Google has most certainly paid for bandwidth/traffic from their end. Whether that's to a CDN or some other arrangement, and there's likely already peering agre

Google has most certainly paid for bandwidth/traffic from their end. Whether that's to a CDN or some other arrangement, and there's likely already peering agreements in place. In these cases what Verizon is doing is asking for money above and beyond what it actually costs to handle the interconnection. They use declining service to their own customers as leverage. Its ridiculous, and even more worrying when you see ISPs and content providers merging as is the case with VZ buying Yahoo and AOL, Comcast and NBC merger, etc.