Google and Verizon making a deal where Google pays to have its content move faster on the Internet would ultimately kill a lot of entrepreneurial activity on the Internet. This might be a negotiating ploy to get other parties negotiating with the FCC on net neutrality off the dime, but if it isn’t, Google’s contemplating a cardinal sin.
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Karen
If this happens then hello to only the wealthy being able to afford the internet. I expected crap like that from Verizon but Google has been open source and had an attitude not to do harm.
Guess that’s gone.
Ryan
And there goes one of the last areas where small business can flourish; sigh, we didn’t just kill the golden goose, we picked its bones clean.
PaulW
Here’s an entrepreneurial idea: let’s build another ‘Net.
Bobby Thomson
If true, this is one of the worst developments of the last decade, against pretty stiff competition. This strikes at the heart of the ability of average citizens to compete in political and other markets.
Say hello to 2001, when 90+% of all political blogs support moneyed interests.
I guess the Scorpio episode of The Simpsons wasn’t that far off, after all.
NonyNony
@PaulW:
The only reason we have the ‘net we have now is because the government subsidized it as a research and defense network at huge cost.
bago
Encryption by default.
Kryptik
But we were told that the saintly telecoms would never try and pull something like this! The free market solves everything and self-regulates! Did the Invisible Hand lie to me?!
Geeno
@Kryptik: The invisible hand gave you the finger.
chris
It’s not really that hard to live without Google. If they want to make themselves irrelevant, so be it. Nobody ever thought there’s be a search engine to supplant Yahoo, either.
EGrise
Y’know, Bing’s pretty good.
I’m just sayin’.
RareSanity
@chris:
If only it were that easy. If Verizon “speeds up” Google content on it’s network but, does not increase the total bandwidth of that same network, all other services, must be slowed down by default.
This is a colossally bad idea. I would have expected this from Microsoft or Apple (with AT&T), but I must admit, I am pretty surprised that Google is attempting this.
Although this part doesn’t make sense to me:
If content providers would be paying Verizon for priority access, why would consumer prices increase? The only thing I can imagine is Verizon would charge customers to remove the “priority” access of a content provider, so all of the services would be equal again, without actually adding any additional value.
I can hear the customer service calls now:
Caller: “Wait, you mean I need to pay $20 a month more just to have the mediocre service I had before? You’re not even going to increase the speed for that extra $20?”
Agent: “You understand correctly. So, do you want to actually be able to stream content from Hulu, ComedyCentral.com or Netflix without degraded performance as you did yesterday, or not? If so, the ‘X-Stream Internet’ package is $20 a month in addition to your ‘Internet Basic by Google’ package.”
Cain
I’m puzzled too. Don’t they own vast amount of dark fiber? They could roll their own Internet and faster too. They are already setting up competition against Verizon and what not. Once Google starts competing this way, you’ll find that people are going to wake up to what a single entity can really do if they dominate the internet that way.
On the other hand, Google’s dark fiber might also open entrepreneurs to use it as well. In some ways we are held back by paying for Internet. We really be should be treating it like electricity.
cain
geemoney
The other part of all this is that there is a LOT of content now owned by Google. I just signed up for Google Voice, have Gmail, often look at YouTube videos, like SketchUp, use Google Scholar, the Google Patent Search, etc, etc.
Look, I agree that it’s bad policy for regular people but it’s great for business, if Google can pull it off. I think that the founders of Google did their best to avoid it as much as possible but fundamentally, business is amoral. It will do what it in its own best interest, however misguided that might be in the larger scheme of things.
What group of congresspersons will make this their fight? Politically, it’s a non-starter; I don’t think that most people understand the implications. Further, once most people do understand the implications you will probably see the net neutrality stuff passed, but between now and then, there’s a buttload of money to be made.
It’s the difference between ethics and morals; Google only really has one of those.
donr
You know, doesn’t Google have some ambitious projects on hand that require good will from people in power down the road? I’m thinking of things like the copyright settlements associated with googlebooks and perhaps googlescholar, and the copyright issues related to youtube. Google is cut a lot of slack on some of these copyright issues (at least in the US, less so in Europe) because they’ve been seen to be democratizing access to information.
The plans under discussion seem to strike a blow at the very core of that perception. Google’s well-organized, with lots of lawyers, but the “don’t be evil” plank of their business model has actually served them well in the past. I wonder what kinds of blowback we might see if Google comes to be viewed as just another rent-seeking company.
RareSanity
@Cain:
This is unavoidable, wired internet is now a utility. No different from electricity, gas or water.
Wireless internet can remain the wild wild west but not both.
Gunner Billy K
I can’t believe I’ve been seriously considering switching to Bing. This news, if accurate, would probably be the final push I need to embrace the lesser evil.
James Hare
@Gunner Billy K:
I’m with you. I already use Bing a great deal when I’m planning for travel. It’s pretty easy to change your default search engine in your browser. Bing also is 3 letters less than Google!
4tehlulz
Google has issued a denial:
grimc
@4tehlulz:
And CNET’s report is pretty much the opposite of the NYT:
RareSanity
@4tehlulz:
Well that is a nice misdirection.
What is being reported is not that they were in talks for carriage, it was that they were in talks for prioritization of traffic.
I hate that “journalists” are usually not curious anymore. Hearing that statement, knowing that it was prepared, vetted and wording chosen carefully, should have immediately triggered the the follow up question of, “What about traffic prioritization?”. Then another question referring to this statement:
What have Google and Verizon been talking about for the past 10 months, as confirmed by Verizon?
JC
Need more information. Three different takes on this, from NYT, CNet, and google’s response.
None agree.
Dr. Morpheus
@Karen:
It was never there to begin with.
I learned from working at Cisco Systems and other companies like that that the “mission statements” and “vision statements” are just pretty words for press releases and marketing campaigns.
Google is no different than Apple, which also provides open source software (much of the underpinnings of OS X are open source software from Apple).
But for some reason people here (ad elsewhere) are justifiably skeptical of Apple but naively trusting of Google.
Corporations have no souls, they’re all alike. I don’t understand why people keep forgetting that.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Dr. Morpheus:
Because Steve Jobs wears jeans and tennis shoes and goes on acid trips! That’s why!