Google-Verizon Deal; slippery slope?
 

This in the New York Times today (login required, but free) Google and Verizon Near Deal on Pay Tiers for Web. Josh Silver, writing in Huffington Post (a little over the top in my view), calls this "The End of the Internet as We Know It"

Thoughts??

I trust Verizon with *nothing*. Verizon Wireless, at least, is an evil, evil, anti-consumer company. (No pun intended. I should really ask for a name change a la Zalister. But that's for another day.)

I'm not picking up good vibes off Google either.

That was my general take as well. It seems to bode a marriage between the largest Internet provider and the largest Internet presence; it's never a good thing when giants get together. Think banks or oil companies.

I still don't get the whole debate. We already have tiered data plans, Comcast (our local IP) has several different kinds of packages. The more you pay, the faster the internet goes. Why wouldn't it be different for businesses?

Frankly, if someone is willing to pay for faster access, they should be allowed to do so. I would prefer people like Hulu.com got a little priority (they're a big company, so presumably they will), that way I can watch streaming video that much more easily.

I will say this: They can't prioritize large companies on such a level that it excludes small sites from having a reasonable amount of bandwidth. And also, you can't charge more for one company to receive more bandwidth, and then at the same time charge smaller companies the same amount of money. Bandwidth isn't limitless, so if you're selling more to one place, you are necessarily selling less to someone else, which means you should charge less.

All in all I've never completely understood this debate, but maybe there's something I'm missing.

I too pay extra for 30MB/sec down (instead of 10) and 2MB up (instead of less than 1), but that isn't the point of the debate. The fear factor in this Verizon/Google pairing is that Google content will get better service over Verizon than anyone else does, e.g. if you're streaming a video from them (or from youTube) you'll get a better connection than if it's from someone else, Hulu, say, or if you're using their talk service it'll work like a charm while Skype gets throttled.

Well, well. Google denies it, says the NYT article is just plain wrong.

I still don't understand how this changes things. If Google bought more bandwidth it would be the same thing, effectively. So, what's the big deal?

Goog can buy all the bandwidth it wants now; that's not the issue, Jay. Google doesn't own the backbone. The issue, now put to bed in a denial by Google, is that they might get preferential treatment from Vzn relative to other suppliers of the same services because Vzn would give their packets top priority and all others less.

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That’s spot on, NovaScotian. And I am astonished that the FCC does not use its muscles to preserve Internet neutrality.

Imagine, for a moment, FoxNews ensuring that its content transfers faster than that of the BBC, NYT, Al-Jazeera and what have you. That is effectively going to skew news coverage – and public perception.

Saying goodbye to Internet neutrality is effectively saying goodbye to a level playing field. And it may well bury many "bothersome" sites by making them far less accessible.

That is not what we want. It would be a disaster in all respects.
At least that’s my opinion.
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Well, to play devils advocate again (I'm enjoying this as of late), aren't we unfairly tampering with the decisions of a free market? It seems to me that if Verizon wants to sell priority slots on it's servers it's allowed to do so. It's fair when the tickets closest to the stage go for more money, isn't it? And that's priority seating.

I would think the smarter thing would be to make sure that charges are fair and that the process is transparent (because, you know, the internet is kind of a public thing as well.) But again, if Verizon owns the server, why shouldn't they be allowed to run it as they see fit. It is there server, and this is a (ostensibly) free market.

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It is the elimination of Internet neutrality that would tamper with a free market.

The act of "speeding up" stuff from certain content providers, while "slowing down" that of others, will drastically warp the Internet. It will put conglomerates at a strong advantage, whereas now small players can get their message out.

As a user I object vehemently to someone skewing "availability" and effectively taking the decision of which content to look at out of my hands.

That is tantamount to tampering with a Free Market!


PS To build on NovaScotian’s analogy: It is as though someone could "pay more" to travel in a special fast lane on the freeway (whether in a limousine or with their cargo-filled truck) – even though they don’t own the freeway.
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@Jay: Suppose your telephone company was permitted to charge you extra to guarantee that a phone call to one of their major customers would go through immediately while phone calls to numbers on exchanges owned by their competitors would be of poorer quality or possibly delayed. Do you see this as different than the Internet issue? I don't even believe that mobile phone companies should be permitted to charge the exorbitant roaming charges they do given that transmitting my phone call is no different that transmitting a local's.

We have these things in America, they're called Carpool lanes. You get to drive in the quickest lane if your are willing to carpool. You may think that's a small price to pay, but it is still a price because you have to find people to go with you and then put up with them :).

Besides this, internet companies already do this. You pay more money, you get more bandwidth.

@NovaScotian -- I think we're getting to a point of brass tacks now. In principle I can agree with you, but here's the catch. These private companies are using their resources in order to support the internet, these resources are not (yet) public domain. Why shouldn't they be allowed to control their own resources?

That being said, I think it can be argued that the internet should be a public good. But if that's the case, then the internet simply needs to be nationalized, or at least semi-nationalized. Wouldn't you think?

This in the Washington Post today**: "Verizon, Google make net neutrality pact, sources say". Now, if you've time to read that, ask yourself: Should two huge American companies and the US FCC be deciding how the Internet will function? Why should the US portion of the Internet which also provides transit for big chunks of the rest of the world be nationalized. Will all the countries of the world set up internal controls clamping down on what can pass into their Internet? Do we need more Chinas, Burmas, Dubais, etc.?

** Can you tell I'm a news freak? One of the pleasures of retirement is that instead of glancing through the newspapers I have delivered, I can actually read them, and with the availability of newspapers on the web, I can read articles and opinion in other places as well.

It's one thing to offer a super-size option (it's the American way after all) but it's a whole different thing to only advertise one size and hide the rest. For those in the know it wouldn't be a big deal. Unfortunately the masses are not always the most well informed.

Sure, the big telecom companies layed down the cable...but when they begin to alter how you use it, there will be an uprising. Take MP3s for example. DRM has been about as successful as the war on drugs. My guess is that shortly after the g'ment passes some tamed down version of a tiered internet law, hacks will surface. Unfortunately I don't know enough kung-fu to provide specifics on "the hack", I do know that if there's a lock...someone will try to pick it.

The companies laid the cable with huge government subsidies starting in 1998 and never delivered what the subsidies were for.

Now that I find interesting. Do you have any info related to that?

This from Google:

http://rider.wharton.upenn.edu/%7Efaulhabe/buildinf.pdf

http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/aust...arch/erate.pdfhttp://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/aust...arch/erate.pdf

http://econpapers.repec.org/article/..._3a336-347.htm

For more than 10 years now, the feds have been subsidizing the build-out of the Internet. Obviously, as they increase the connections to schools, there is a commensurate reinforcement of the backbone to the locale.

Ah ha! Good job NovaScotian, that looks to me like a clear cut case for "net neutrality" if we the people are paying for a good part of the backbone, it had better stay neutral. I wonder why people don't point out this sort of information more often?

More on the "arrangement" between Google and Verizon: To Be Clear: Google IS Fighting Real Net Neutrality Rules

Robert X Cringley's take: A Net Game for Google?

Here's the eff's take: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08...-netneutrality