During the recent wireless spectrum auctions that just brought the FCC $19.6 billion in license fees, there was a lot of speculation about what drove each of the different corporate bidders. But the bidders themselves were barred from speaking publicly about their auction strategies. Now that Verizon has been declared the biggest overall winner, and the auction is over, the participants are free to speak. Google was potentially the big spoiler in the auction, but as it explains, the main motivation behind its participation was simply to ensure that some of the open rules it had lobbied for would be enforced on whoever won.

From the Google Public Policy Blog: