.

I have to admit that I was surprised by all the back-pedaling and calculated retreat by net neutrality proponents at the House Internet Subcommittee hearing on Chairman Markey's net neutrality bill HR5353.

Net neutrality proponents were clearly on the defensive, proactively responding to criticisms of the bill and not spending much time touting its benefits.