8 ms·

Google goes "evil"

153 points by mcantelon 16y ago

yanw 16y ago
I know Google became the poster-child for net neutrality, but why aren't other big internet companies that have shied away from this debate being labeled "evil"? The agreement text doesn't describe anything that differs from the internet as it is today, it just leaved loopholes to appease Verizon investors and to show the gov't that their not needed, the usual bullshit.
- sigzero 16y ago
  When your motto is "do no evil" people tend to call you on it when you do.
  - yanw 16y ago
    Did they? The agreement have some good point as well as compromises, nothing particularly earth shattering, if you want something different call your senator, not Google.
    - sigzero 16y ago
      I was not coming down either way. I was just stating that if people perceive this as "evil" they are certainly going to call Google on it. Not that I think Google cares.
  - enomar 16y ago
    Their motto is "Don't be evil": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dont_be_evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dont_be_evil
- kiba 16y ago
  Personally, I find regulations to be possible vectors for regulatory capture. People act as if regulations is the only solution, rather than asking if previous regulations cause the problem in the first place.
Aaronontheweb 16y ago
So did Google essentially lie to the public about this last week or have I misunderstood? http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/05/google-verizon-net-neutrality/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/05/google-verizon-net-neutrali...
- yanw 16y ago
  http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_verizon_propose_enforceable_net_neutrality.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_verizon_propose_...
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
kenjackson 16y ago
When are people going to give up this notion that companies are evil or good? Companies try to make money and crush those that try to stop them. it's just when you're big, you get to do the crushing. When you're little, you're dodging giant feet trying to step on you. Google and Apple are now unquestionably large. And they are crushing things that stand in their way. Just remember, "Don't be evil" as a motto to make money. Until you can no longer make sufficient money with the motto. Then being evil is almost certainly the only way.
- kiba 16y ago
  Organizations are not individuals. Organizations are composed of individuals. One individual in one part of the company can do good thing, while another individual can do something. It is still important to realize that the design and structure of organizations influence the behaviors of individuals. However, it is also important to realize that all organizations, not just corporations, wishes to grow to sustain its members. They will grow and change. They will continue to exists even long after their purpose is accomplished. Sometime, organizations get cancers that rotten them to the core, much like the RIAA, the MPAA, and California. Sometime that's due to the rules being modified or being poor in the first place. Giants guy hate cannibalizing their business. They're so big that they move very slowly. They may get economy of scale, but they also got dis-economy of scale. New guys are not constrained by traditions or size inefficiency. So they will be able to seize opportunities left or cannot be reached by giant people. So giant guys don't always have the advantage. There is a place for the small mammals in the world of dinosaurs.
- rue 16y ago
  > When are people going to give up this notion that companies are evil or good? Companies try to make money and crush those that try to stop them. Trying to crush those that oppose you is pretty evil, all things considered. Particularly for a cause as banal as trying to make more money (usually when you do not even need to) rather than, say, fighting space aliens.
- raganwald 16y ago
  When are people going to give up this notion that companies are evil or good? Hey, I didn't start it, Google did. If a politician stands up and says, "Elect me because I'll do the best backroom deals for you, my constituent," you know what you're getting. You don't elect her and then complain that she's in bed with lobbyists. But when she calls for transparency in government and bringing a new broom to the legislature, you have every right to be outraged when she's discovered steering fat consulting contracts to her college buddies. It's not an issue of whether Google is evil. It's an issue of whether Google is Hypocritical.
treeface 16y ago
>Google's decision to cut a deal with Verizon wreaks of either impatience or fear. Either Google wasn't willing to wait for the Verizons of the world to crumble and die -- and therefore moved it's own business development timeline up 5 or 10 years at the expense of the entire American public. Or, Google feared doing the dirty work that comes with being a leader -- despite launching a "Google Fiber for Communities" program that competes head-to-head with the decrepit incumbents, Google feared actually having to fulfil their potential to defeat the bad guys. Maybe someone can correct me on this, but as far as I've been able to determine, Verizon's been the one pushing FTTH more than any other company with FiOS. Google might have this pet project, but Verizon has put quite a lot of money into laying new fiber.
- SnowLprd 16y ago
  Correction: Verizon used to push fiber-to-the-home. They shelved FiOS months ago: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/27/verizon-shelves-plans-for-future-fios-rollouts-relocations-to-m/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/27/verizon-shelves-plans-for...
moskie 16y ago
I think we have a lot of Chicken Littles reacting to this news. All the articles that speak out against this agreement are mostly just laundry lists of no-network-neutrality doomsday scenarios, and are not even attempting an unbiased discussion of what this proposal is actually saying. The proposal explicitly solidifies network neutrality for wired services, which is good. But it's true, this proposal does not cover wireless service: "Because of the unique technical and operational characteristics of wireless networks, and the competitive and still-developing nature of wireless broadband services, only the transparency principle would apply to wireless broadband at this time." Those last three words are important. This proposal is not advocating for wireless service network neutrality, but it also is not advocating against it. And perhaps most importantly, this proposal explicitly leaves the door open for discussing wireless service network neutrality in the future. So I think we should be able to accept this as a first step, then afterwards continue to advocate for similar practices to be implemented for wireless service as well. It also suggests that ISPs be able to have content and services specific to their subscribers, as long as it does not "threaten the meaningful availability of broadband Internet access services or have been devised or promoted in a manner designed to evade these consumer protections." I suppose people can be up-in-arms about that, but I think that's a reasonable target: ISPs can do what they want as long general internet access is not compromised.
illumin8 16y ago
This is a good article. Google and Verizon basically said "we are supporting net neutrality, as long as it only applies to the parts of the internet that we have no interest in". Wireless and new services like TV are not included. This is not net neutrality. This is Google/verizon profit guaranteed utopia. New business models need not apply.
- moultano 16y ago
  Failure to recommend regulation != opposing regulation.
- sandipc 16y ago
  I think Google definitely cares about wireline broadband...
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  > "we are supporting net neutrality, as long as it only applies to the parts of the internet that we have no interest in" Except Google makes most of its profit on wireline broadband...
  - waterlesscloud 16y ago
    Today.
dman 16y ago
Ive long felt that there is an eerie parallel between Google and Standard Oil (the historic Oil company owned by John D Rockefeller). Heres a quote from the wikipedia page for Standard Oil - "The company grew by increasing sales and also through acquisitions. After purchasing competing firms, Rockefeller shut down those he believed to be inefficient and kept the others. In a seminal deal, in 1868, the Lake Shore Railroad, a part of the New York Central, gave Rockefeller's firm a going rate of one cent a gallon or forty-two cents a barrel, an effective 71% discount off of its listed rates in return for a promise to ship at least 60 carloads of oil daily and to handle the loading and unloading on its own.[citation needed] Smaller companies decried such deals as unfair because they were not producing enough oil to qualify for discounts."
- delano 16y ago
  That sounds like they found an efficient deal for both sides.
  - pi3832 16y ago
    The industry and consumers were much better off with Standard Oil controlling most of the industry. It stabilized markets and led to more efficient crude and refined oil production.
    - dman 16y ago
      Significant portions of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil would disagree with that assessment.
- Charuru 16y ago
  Err actually I think this is the exact opposite of the Google situation, where Google would be paying MORE to deliver their stuff. Lol?
  - dman 16y ago
    The relativistic comparision is not to what they used to pay, but what their competitors will pay in the new reality.
akeefer 16y ago
This is a pretty terrible article: the author basically mis-represents what actually happened, and then dismisses any possible legitimate motive for Google doing what it did with no argument, merely by asserting that such a motive can't possible exist. Maybe, just maybe, Google thinks that massive government regulation of the still-nascent wireless internet market will do more harm than good at this point, and that we should consider the question later once we have actual empirical data about what works and what doesn't? Is that really such an illogical position to adopt?
- jshen 16y ago
  "that really such an illogical position to adopt?" yes, because once giant corporations make a tiered wireless internet take hold there is absolutely no chance of untiering it.
  - akeefer 16y ago
    You might disagree with it, but it's not illogical. There's a big, big difference between saying "I don't agree with Google" and "there's no possible logical reason for their position, therefore it must be evil." What you're expressing above is one possible interpretation of how the future could unfold, but different, intelligent people can easily disagree about that.
    - jshen 16y ago
      I don't think an intelligent person would believe that once a tiered internet were in place that there is a high probability of it changing. When google says "don't be evil", I take that to mean they wouldn't promote an internet where the traffic from my site may be forced to take a backseat to the traffic from Giant Corporation because I can't give a big enough kickback to verizon. Given google's "don't be evil" mantra it's illogical for them to promote a tiered internet since such a promotion is contrary to their mantra.
      - akeefer 16y ago
gojomo 16y ago
Adam Green is being hyperbolic to boost his 'bold progressive' activist organization's campaign. Assign his words no more weight than when you receive direct mail with alternating paragraphs in ALL CAPS and an RSVP about how important it is for you to DONATE NOW.
Tichy 16y ago
There already is a channel that offers only limited access to information, and people pay for it: TV. I guess if people are content with limited channels, why not let them. It also doesn't bother me much that I can not watch TV through my internet connection. Overall I am not worried, because there should be enough people who would want a free connection. Competition should do the rest.
buster 16y ago
Although i'm not american, and so it doesn't affect me, i think this sounds like a good move from google. I fail to see the horrible, evil plan when i read the original article http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/joint-policy-proposal-for-open-internet.html http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/joint-policy-... . Would someone care to point me to the evil in those 7 points? To me it sounds like "we want the internet more open and transparent for the customers". That's good for american customers, isn't it? Why evil?
Charuru 16y ago
I'm still not quite sure why this is terrible. Will this decrease bandwidth for all the smaller sites? I don't see any reason why it would, unless ISPs go over capacity. In which case if they do, then everyone would suffer... and paying some money to suffer less does not seem so unfair to me. We already have tiered internet on the consumer side, ie, DSL vs Cable vs Dial-up vs FiOS. I don't see what difference it makes if there are also tiers on the content provider side. The real problem seems to be one of capacity; any issues is caused by a bandwidth scarcity, and that would have to be increased. What these people are discussing is just a way to allocate the remaining bandwidth, in which case 'fairness' is completely impossible. There's absolutely no way to determine who deserve the bandwidth more arbitrarily... Putting it on the market seems pretty reasonable! Anyway, I hope new service provider startups come into being that will make the investments to improve infrastructure, though from what I understand that seems to be a completely thankless job... Please don't vote me down just because you disagree, I actually do not understand many of these positions and this is a plea to be educated. Thanks.
- bodski 16y ago
  With wireless you can't just keep increasing capacity forever. The problem is that there is a theoretical limit to how wireless infrastructure can be improved. Sure, new generations of wireless tech. are improving the bandwidth available every few years. But RF frequency bands are a limited resource and sooner or later Shannon-Hartley's theorem [1] will dictate that the only way to improve bandwidth will be to increase power levels received at user's antennae (either by increasing effective transmission power or clustering cells more densely). But doing this will deliver ever diminishing (logarithmic) gains and an increasing public health risk associated with increased RF levels. Couple that with the fact that wireless is going to be the Internet in the coming decades (for many youngsters it already is) and you are faced with a problem of how to allocate things fairly. Wired Internet resources on the other hand can be upgraded effectively forever. If the demand is there we can keep laying new fibre whilst maximising the existing lines with new modulation techniques etc. The same cannot be said of wireless technology. It is precisely because of these major contention issues that wireless spectrum should be protected under net neutrality regulations, its need of regulation is in fact greater than that of wired Internet. When there is an approaching hard limit to bandwidth available why would we want to allow the parties with the biggest wallets dominate the traffic? It is precisely these sorts of situations that governments are for, without them monopolies will naturally form at the expense of the populace. Imagine if governments around the world said, let's solve (or rather ignore) the problem of car traffic congestion by allowing employers to bid for priority access to the roads on behalf of their employees, and businesses to bid on behalf of their customers, even though everyone has already paid their own car tax, fuel etc. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem
danielsoneg 16y ago
Seems to me like a lot of the furor over this announcement has to do with Verizon's involvement - there seems to be a de facto assumption that if Verizon has said it's good, it's bad for the consumer. I have my own opinions on that statement, but if I were Verizon's PR dept, I'd be drinking.
DTrejo 16y ago
Is there something wrong with being overcautious in this case?
- thebigshane 16y ago
  wouldn't the term "OVERcautious" imply too much caution? Caution is fine, great in fact. But too much of anything is ...
Ixiaus 16y ago
This is a sensationalist article and the author read into it poorly. Something is bound to happen, there will be some sort of compromise between complete network neutrality and telecom dominance; primarily because neither camp will get all of what they want. This deal is great news because at least something is being preserved! If you truly care don't just support network neutrality, support projects like GNUnet (https://ng.gnunet.org/ https://ng.gnunet.org/) or FreeNet that actually enable people to use the internet anonymously and securely.
- itistoday 16y ago
  In in a "tiered internet" projects like GNUnet and FreeNet are at risk. Service provider routers with deep packet inspection and similar technology will simply turn a little dial until bandwidth for GNUnet et. al. slows to a trickle. That's why this is such a touchy issue. Any attempt on the part of Google/Verizon to not come out directly in favor and clearly stating support of Network Neutrality, is in fact a PC way of saying that they don't support it.
  - Ixiaus 16y ago
    Would it be that feasible to detect anonymized and encrypted GNUnet traffic? The packets would be largely scrambled, no? Unless you knew that sending/receiving nodes were in fact GNUnet endpoints - you could infer what the traffic is, based on that - otherwise they shouldn't be able to reliably determine whether it is an encrypted SSL browser session or an encrypted GNUnet transmission (I may be missing a crucial piece of information here, please fill me in if so!). I would imagine that coming out and clearly supporting it would be a difficult PR move to swallow. The extreme of net neutrality ensures that the internet remains open regardless of what is being transmitted; this includes everything from illegal content, socially taboo content, legal content, and liberal expression of thought/idea/opinion. While many critical thinkers would correctly say that "supporting an open internet maintains innovation and the free exchange of ideas and that it is often a self-regulating entity that should not be stifled" they also forget that many many people do not see it that way. There is quite a bit of archaic thinking that qualifies an "open internet" as a harmful medium because that openness allows for the unregulated transmission of thought dangerous to the state, child pornography, and other illicit materials and subjects. Those same people that believe it must be regulated are locked in a state of believing it is people they must control rather than themselves (I know that sounds unnecessarily philosophical, but, it really is the truth). Is this worth fighting? Are we making headway? Maybe a little. But the establishment is established while the progressive roots of free thinkers is protean (it is necessarily so, otherwise we wouldn't be progressive). The goal should be to keep pushing, slowly, persistently, and steadily while exploring mediums and clever ways of circumventing the silliness of people that believe regulating something as transformative as the internet will actually work. Hell, it's all a bunch of old people coming up with these policies! In 20 or 30 years, people in political power will be those young people that were born with the internet and were witness to it - the internet already made its impact and the momentum is far too great for anyone power to stop it. It may be muffled for a bit (if even that), but it won't be stopped.
NginUS 16y ago
If these guys really cared about their cause, wouldn't it make more sense to provide a text field like YouTube does to embed the ad on your own site, rather than, or in addition to trying to raise money to pay for it?
jmtame 16y ago
i've been dissatisfied with every article i've read about this subject, and it's something that i care deeply about as a supporter of network neutrality. just like every other article, it's linkbaiting and taking the opportunity to bash google when the only alternative is to let congressmen make up these rules on their own with the telecoms (not the type of situation you want to be in). if anyone is going to negotiate the formal policies of network neutrality, i can't think of a better company to do it than google. the formalization has to happen one way or the other, we've already seen that the fcc's power is questionable at best right now. engadget wrote the best explanation of the tradeoffs here: http://i.engadget.com/2010/08/09/google-and-verizons-net-neutrality-proposal-explained/ http://i.engadget.com/2010/08/09/google-and-verizons-net-neu...
- einarvollset 16y ago
  Jared, from the linked article: "it's hard to reconcile the stated need for net neutrality in this agreement with a giant exception for wireless networks, which are quickly becoming the most important networks of all"
gruseom 16y ago
If the narrative continues to grow the way it's growing, Google are going to backpedal on this the same way they've backpedaled after making other mistakes. It doesn't matter much what the particulars of the deal are or how unfairly they're being misinterpreted (if they are); there's a risk to Google's brand here and they're smart enough to protect it. The reaction against this deal is emotional. How many people have studied the details? I haven't. It doesn't matter because people have such strong feelings about net neutrality and -- on the whole -- rightly so. These feelings may be limited to the small tech community but that community's importance is greater than its numbers and includes a lot of people inside Google itself. If this doesn't die down in a couple days, expect some sort of adjustment from Google.
- moultano 16y ago
  I've learned something about the news today. If A has a good reputation and B has a bad reputation, and A and B come to a compromise, it makes the reputation of A worse, and doesn't make the reputation of B any better, regardless of what the compromise actually is. Verizon is so toxic that them just being a party to this taints it for everyone it seems. If this agreement were something that Google was _demanding_ of Verizon rather than something they agreed to with Verizon, everyone would be praising it.
zmmmmm 16y ago
The biggest problem I have with this is that the rationalization for why the "unique characteristics" of wireless networks require no network neutrality is completely missing. Limited bandwidth? But why does limited bandwidth mean it's ok to prejudice services? Why does that make it ok that YouTube can purchase prioritized service over GlueTube? Doesn't having a limited resource make it more important to share that resource around rather than less important? Isn't that the way it works everywhere else (eg: limited water supplies usually mean we regulate the price and ensure Grandma doesn't have to pay way more than BigCompany or we know that Grandma is getting no water). The "still-developing nature" of the service? I still don't get it. If anything the immature nature of the services mean that the nascent network needs more protection, not less. We just don't know how it is going to evolve - ok fine - but doesn't uncertainty counsel more caution rather than lack of caution? We can always relax rules later if they are determined to be harmful. It will be very hard to wind back a non-network-neutrality situation once that has emerged and established itself if we determine it is harmful. Perhaps I can buy these arguments if they are made sufficiently, but there just isn't enough detail here to make a sound logical link. I'm not going to say they are evil, but I do think Google has got some explaining to do.
- moultano 16y ago
  It seems like caution in most circumstances is _not_ to regulate it.
  - itistoday 16y ago
    "Regulating it" has the wrong connotation when associated with Net Neutrality. It suggests an evil-facist government-controlled internet, when in fact it's the exact opposite. Net Neutrality is government enforcing non-control of the internet, over everybody. It says that no one, including the government, can make the internet a non-level playing field. Like national parks, it's a Good Thing™.
  - zmmmmm 16y ago
    I guess the argument I would make against that is that the risk of starting with network neutrality is low because it is approximately what we have now (I'm sure someone will provide counter examples, but I would still say it is fairly much the situation). There is more certainty in maintaining the status quo than adventuring into unknown territory.
mattmaroon 16y ago
I laughed out loud at "wireline" internet becoming irrelevant in a few years. Even when I'm surfing the web on my phone, I'm doing it on wifi as often as on EVDO. Then there's the 10+ hours a day in front of a computer. Cellular internet is a long way from offering the speed and convenience of broadband. And even then, the cost of landline internet is just so much lower that we'll see wi-fi continue to proliferate.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  3G is roughly as fast as DSL, isn't it? Like 1.5Mbps. 4G is supposed to have 100Mbps down, and 50 up. That's plenty fast. And the cost of wireless internet is cheaper. I pay $30/month for my unlimited data plan with T-Mobile, and I pay $60/month for my FIOS.
  - mattmaroon 16y ago
    No, for two reasons. 1, What you're quoting is a theoretical maximum, actual rates are substantially lower. 2, The latency is brutal. Most of the net (especially as viewed from mobile devices) is very small files delivered frequently, which makes latency a much bigger factor in overall experience than speed. Ping times on even the strongest 3G connections are much higher than even an average wired broadband connection. Also you only pay less for your wireless internet because the average consumer uses WAY less of it than wired. Per megabyte we're spending far more on those wireless data plans, and as soon as the rate of use grows I think we'll see them start becoming metered.
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      Nice catches... I was agreeing with you until I thought about it a little, now I'm agreeing with you again.
- noodle 16y ago
  i disagree. the wimax in my area is actually pretty good. not great, mind you, but i could see the entire industry improving in a few years such that its equal to or better than land line based access.

153 points by mcantelon 16y ago

yanw 16y ago

I know Google became the poster-child for net neutrality, but why aren't other big internet companies that have shied away from this debate being labeled "evil"? The agreement text doesn't describe anything that differs from the internet as it is today, it just leaved loopholes to appease Verizon investors and to show the gov't that their not needed, the usual bullshit.

sigzero 16y ago
When your motto is "do no evil" people tend to call you on it when you do.
- yanw 16y ago
  Did they? The agreement have some good point as well as compromises, nothing particularly earth shattering, if you want something different call your senator, not Google.
  - sigzero 16y ago
    I was not coming down either way. I was just stating that if people perceive this as "evil" they are certainly going to call Google on it. Not that I think Google cares.
- enomar 16y ago
  Their motto is "Don't be evil": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dont_be_evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dont_be_evil
kiba 16y ago
Personally, I find regulations to be possible vectors for regulatory capture. People act as if regulations is the only solution, rather than asking if previous regulations cause the problem in the first place.

Aaronontheweb 16y ago

So did Google essentially lie to the public about this last week or have I misunderstood? http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/05/google-verizon-net-neutrality/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/05/google-verizon-net-neutrali...

yanw 16y ago
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_verizon_propose_enforceable_net_neutrality.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_verizon_propose_...

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

kenjackson 16y ago

When are people going to give up this notion that companies are evil or good? Companies try to make money and crush those that try to stop them. it's just when you're big, you get to do the crushing. When you're little, you're dodging giant feet trying to step on you. Google and Apple are now unquestionably large. And they are crushing things that stand in their way. Just remember, "Don't be evil" as a motto to make money. Until you can no longer make sufficient money with the motto. Then being evil is almost certainly the only way.

kiba 16y ago
Organizations are not individuals. Organizations are composed of individuals. One individual in one part of the company can do good thing, while another individual can do something. It is still important to realize that the design and structure of organizations influence the behaviors of individuals. However, it is also important to realize that all organizations, not just corporations, wishes to grow to sustain its members. They will grow and change. They will continue to exists even long after their purpose is accomplished. Sometime, organizations get cancers that rotten them to the core, much like the RIAA, the MPAA, and California. Sometime that's due to the rules being modified or being poor in the first place. Giants guy hate cannibalizing their business. They're so big that they move very slowly. They may get economy of scale, but they also got dis-economy of scale. New guys are not constrained by traditions or size inefficiency. So they will be able to seize opportunities left or cannot be reached by giant people. So giant guys don't always have the advantage. There is a place for the small mammals in the world of dinosaurs.
rue 16y ago
> When are people going to give up this notion that companies are evil or good? Companies try to make money and crush those that try to stop them. Trying to crush those that oppose you is pretty evil, all things considered. Particularly for a cause as banal as trying to make more money (usually when you do not even need to) rather than, say, fighting space aliens.
raganwald 16y ago
When are people going to give up this notion that companies are evil or good? Hey, I didn't start it, Google did. If a politician stands up and says, "Elect me because I'll do the best backroom deals for you, my constituent," you know what you're getting. You don't elect her and then complain that she's in bed with lobbyists. But when she calls for transparency in government and bringing a new broom to the legislature, you have every right to be outraged when she's discovered steering fat consulting contracts to her college buddies. It's not an issue of whether Google is evil. It's an issue of whether Google is Hypocritical.

treeface 16y ago

>Google's decision to cut a deal with Verizon wreaks of either impatience or fear. Either Google wasn't willing to wait for the Verizons of the world to crumble and die -- and therefore moved it's own business development timeline up 5 or 10 years at the expense of the entire American public. Or, Google feared doing the dirty work that comes with being a leader -- despite launching a "Google Fiber for Communities" program that competes head-to-head with the decrepit incumbents, Google feared actually having to fulfil their potential to defeat the bad guys. Maybe someone can correct me on this, but as far as I've been able to determine, Verizon's been the one pushing FTTH more than any other company with FiOS. Google might have this pet project, but Verizon has put quite a lot of money into laying new fiber.

SnowLprd 16y ago
Correction: Verizon used to push fiber-to-the-home. They shelved FiOS months ago: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/27/verizon-shelves-plans-for-future-fios-rollouts-relocations-to-m/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/27/verizon-shelves-plans-for...

moskie 16y ago

I think we have a lot of Chicken Littles reacting to this news. All the articles that speak out against this agreement are mostly just laundry lists of no-network-neutrality doomsday scenarios, and are not even attempting an unbiased discussion of what this proposal is actually saying. The proposal explicitly solidifies network neutrality for wired services, which is good. But it's true, this proposal does not cover wireless service: "Because of the unique technical and operational characteristics of wireless networks, and the competitive and still-developing nature of wireless broadband services, only the transparency principle would apply to wireless broadband at this time." Those last three words are important. This proposal is not advocating for wireless service network neutrality, but it also is not advocating against it. And perhaps most importantly, this proposal explicitly leaves the door open for discussing wireless service network neutrality in the future. So I think we should be able to accept this as a first step, then afterwards continue to advocate for similar practices to be implemented for wireless service as well. It also suggests that ISPs be able to have content and services specific to their subscribers, as long as it does not "threaten the meaningful availability of broadband Internet access services or have been devised or promoted in a manner designed to evade these consumer protections." I suppose people can be up-in-arms about that, but I think that's a reasonable target: ISPs can do what they want as long general internet access is not compromised.

illumin8 16y ago

This is a good article. Google and Verizon basically said "we are supporting net neutrality, as long as it only applies to the parts of the internet that we have no interest in". Wireless and new services like TV are not included. This is not net neutrality. This is Google/verizon profit guaranteed utopia. New business models need not apply.

moultano 16y ago
Failure to recommend regulation != opposing regulation.
sandipc 16y ago
I think Google definitely cares about wireline broadband...
patrickaljord 16y ago
> "we are supporting net neutrality, as long as it only applies to the parts of the internet that we have no interest in" Except Google makes most of its profit on wireline broadband...
- waterlesscloud 16y ago
  Today.

dman 16y ago

Ive long felt that there is an eerie parallel between Google and Standard Oil (the historic Oil company owned by John D Rockefeller). Heres a quote from the wikipedia page for Standard Oil - "The company grew by increasing sales and also through acquisitions. After purchasing competing firms, Rockefeller shut down those he believed to be inefficient and kept the others. In a seminal deal, in 1868, the Lake Shore Railroad, a part of the New York Central, gave Rockefeller's firm a going rate of one cent a gallon or forty-two cents a barrel, an effective 71% discount off of its listed rates in return for a promise to ship at least 60 carloads of oil daily and to handle the loading and unloading on its own.[citation needed] Smaller companies decried such deals as unfair because they were not producing enough oil to qualify for discounts."

delano 16y ago
That sounds like they found an efficient deal for both sides.
- pi3832 16y ago
  The industry and consumers were much better off with Standard Oil controlling most of the industry. It stabilized markets and led to more efficient crude and refined oil production.
  - dman 16y ago
    Significant portions of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil would disagree with that assessment.
Charuru 16y ago
Err actually I think this is the exact opposite of the Google situation, where Google would be paying MORE to deliver their stuff. Lol?
- dman 16y ago
  The relativistic comparision is not to what they used to pay, but what their competitors will pay in the new reality.

akeefer 16y ago

This is a pretty terrible article: the author basically mis-represents what actually happened, and then dismisses any possible legitimate motive for Google doing what it did with no argument, merely by asserting that such a motive can't possible exist. Maybe, just maybe, Google thinks that massive government regulation of the still-nascent wireless internet market will do more harm than good at this point, and that we should consider the question later once we have actual empirical data about what works and what doesn't? Is that really such an illogical position to adopt?

jshen 16y ago
"that really such an illogical position to adopt?" yes, because once giant corporations make a tiered wireless internet take hold there is absolutely no chance of untiering it.
- akeefer 16y ago
  You might disagree with it, but it's not illogical. There's a big, big difference between saying "I don't agree with Google" and "there's no possible logical reason for their position, therefore it must be evil." What you're expressing above is one possible interpretation of how the future could unfold, but different, intelligent people can easily disagree about that.
  - jshen 16y ago
    I don't think an intelligent person would believe that once a tiered internet were in place that there is a high probability of it changing. When google says "don't be evil", I take that to mean they wouldn't promote an internet where the traffic from my site may be forced to take a backseat to the traffic from Giant Corporation because I can't give a big enough kickback to verizon. Given google's "don't be evil" mantra it's illogical for them to promote a tiered internet since such a promotion is contrary to their mantra.
    - akeefer 16y ago

gojomo 16y ago

Adam Green is being hyperbolic to boost his 'bold progressive' activist organization's campaign. Assign his words no more weight than when you receive direct mail with alternating paragraphs in ALL CAPS and an RSVP about how important it is for you to DONATE NOW.

Tichy 16y ago

There already is a channel that offers only limited access to information, and people pay for it: TV. I guess if people are content with limited channels, why not let them. It also doesn't bother me much that I can not watch TV through my internet connection. Overall I am not worried, because there should be enough people who would want a free connection. Competition should do the rest.

buster 16y ago

Although i'm not american, and so it doesn't affect me, i think this sounds like a good move from google. I fail to see the horrible, evil plan when i read the original article http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/joint-policy-proposal-for-open-internet.html http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/joint-policy-... . Would someone care to point me to the evil in those 7 points? To me it sounds like "we want the internet more open and transparent for the customers". That's good for american customers, isn't it? Why evil?

Charuru 16y ago

I'm still not quite sure why this is terrible. Will this decrease bandwidth for all the smaller sites? I don't see any reason why it would, unless ISPs go over capacity. In which case if they do, then everyone would suffer... and paying some money to suffer less does not seem so unfair to me. We already have tiered internet on the consumer side, ie, DSL vs Cable vs Dial-up vs FiOS. I don't see what difference it makes if there are also tiers on the content provider side. The real problem seems to be one of capacity; any issues is caused by a bandwidth scarcity, and that would have to be increased. What these people are discussing is just a way to allocate the remaining bandwidth, in which case 'fairness' is completely impossible. There's absolutely no way to determine who deserve the bandwidth more arbitrarily... Putting it on the market seems pretty reasonable! Anyway, I hope new service provider startups come into being that will make the investments to improve infrastructure, though from what I understand that seems to be a completely thankless job... Please don't vote me down just because you disagree, I actually do not understand many of these positions and this is a plea to be educated. Thanks.

bodski 16y ago
With wireless you can't just keep increasing capacity forever. The problem is that there is a theoretical limit to how wireless infrastructure can be improved. Sure, new generations of wireless tech. are improving the bandwidth available every few years. But RF frequency bands are a limited resource and sooner or later Shannon-Hartley's theorem [1] will dictate that the only way to improve bandwidth will be to increase power levels received at user's antennae (either by increasing effective transmission power or clustering cells more densely). But doing this will deliver ever diminishing (logarithmic) gains and an increasing public health risk associated with increased RF levels. Couple that with the fact that wireless is going to be the Internet in the coming decades (for many youngsters it already is) and you are faced with a problem of how to allocate things fairly. Wired Internet resources on the other hand can be upgraded effectively forever. If the demand is there we can keep laying new fibre whilst maximising the existing lines with new modulation techniques etc. The same cannot be said of wireless technology. It is precisely because of these major contention issues that wireless spectrum should be protected under net neutrality regulations, its need of regulation is in fact greater than that of wired Internet. When there is an approaching hard limit to bandwidth available why would we want to allow the parties with the biggest wallets dominate the traffic? It is precisely these sorts of situations that governments are for, without them monopolies will naturally form at the expense of the populace. Imagine if governments around the world said, let's solve (or rather ignore) the problem of car traffic congestion by allowing employers to bid for priority access to the roads on behalf of their employees, and businesses to bid on behalf of their customers, even though everyone has already paid their own car tax, fuel etc. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem

danielsoneg 16y ago

Seems to me like a lot of the furor over this announcement has to do with Verizon's involvement - there seems to be a de facto assumption that if Verizon has said it's good, it's bad for the consumer. I have my own opinions on that statement, but if I were Verizon's PR dept, I'd be drinking.

DTrejo 16y ago

Is there something wrong with being overcautious in this case?

thebigshane 16y ago
wouldn't the term "OVERcautious" imply too much caution? Caution is fine, great in fact. But too much of anything is ...

Ixiaus 16y ago

This is a sensationalist article and the author read into it poorly. Something is bound to happen, there will be some sort of compromise between complete network neutrality and telecom dominance; primarily because neither camp will get all of what they want. This deal is great news because at least something is being preserved! If you truly care don't just support network neutrality, support projects like GNUnet (https://ng.gnunet.org/ https://ng.gnunet.org/) or FreeNet that actually enable people to use the internet anonymously and securely.

itistoday 16y ago
In in a "tiered internet" projects like GNUnet and FreeNet are at risk. Service provider routers with deep packet inspection and similar technology will simply turn a little dial until bandwidth for GNUnet et. al. slows to a trickle. That's why this is such a touchy issue. Any attempt on the part of Google/Verizon to not come out directly in favor and clearly stating support of Network Neutrality, is in fact a PC way of saying that they don't support it.
- Ixiaus 16y ago
  Would it be that feasible to detect anonymized and encrypted GNUnet traffic? The packets would be largely scrambled, no? Unless you knew that sending/receiving nodes were in fact GNUnet endpoints - you could infer what the traffic is, based on that - otherwise they shouldn't be able to reliably determine whether it is an encrypted SSL browser session or an encrypted GNUnet transmission (I may be missing a crucial piece of information here, please fill me in if so!). I would imagine that coming out and clearly supporting it would be a difficult PR move to swallow. The extreme of net neutrality ensures that the internet remains open regardless of what is being transmitted; this includes everything from illegal content, socially taboo content, legal content, and liberal expression of thought/idea/opinion. While many critical thinkers would correctly say that "supporting an open internet maintains innovation and the free exchange of ideas and that it is often a self-regulating entity that should not be stifled" they also forget that many many people do not see it that way. There is quite a bit of archaic thinking that qualifies an "open internet" as a harmful medium because that openness allows for the unregulated transmission of thought dangerous to the state, child pornography, and other illicit materials and subjects. Those same people that believe it must be regulated are locked in a state of believing it is people they must control rather than themselves (I know that sounds unnecessarily philosophical, but, it really is the truth). Is this worth fighting? Are we making headway? Maybe a little. But the establishment is established while the progressive roots of free thinkers is protean (it is necessarily so, otherwise we wouldn't be progressive). The goal should be to keep pushing, slowly, persistently, and steadily while exploring mediums and clever ways of circumventing the silliness of people that believe regulating something as transformative as the internet will actually work. Hell, it's all a bunch of old people coming up with these policies! In 20 or 30 years, people in political power will be those young people that were born with the internet and were witness to it - the internet already made its impact and the momentum is far too great for anyone power to stop it. It may be muffled for a bit (if even that), but it won't be stopped.

NginUS 16y ago

If these guys really cared about their cause, wouldn't it make more sense to provide a text field like YouTube does to embed the ad on your own site, rather than, or in addition to trying to raise money to pay for it?

jmtame 16y ago

i've been dissatisfied with every article i've read about this subject, and it's something that i care deeply about as a supporter of network neutrality. just like every other article, it's linkbaiting and taking the opportunity to bash google when the only alternative is to let congressmen make up these rules on their own with the telecoms (not the type of situation you want to be in). if anyone is going to negotiate the formal policies of network neutrality, i can't think of a better company to do it than google. the formalization has to happen one way or the other, we've already seen that the fcc's power is questionable at best right now. engadget wrote the best explanation of the tradeoffs here: http://i.engadget.com/2010/08/09/google-and-verizons-net-neutrality-proposal-explained/ http://i.engadget.com/2010/08/09/google-and-verizons-net-neu...

einarvollset 16y ago
Jared, from the linked article: "it's hard to reconcile the stated need for net neutrality in this agreement with a giant exception for wireless networks, which are quickly becoming the most important networks of all"

gruseom 16y ago

If the narrative continues to grow the way it's growing, Google are going to backpedal on this the same way they've backpedaled after making other mistakes. It doesn't matter much what the particulars of the deal are or how unfairly they're being misinterpreted (if they are); there's a risk to Google's brand here and they're smart enough to protect it. The reaction against this deal is emotional. How many people have studied the details? I haven't. It doesn't matter because people have such strong feelings about net neutrality and -- on the whole -- rightly so. These feelings may be limited to the small tech community but that community's importance is greater than its numbers and includes a lot of people inside Google itself. If this doesn't die down in a couple days, expect some sort of adjustment from Google.

moultano 16y ago
I've learned something about the news today. If A has a good reputation and B has a bad reputation, and A and B come to a compromise, it makes the reputation of A worse, and doesn't make the reputation of B any better, regardless of what the compromise actually is. Verizon is so toxic that them just being a party to this taints it for everyone it seems. If this agreement were something that Google was _demanding_ of Verizon rather than something they agreed to with Verizon, everyone would be praising it.

zmmmmm 16y ago

The biggest problem I have with this is that the rationalization for why the "unique characteristics" of wireless networks require no network neutrality is completely missing. Limited bandwidth? But why does limited bandwidth mean it's ok to prejudice services? Why does that make it ok that YouTube can purchase prioritized service over GlueTube? Doesn't having a limited resource make it more important to share that resource around rather than less important? Isn't that the way it works everywhere else (eg: limited water supplies usually mean we regulate the price and ensure Grandma doesn't have to pay way more than BigCompany or we know that Grandma is getting no water). The "still-developing nature" of the service? I still don't get it. If anything the immature nature of the services mean that the nascent network needs more protection, not less. We just don't know how it is going to evolve - ok fine - but doesn't uncertainty counsel more caution rather than lack of caution? We can always relax rules later if they are determined to be harmful. It will be very hard to wind back a non-network-neutrality situation once that has emerged and established itself if we determine it is harmful. Perhaps I can buy these arguments if they are made sufficiently, but there just isn't enough detail here to make a sound logical link. I'm not going to say they are evil, but I do think Google has got some explaining to do.

moultano 16y ago
It seems like caution in most circumstances is _not_ to regulate it.
- itistoday 16y ago
  "Regulating it" has the wrong connotation when associated with Net Neutrality. It suggests an evil-facist government-controlled internet, when in fact it's the exact opposite. Net Neutrality is government enforcing non-control of the internet, over everybody. It says that no one, including the government, can make the internet a non-level playing field. Like national parks, it's a Good Thing™.
- zmmmmm 16y ago
  I guess the argument I would make against that is that the risk of starting with network neutrality is low because it is approximately what we have now (I'm sure someone will provide counter examples, but I would still say it is fairly much the situation). There is more certainty in maintaining the status quo than adventuring into unknown territory.

mattmaroon 16y ago

I laughed out loud at "wireline" internet becoming irrelevant in a few years. Even when I'm surfing the web on my phone, I'm doing it on wifi as often as on EVDO. Then there's the 10+ hours a day in front of a computer. Cellular internet is a long way from offering the speed and convenience of broadband. And even then, the cost of landline internet is just so much lower that we'll see wi-fi continue to proliferate.

steveklabnik 16y ago
3G is roughly as fast as DSL, isn't it? Like 1.5Mbps. 4G is supposed to have 100Mbps down, and 50 up. That's plenty fast. And the cost of wireless internet is cheaper. I pay $30/month for my unlimited data plan with T-Mobile, and I pay $60/month for my FIOS.
- mattmaroon 16y ago
  No, for two reasons. 1, What you're quoting is a theoretical maximum, actual rates are substantially lower. 2, The latency is brutal. Most of the net (especially as viewed from mobile devices) is very small files delivered frequently, which makes latency a much bigger factor in overall experience than speed. Ping times on even the strongest 3G connections are much higher than even an average wired broadband connection. Also you only pay less for your wireless internet because the average consumer uses WAY less of it than wired. Per megabyte we're spending far more on those wireless data plans, and as soon as the rate of use grows I think we'll see them start becoming metered.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    Nice catches... I was agreeing with you until I thought about it a little, now I'm agreeing with you again.
noodle 16y ago
i disagree. the wimax in my area is actually pretty good. not great, mind you, but i could see the entire industry improving in a few years such that its equal to or better than land line based access.