3 ms·

The real question here is how important it is for home users to have the ability to run servers without signing up for a business-class account. Google wants to

by md224 13y ago

The real question here is how important it is for home users to have the ability to run servers without signing up for a business-class account. Google wants to create an equivalence between two groups: 1) People who want to run a server at home 2) Businesses The debate here should be about if that equivalence is dangerous and why. Perhaps it would be better to avoid the connotations of the word "business" and just view this as Google saying "if you want to run a server, you have to pay more for a premium account." Do people think this is reasonable?

dragonwriter 13y ago
> The real question here is how important it is for home users to have the ability to run servers without signing up for a business-class account. That may be a real question, but I that its not the real question; equally real is the question of whether what Google did is permissible under the language of the Open Internet Report and Order, since that's a governing regulation (and, on top of that, one for which Google recently and actively lobbied.) And, related to that, whether the expectation that Google will obey the law governing where they can and cannot restrict customers when offering a service is reasonable.
Guvante 13y ago
Google doesn't want to create that equivalence. The problem is the definition of business in the US is so broad as to be unusable for this kind of thing. For instance Google is fine with you using your connection to VPN to work, but you are technically an agent of your business when you do that. Thus outright disallowing Businesses is a no-go, since they can't filter you beforehand they have to get you to filter yourself. One way would be to ensure that the business version is so much better than the consumer version that businesses switch themselves. Unfortunately if you have 99.9% uptime and 1 Gbps total bandwidth, who isn't okay with that?
- k3n 13y ago
  What if the support options for residential was strictly email, and only answered M-F 9-5 (not including holidays) with a response time of 24-48 hrs, but for business support you get 24/7/365 phone & email support with a response time of 1 hour? Because that is going to be the story, more or less. The amount of time you can stand to be without service is basically the crux of the decision; if you just run a gaming server or host your mom's cooking website, being down a day or three won't really matter, but if you (or your clients) depend on your site -- say, you have an online reservation system for a hotel -- then even an hour is going to cost you money, and I know from personal experience that if it's down for a day or more, the client is probably going to drop you unless you pay them off in a big way (free month of service, etc.).

by md224 13y ago

dragonwriter 13y ago

> The real question here is how important it is for home users to have the ability to run servers without signing up for a business-class account. That may be a real question, but I that its not the real question; equally real is the question of whether what Google did is permissible under the language of the Open Internet Report and Order, since that's a governing regulation (and, on top of that, one for which Google recently and actively lobbied.) And, related to that, whether the expectation that Google will obey the law governing where they can and cannot restrict customers when offering a service is reasonable.

Guvante 13y ago

Google doesn't want to create that equivalence. The problem is the definition of business in the US is so broad as to be unusable for this kind of thing. For instance Google is fine with you using your connection to VPN to work, but you are technically an agent of your business when you do that. Thus outright disallowing Businesses is a no-go, since they can't filter you beforehand they have to get you to filter yourself. One way would be to ensure that the business version is so much better than the consumer version that businesses switch themselves. Unfortunately if you have 99.9% uptime and 1 Gbps total bandwidth, who isn't okay with that?

k3n 13y ago
What if the support options for residential was strictly email, and only answered M-F 9-5 (not including holidays) with a response time of 24-48 hrs, but for business support you get 24/7/365 phone & email support with a response time of 1 hour? Because that is going to be the story, more or less. The amount of time you can stand to be without service is basically the crux of the decision; if you just run a gaming server or host your mom's cooking website, being down a day or three won't really matter, but if you (or your clients) depend on your site -- say, you have an online reservation system for a hotel -- then even an hour is going to cost you money, and I know from personal experience that if it's down for a day or more, the client is probably going to drop you unless you pay them off in a big way (free month of service, etc.).