Stopping “Badvertising” at Yahoogle.

As an indicator of how perverse wealth-draining antitrust policy has become, have a look at the “concessions” being squeezed out of Google and Yahoo on their proposed advertising collaboration.

In the communications realm, it used to be that the heavy-metal infrastructure companies were regarded as monopolistic or potentially so. Then, wise regulators feared the Windows desktop surely was an essential facility to which competitors deserved access. Now, “mere” content companies are the monopolies.

Think about it; websites–code!!–are being regarded as something regulators must oversee, as if our left-mouse-button no longer works should the ads we’re served up by Yahoogle seem stilted.

The end result of concessions here, as in satellite mergers and elsewhere, is that we end up with entities that increasingly do not resemble what would exist in a free market. Kind of like banks in a world in which central bankers have controlled money and credit for decades, but that’s another story.