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CEO Eric Schmidt says Google is moving at full speed with plans to place ads on its archrival Yahoo, even though the Department of Justice is just gearing up to take action on the deal. The deal, signed in June, is set to start in weeks. "You face a question as a large company trying to change things: How many initiatives do you want to take on that are unpopular or lead to criticism?" said Schmidt in a press conference. By "change things," Schmidt would have you think he's talking about saving the world. But here's something that should draw interest from antitrust cops: A Valleywag tipster says that one unpopular change Google is making is to hike the minimum bids on some ads tenfold. That kind of pricing power is usually a sign of a monopoly. And it should well lead to criticism.It's not clear how widespread the price hikes are. (If you've seen raises in your Google bids, please let us know.) But even if the price changes are narrowly targeted, they're alarming in their size and suddenness. The effect of hiking the bids, and then dropping them, says our tipster, is that many of the keyword campaigns were canceled for not meeting the temporarily raised minimums, as he says this screenshot shows:

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Google will likely defend the move as an effort to improve the quality of ads, arguing that more expensive ads are more likely to prove of interest to Web searchers. But the net effect is to shut out mom-and-pop shops aiming to advertise in small niches — the market on which Google built its advertising machine. At Google's Zeitgeist conference today, sales chief Tim Armstrong said, "We have one of the most transparent, accountable models in the digital landscape," True in the sense that Google's pay-per-click advertising can easily be tracked to see its benefit. But when the cost is set by Google, in an utterly opaque manner, how can anyone make rational plans around its advertising? All the cost-benefit analyses in the world won't help an advertiser whom Google decides to disadvantage, for its own obscure reasons. AdWords, the system Google uses to take bids for ads and place them, has long been called a "black box"; its operations are mysterious, and Google does not explain the changes it makes to its algorithms — in part, it says, because it changes them so frequently. But regulators would be wise to demand more clarity for Google. It's a simple quid pro quo: If Google is to expand its reach with the Yahoo deal, why not give customers a bit more clarity on how it charges them? It doesn't seem like much to ask. (Photo by Steve Jurvetson)