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Google CEO Eric Schmidt ascended to the Aspen Summit to discuss what freedom and openness means to his company and its customers. The Google Public Policy blog has been spinning the company's mantra about net neutrality, open access to the 700MHz wireless spectrum, and now the simple concept of freedom. Their latest post features a video of Schmidt addressing The Progress & Freedom Foundation's Aspen Summit about Google's views on those topics.

This is the talk where Schmidt suggested Google will "probably" bid on the 700MHz spectrum when the auction takes place. We'll be surprised if they don't participate, either as a bidder or in partnership with one or more entities.

A video of his presentation opens with an introduction that references Schmidt's history with Sun and Novell, two companies that have fallen into corners of the tech industry where they once held dominant positions. Fortunately for the CEO, Larry Page and Sergey Brin rescued Schmidt from Utah to helm the pre-IPO search engine.

The blog summarized the essential points Schmidt wanted to make about the Internet and freedom, noble aspirations to be certain:

First, he said we need to defend freedom of speech as more speech comes online – and give teeth to the issue by pressing governments to classify censorship as a trade barrier. Second, we need to continue working toward universal broadband access, by government collaborating with industry and making sure that networks remain content neutral. And third, he called on government to be more transparent to its citizens – citing as an example our Sitemaps partnership with the federal government and five state governments.

We have to scratch our heads about the 'censorship as trade barrier' comment. Google and a number of other technology companies have agreed to abide by local laws in China, so they can open operations there. Those laws include the willing self-censorship of content.

We'll give Schmidt and Google credit on one point: at least they aren't Yahoo, which still has to explain itself over Congressional testimony given in relation to journalist Shi Tao's incarceration in China, and Yahoo's knowledge of the evidence gathering that took place.