Google is Now TOO Effective in Washington

I had previously seen this meme about the spectrum auction results pushed by some irony-loving wonky types, but when it is repeated by members of Congress (who fail to see the irony), it's been taken to another level...

From Bloomberg yesterday....

Google Inc. manipulated a U.S. government spectrum auction by bidding just enough to trigger rules that will open a nationwide set of airwaves to any device and then walking away, Republican lawmakers said.

The so-called open-access requirements, also backed by consumer groups, may have shortchanged taxpayers by discouraging more companies from bidding, Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, said today at a hearing.

``Google was successful in gaming the system,'' Upton said.

Upton's full comments are here.

The only right thing for Google to do is to begin to shut down its overly effective Washington operation. They are clearly operating on a level that is unfair to all those telecom giant DC neophytes.