It's the "in the spirit of compromise" line that I don't get. I'm pretty sure Google would prefer net neutrality to apply to wireless too, but they threw users under the bus to buddy up with Verizon. But no one asked Google to put this proposal together. No one said they had to work together with Verizon on it. Why didn't they just both submit their own proposals and let the FCC make up their own mind on the various issues? It's not like this proposal is going to get passed directly into law anyway.
Compromise? That doesn't sound like the Google I know and love.
Google has always been known for their lofty ideals and their principled founders. They are the company you can trust to walk away from billions of dollars before compromising what they believe. We saw that in their interactions with China. We saw that when they owned up to the data they accidentally collected driving down the street. We saw that when they changed their rules to make it harder for spammers to put adsense on temporary landing pages.
I've been a Google fan boy for a long time but this week they lost my respect.
Why didn't they just both submit their own proposals and let the FCC make up their own mind on the various issues?
I suspect that the FCC would see no common ground between the proposals and do nothing. In fact, that was pretty much the state of play until last week.
I think it would be better for the FCC to keep doing nothing at this point.
Right now the ISPs are afraid that if they create a tiered network that there would be outrage and the government would move in and regulate their industry.
However, now Google has given them coverage by making it appear to the FCC and congress that there is a compromise that can be made into law. I'd actually prefer that there be only light regulation, but a healthy paranoia from the telcos that they would be strong armed by the government (and corporations like Google) if they start to violate net neutrality.
It reminds me of a debate in US history about the Bill of Rights. Some argued that by listing your rights, you are inherently implying that there are no rights other than those listed. The idea is that by not enumerating rights you expand them.
I think the current state of regulatory uncertainty cannot last. Eventually Washington will get bored of the issue and — absent regulation — ISPs will go back to their old tricks.
Perhaps. But sometimes telling an industry not to fuck consumers or face regulation keeps them better behaved than telling them exactly how they are allowed to fuck consumers.
> The idea is that by not enumerating rights you expand them.
Bullshit.
Only 2 things are giving you freedoms right now ... free markets where competition is real and regulations by an elected government ... the later doing good in some cases, bad in others.
If you don't want government regulations (which let's be honest, aren't done for the good of the public most of the times), then you need ways to prevent monopolies.
Advancements in technology are one way to do it ... and I clearly see Google's point of view. Wireless Internet is a much more competitive landscape, and IMHO the FCC would do more harm than good in the current market.
I live in Europe and I'm paying ~ 20 euros per month for 3G Internet provided by Vodafone (~ 4 GB of traffic included, the bandwidth fluctuating between 2 - 4 Mbps).
And it's a pre-pay card, no contract attached, and I'm paying whenever I feel like it. When a competitor approached me with an offer for a 2 year contract I almost told them to go fuck themselves. And now they are also offering a competitive pre-pay option. And 4 GB of traffic may not be enough ... but I remember the days when I was working over a 56 kbps telephone land-line. Things will improve.
Is the FCC so hapless that they can't make independent decisions about this? I sincerely hope that their logic isn't just: "Well, since Google and Verizon both agree on this then we better agree with them too!"
I actually don't think Google really cares too much about network neutrality one way or the other at this point. What they do care about is gaining clout in the mobile world, as the wired internet becomes increasingly irrelevant.
I agree with you for most parts, but the interactions with China should not be mistaken for 'google taking the high ground'. Google was already losing horribly to Baidu to the point where they were giving away free music in order to try and gain users ( http://www.drmwatch.com/ocr/article.php/3726636 ). They made a sensible decision to leave, but framed it as a human rights issue to the media in order to gain sympathy.
In no ways am I defending Baidu or China. I am just saying they didn't leave because of their lofty morals.
They were giving away music because that was always a feature of Baidu that they had been hurting for not having. Last I heard they had gained up to ~25% market share. 25% of a market that large and with that much potential is enough to run an entire company off. I don't buy this narrative that they tossed it away out of some petulant "If I can't dominate this market I won't try" motive.
China only represented 1% of Google's revenue when they pulled out. They saw the writing on the wall - China would not allow foreign Internet companies to be successful in the long term - and decided to pull out before corporate espionage transferred all of their technology to Chinese competitors.
It's a bit much to paint that as some bold moral stand. They were fine with censorship for four years - why did it suddenly become so objectionable?
Since the sensorship is beyond what Google's founders had expected. Even we native Chinese had not expected that then.
However, given they have invested so much on the Free Music Plan, and the market was rewarding, why, all of sudden, they pulled their feet? And risking of losing the world's largest and emerging market?
Though, I agree there are multiple causes about that. But simply thinking they pulled because they were losing ...
YouTube only represents a tiny portion (<1%) of Google's revenue. GMail, Google Docs, Google Earth, etc. only represent a tiny portion of Google's revenue. While your larger point may be correct (though I hope not) they've always shown willingness and ability to invest in market share for the long term - and 40% of China's search market is kind of a big deal.
> Google has always been known for their lofty ideals ...
Notice you said "they are _known_ for their lofty ideals" it doesn't mean they live by their ideals.
> They are the company you can trust to walk away from billions...
If they already make hundreds of billions, walking away from 1 billion doesn't seem that bad in exchange for a PR win and more billions comming in the future.
> We saw that in their interactions with China. We saw that when they owned up to the data they accidentally collected driving down the street. We saw that when they changed their rules to make it harder for spammers to put adsense on temporary landing pages.
My personal measure for company idealism is this : "the amount of revenue (both long and short term) they are willing to give up in order to abide by their ideals". Was China a major market for them? No. They raised a PR stink only after they realized it was lost cause and they might as well drum up some PR points for it. Then capturing of too much private data -- well, if it was a lawsuit coming because somone could have leaked it, there's not much idealism at work there as damage control. Changing their rules to block spammers -- also just trying to cut out the irrelevant noise, to make their ads more focused.
> I've been a Google fan boy for a long time but this week they lost my respect.
I have set asside my respect for Google after their IPO. Not because they did anything wrong, but because I knew it would come to this. Don't get me wrong, they are still a good money making machine, but that's all they are -- a big friggin' money making machine. Google doesn't have a soul, it doesn't have a moral sense, it is here to make money. If it stops making money it wil vanish. If telling people you are "good and not evil" makes money, they'll tell people that, if getting in bed with Verizon makes them money -- so be it.
I for one, don't blame Google. They are just now performing according to my expectations and behaving like a large, publically owned company should behave. I am still baffled at the large number of intelligent and rational individuals who have been misled by Google's PR over these years.
They fought for net neutrality for the longest time, and I believe they still do it's just that they were doing it alone, the FCC seemed helpless to do anything so they negotiated with Verizon, and in the corporate world compromises and piratical solutions are the reality.
So they're the victims in this situation? They could have not made a profit from this. But since they decided that they would they made the compromise that would put them in that space.
I agree but a lot of people (myself included) thought Google was large, rich, smart, respected and brazen enough to fight this fight so we were all thrilled when they dropped the gauntlet against the carriers.
At this point I'm just dying to find out what they saw on the horizon that made them come to a full stop.
Characterizing a compromise that gains them progress in one area in exchange for allowing the other party to stall in another area, characterizing that as "a full stop" is rather disingenuous.
What no one seems to be addressing or making a good case for in their criticisms is why allowing that stalling tactic is so very bad that it overshadows progress in locking in net neutrality protections in the wired realm.
Exactly. If Google with it's billions and market position is willing to bendover like this, what chance do smaller players have, even a consortium of them?
I think most would agree that those are failed democracies. Just because democracy does certain things in practice does not mean that those things are in line with the core principles of democracy, of which compromise is one.
Then color me against democracy, but I don't care if the democratic majority wants slavery: it's bad and should not be compromised on, the majority will just have to suck up.
The Myth/Fact format was probably the wrong choice when many of the "Fact" sections contain information supportive of the "Myth", along with a few weasel words like "But given political realities", "However, in the spirit of compromise", etc.
FTFA: "MYTH: This proposal would eliminate network neutrality over wireless.
FACT: It’s true that Google previously has advocated for certain openness safeguards to be applied in a similar fashion to what would be applied to wireline services. [...]"
I don't think you're allowed to have "MYTH" and "FACT" sections that agree with each other like that.
True, they wrote a bit more in the "fact" part about how Congress would keep a watchful eye, but that did nothing to debunk the "MYTH." Why wouldn't the FCC be better suited to keep a watchful eye?
I think they are just making the point that the absence of wireless regulation in this proposal does not preclude such regulation in the future. You could accuse them of capitulating on that, but not reversing.
If you think political realities don't have an effect on what can be accomplished with net neutrality, you're just being naive. I think this marks the point in time where (publicly at least) Google has moved on from the unfettered idealist stage to the more pragmatic realist stage. It might be a sad shift, but it was an inevitable one.
As pragmatic realist moves go, it is a great deal less cynically capitulatory than it could be. The part of the compromise that, by their previous words and actions, they could be reasonably thought to be more against is purposefully limited in scope and time.
The way I read it is that they are playing a move in the game which they hope gets a win in one area, with that move only costing their allowing another player to stall in another area. As compromises go, your limited win for their limit stall sounds pretty good to me. It is a lot better than the pragmatic capitulation of your limited win for their limited win. Descriptions of this as "they are selling out" are miss-characterizing this proposal and missing that difference.
However it was not a shift that Google had to take. Wasn't the whole point that FCC was gathering information to make up its mind? Who knows what would have been the _acceptable_ compromise for the FCC.
Maybe if Google had kept the fight, the FCC would have agreed to most of its points. As it is, it will be hard for anyone now to argue against this: they'll just be told "Look, even Google that was the most pro Net neutrality company things this is a good compromise, so shut up".
That's why people feel that Google has sold the netizens out (which personally I think it's a bit extreme: they are a company after all), and why it will be hard for the final law to be much different than what these two companies cooked up. So much for democracy.
They ceded the wireless world to the control of the carriers so it wouldn't be a stall so much as playing dead.
And a full reversal is certainly possible, it would imply a short-sightedness which is hard to reconcile with Google's policy history which tells us that it would take some major event (think the Chinese hacking incident) for them to reverse themselves entirely.
There is simply no way this agreement was undertaken lightly or without extensive analysis. Doubly so because it pisses off the technical elite (and they surely knew it would) both inside and outside Google.
President at NetsEdge Consulting, LLC (Sole Proprietorship)
VP of Federal Law and Policy at MCI
Senior Director for Global Public Policy at MCI
Director of Federal Law and Policy at MCI
Regulatory Counsel at IDB WorldCom
Associate Attorney at Sutherland, Asbill, and Brennan
Associate Attorney at Bishop, Cook, Purcell & Reynolds
I've found that a pretty good rule of thumb for recognizing corporate BS is any time a campaign is called "Get The Facts" or something similar.
For example, look on the side of many boxes of junk cereal and you'll find a "Get The Facts" box touting the benefits of some miniscule quantity of vitamin contained in the cereal. Or when Microsoft launched a "Get The Facts" campaign in 2004 to try to steer users away from Linux.
I also find the phrase to be highly condescending.
Hence "or something similar"... I'm attempting to draw a parallel to a common PR tactic that has a rather remarkable track record of being disingenuous.
I think this PR tactic became common because this is probably the most obvious way of responding to something that one (Google in this case) thinks is a rumor or inaccuracy.
even though the parallels are disingenuous, I would refrain from citing this as a reason for feeling suspicious.
However, my objection is that it paints an overly simplistic picture of the "myth" by reducing it to a one-line straw man which can then easily be dismantled in the "fact" section.
So while it's true that it is important to evaluate the content presented, it is also critical to consider the content not included either by commission or omission.
I've found that a pretty good rule of thumb for recognizing people who don't care to actually validate facts is any time they use "rules of thumb" or something similar.
For example, look at the parent of this post, and you'll find a 'Rule of Thumb' touting a couple anecdotes about when the rule of thumb worked in some instance, without any proof.
I also find the phrase to be highly condescending to those of us who care to study an argument for what it contains, and not just a phrase it happens to use.
Nowhere did I say that I hadn't read what was written. However, the format was cause for suspicion.
As I mention above, my objection is that it paints an overly simplistic picture of the "myth" by reducing it to a one-line straw man which can then easily be dismantled in the "fact" section.
So while it's true that it is important to evaluate the content presented, it is also critical to consider the content not included either by commission or omission.
Nowhere did I say that I didn't consider the content omitted, but by going in with a bias against the article, you're setting yourself up to already have an opinion without knowing the material.
"So, for example, broadband providers could offer a special gaming channel, or a more secure banking service, or a home health monitoring capability – so long as such offerings are separate and apart from the public Internet."
Can somebody explain? Does this mean verizon would be able to sell special secure service to say, bank of america for its public site? What is the meaning of "separate from public internet"? doesn't this eventually mean that by paying verizon, BOA would be able to offer secure service than a bank who did not buy the "special service" from verizon? Am I missing something here?
If this is the case, what is to stop verizon from going a step ahead from offering "secure" to "faster" service to those who care to pay. then where goes net-neutrality.?
here in switzerland some of the DSL providers also provide their own set-top box that provides access to TV channels.
Which is funny because at first the Cable TV companies brought internet to the households and now the phone companies are bringing TV.
Anyways: While the bandwidth for internet is available at bandwidth from 300/100 kbit/s up to 20/1.2 Mbit/s, the TV functionality uses bandwidth independent from those plans allowing even the 300Kbit/s customers to watch TV in acceptable quality.
If what this Google proposal means is something like that, we really shouldn't care. This is not about building a private internet, this is about adding additional (and voluntary) services to the existing internet connection.
This is what its supposed to be about, but the worry is that the television companies that are also providing internet, will just create new 'services', that are effectively a non-net-neutral internet.
If the special treatment that BoA pays for does not degrade my (or anyone else's) internet performance, and does not degrade the speed or accessibility of other bank websites, I don't mind. I think the "separate and apart" means this goes further - I can't just type https://www.bankofamerica.com/ and get the special service.
I understand.. so yes - we as users won't mind. but what if I were another bank? The security upgrades that I would normally pay Infosys to do for me now no longer give me a competitive advantage over BoA. I'd have to pay verizon in addition to get the same "special service" to offer the same security (replace with speed/features etc.) right?
Yep, that's pretty much what it is. The words "upgrade" or "in addition" are purely PR: what is the difference between slowing down website A but not B, or increasing the bandwidth for website B but not A? I'd imagine that in the USA you'll get faster broadband in the future: either the "normal" usage gets redefined each time, or you could be stuck with "normal" being the situation in 2010 for the next decade or more.
When you increase bandwidth for A but not B because A is paying you more money, you are behaving in the exact same way that the internet does: paying for a faster connection leads to more bandwidth. When you slow down B but not A because A is paying you more money, you are actively messing with packets, holding back ones from B while pushing ones from A further up the queue. Speeding up A is not the same thing as slowing down B.
Eh??? Paying for a faster connection??? What are you trying to say? That if I own a website then it's ok to be charged money by an ISP to get an extra chunk of the last mile to the user???
No. You're charged for the connection your server has to the wider internet. The end-user is charged for their connection to the wider internet.
Note that I'm talking about the total bandwidth available, not the speed of the connection to an end-user. The distinction is important: having more bandwidth means that you can send data to more users without sacrificing individual speed.
Peering arrangements between providers are the closest it should be possible to get to paying for a larger chunk of the last mile: because the server they are trying to talk to is fewer hops away, they will have lower pings, and possibly more responsive page-loading. In a situation where the connection of a network to the backbone is saturated, this appears to be the same as giving the peered provider's packets priority, since that connection is not saturated. This situation is somewhat distinct, however, being an issue of incompetence or third-party malice (the connection is either too small for normal usage or being attacked) instead of hardware designed to prioritize packets by source (which would be malice or greed on the part of the provider). This assumes a simple network topography, with a single connection to non-peered network, but it may be expanded to explain situations involving larger networks.
Perhaps you are missing the point. If I pay for more bandwith and you do not then we will access every website at the same speed. You might access all sites slower than I do, but the sites you access, are all accessed at the same speed.
So you would have no artificial incentive to visit say the BBC rather then Huffington Post.
But, what internet prioritization is about, is that regardless of the speed of bandwith you have, some websites will be slower and some faster. Sure, if you have a 10mb and I have a 20mb then the slower sites will be even slower to you than me, and the faster sites not as fast as mine, but that is the point. Not that a user can access all sites faster or slower, but that all users can access some sites faster and some slower, regardless of the package they have.
So, if this was the case say in 1998, when Google was the newest and best thing, google.com would be so slow and Yahoo so fast that possibly people would just stick with yahoo.
Your Infosys stuff will still work - but BoA may be able to add additional end-to-end or last-mile advantages above that. I think (though I'm not sure) that part of this deal precludes exclusivity - BoA cannot prevent another bank from getting the same service for the same money.
That makes sense.. so it boils down to the ban on "exclusivity" - if it wasn't for that, then for sure there is no net neutrality.But even with that in there,
I am sure it won't be difficult to find a conflict of interest given enough time and freedom for verizon to strategize. For a hypothetical example, what if verizon itself spawns a paypal like website using its own secure service for free for which others have to pay?
MYTH: Google has “sold out” on network neutrality.
FACT: Sure, we were all ready to pay $4.6 billion to keep the 700MHz band open a couple years ago. Hey, had you seen that iPhone thing? It was killing us. But that was yesterday. Just the other day, our BFF Verizon told us that Android was selling 300,000 units a day. 300,000 a day. We were, like, "Net neutrality who?"
And what would they do if that auction was taking place today? Google only supported net neutrality when they were an outsider with nothing to lose and everything to gain. Now they're part of the club and, conveniently, compromise is the virtue of the day.
I don't understand why people equate Google winning or losing with its net neutrality stance. Google has been hugely successful on the net. Surely it would be in their interest to not have net neutrality and to have their traffic favored over competitors, but they're not advocating that. I really don't follow your argument.
When a supposedly whole-hearted net neutrality supporter flips overnight to a watered-down proposal with the fastest-growing market excluded from consideration, you have to question whether they have any credibility at all. Particularly when their partner in crime is the number one enemy of net neutrality and someone Google is almost entirely dependent on for Android's success.
Are these rules on the 700MHz spectrum not going to take effect? I've seen nothing that suggests that's the case. Certainly a policy proposal doesn't have the force necessary to change these rules. If anything, those rules are evidence that wireless will become more open over time.
As they clearly state, they can't see enough reason to force regulation yet. And with at least double the number of providers (far more if you count resellers) compared to landlines (USA-centric view), they're right.
Now, you can still argue that despite competition mobile internet needs regulation. But that's a much tougher argument to make.
What? So a few years ago Google believes that wireless needs to be kept open, makes a big bet and succeeds in ensuring as much.
Nowadays instead it does not require regulation because there's plenty of competition.
What has changed in the last few years to make Google change their mind? Have the number of wireless competitors gone up? From what I heard you (=Americans) are ending up with 2 large wireless companies (AT&T and Verizon), and a couple of little ones.
If anything competition has decreased. And yet Google feels regulation is not necessary anymore.
What I got from the post was how arrogant Google has become. Anyone notice that they dress up their opinions with wasted "MYTHS" & "FACTS"? And while the myth statements & facts maybe be true, they don't actually dis-prove the point of many originating myths, which Is why they follow each Myth/Fact with an opinion.
I don't mind Google having an opinion worth fighting for, but Google is a private company trying to push their private deals on government acting like they are doing everyone a favor.
I personally don't appreciate what they're doing and I'm noticing a trend where I'm beginning to like Google as much as I like Microsoft, and I hate Microsoft.
The most important point here is their defense of the wireless exemption.
Agree with it or not (I'm on the fence, and most people seem to disagree with it), it is deliberately temporary, and most importantly, subject to annual review and debate. So if you don't like it, please disagree, but do note that this is not meant to be a permanent provision.
But one could still argue that a deliberate, temporary solution still does no good. Why not just take care of everything right now, while we've already got legislators talking about it? If we have to bring up this whole discussion again a second time to get wireless done, I fear it will never be so.
Why not just take care of everything right now? For the same reason you don't get married on the first date. Wireless Internet is a very young and largely unknown market, we don't know what form it will eventually settle into and any laws we draft now are likely to be hopelessly naive in the much same way that software design patents are.
Wireless internet is already a total joke, where carriers charge you extra for tethering just to use the bandwidth you already paid for, and give you the runaround when you try to contest charges. The carriers will manipulate this market to squeeze every possible dime they can get from it.
And recall just how badly mobile phones stagnated before the iPhone and Android. That's carrier control at work.
The sooner these guys become reduced to dumb pipes, the better.
>Wireless internet is already a total joke, where carriers charge you extra for tethering just to use the bandwidth you already paid for
Bullshit. Don't dumb down the argument just because it serves your personal desires.
Tethering completely upsets the usage models. Their choice is then either to increase prices for everyone, or, if it remains relatively rare, increase the prices for the few. They chose the latter.
Given that they claimed "Unlimited" bandwidth, I would say that you already paid for that slice of bandwidth you're using for your computer.
That said, it would be nice to have explicit limits at different price points, regardless of how you're using it. They don't seem to be doing this, though, even on AT&T where you're specifically paying for a given amount of bandwidth. You have to pay again.
I haven't signed up for a plan that claimed unlimited since the 90s. Maybe organizations around here are just more rational?
However I do have a 5GB plan on my smartphone. In an average month I use around 500MB, because there's only so much you can do on a smartphone, and they know it, but they monitor the curve and provide enough excess that I know that if I really needed it for a period, I could use it. They also sell data sticks for PCs, and they charge much more for lower caps, because of course they know that you'll use it.
My gym membership costs something like $19 a month. Technically I could go every open minute of every day, hogging equipment and space. So could everyone else. Of course then the gym could host a membership count in the dozens instead of in the many hundreds, and my real cost would be significantly higher.
> Tethering completely upsets the usage models. Their choice is then either to increase prices for everyone, or, if it remains relatively rare, increase the prices for the few. They chose the latter.
The only way they'd be forced to increase prices for everyone is if they were breaking even. And there isn't a usage model in existence that makes a $20 tethering charge on top of a $15 200MB data plan even remotely reasonable.
Don't come up with flimsy rationalizations just because it serves your personal desires.
>The only way they'd be forced to increase prices for everyone is if they were breaking even
You mean as a whole company? Ha, that's a riot.
If selective customers cost a business disproportionately, they target those customers or fire them as customers. Get used to it because it's how the real world works.
>Don't come up with flimsy rationalizations just because it serves your personal desires.
I'm a data user, not provider. I gain no benefit by extra costs, caps, and overage fees. Those things hurt me instead of help me.
I'm also rational, however, and I have the capacity to separate my selfish desires ("I want everything free and everything limitless and perfect!") from the reality.
Ah, when I spoke of your personal desires, I wasn't talking about what you desired from your carrier. It's rather strange that you'd interpret it that way, since that obviously doesn't make any sense. However, you do have a reputation for being uncharitable and holding irrational grudges against people, which also explains your weird "whole company" assumption.
Whatever the case, you are strangely attempting to justify carrier pricing schemas through customer costs alone, as if the carriers were driven by sheer necessity rather than the desire to exploit their leverage in a deficiently competitive market. Maybe that's not what you're suggesting. If it is, my breaking even point still stands. If it isn't, and you agree that the pricing schemas are driven by leverage exploitation, then my larger point that carriers will abuse their power to the detriment of the public still stands.
I'll grant you one thing, which is that your "usage models" argument is sufficient to explain why tethering restrictions exist at all. But it's neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the specific pricing schemes, which I chalk up to leverage exploitation. And don't try to tell me carriers would never exploit their customers--they have an established and unambiguous record of doing exactly that.
I'll be leaving this conversation now, since I'm pretty sure you're in this to attack me rather than have a genuine discussion. Take care!
Interesting discussion tactic. Your argument is almost entirely an attack on me (first that I have a "reputation", which is a laugh, and then that I bizarrely mistook your very clear statement), and then after making your point you leave off claiming that this is it, you're sure that I'll just attack you.
That people actually fell for that blend of trolling, actually up-arrowing, is a sad indictment of Hacker News. I was sure everyone was pretty accustomed to that cheap tactic by now.
I (and many others who weren't angered by the Google proposal) agree. But laws are often very specific things. A net neutrality law for wireless networks could very well impose significant, specific restrictions that address our current wireless networks while harming those in the future. And there may be no way of knowing what those "bad" restrictions might be.
Sites only accessible to people on a network which is linked to the internet are not part of the public internet (for instance, my router's configuration page is most definitely not part of the public internet). A proprietary browser-based application running inside of a corporate network would not be part of the public internet, unless it is specifically designed to be accessible to anyone with a browser. The basic rule of thumb I would use is that something is on the public internet if anyone with a browser in a country with no filtering of the internet can reach it, given the proper passwords and so forth (and without using a VPN or similar tunneling to make it appear that they're elsewhere).
Would you mind explaining the difference between them, other than that one is capitalized while the other is not, then? Focus on how I would be inaccurate if I replaced every instance of "internet" with "Internet" in my previous post.
Technically the Internet was named so because it was an "inter-network" of networks (for example, intranets.) So some subsets of the overall Internet have always been privately owned and controlled (eg., ISP's and internal company networks), and parts were more "public" or at least operated by commercial carriers who were supposedly neutral (and therefore not responsible for) payload.
Personally, I am for total net neutrality (wireless, etc.).
But speaking pure strategy, you'd think after Microsoft antitrust, USL/BSDi, etc., that large tech companies would learn to avoid going anywhere near debates about the law.
Legal debates are really important. In fact they are so important that they have a habit of leaving some of the largest centers of innovation in their wake. And each legal fight is different, for sure. But I don't think people exactly appreciate the opportunity cost associated with anything but the most clear positions on social/legal issues.
Don't get me wrong: debate is important. Critical to our society and all that. But as a company, you can't ever afford to be kinda in a stance about something. Facebook, to their credit, come off as usually very decisive about their policy decision making (maybe it's that hacker, trial and error culture?), if wrong at first.
I think Google's approach in China was pretty good. They were almost decisive for about five minutes. But then it got mired in this or that proxy -- and meanwhile you create this doubt in people's minds. The doubters gain traction -- and it even infects your own focus, etc. -- all the way down the org chart.
And I don't know that I'm advocating disruptive, brash decision making. But you have to think of this whole technology and world environment as in a very fast-moving frame of reference. In which, anything that positions you in doubt and uncertainty grows with time until you clarify things. It's a fast moving set of integrals, running up area underneath at any given moment. Honesty is probably always the most important. But messed up frames of reference that seem like the right thing but actually tie up entire reserves of focus, etc., will quickly waylay even the best by the side of the road.
I'm having trouble blaming them for the out-of-band services exemption. That seems unavoidable to me as the alternative leads to absurdities.
How would you technically define "neutrality" between a digital TV service and its piggybacked internet connection? If the provider wants to allocate enough bandwidth for a specific quality video signal and use the rest for IP, is something wrong with that? Are they supposed to throttle the video signal to match the quality of Youtube?
Even if they use IP for the TV service, it's still going to blow away any competing service that has to traverse the public internet and I don't see any sensible way the ISP could avoid that. And it gets really weird when you look at internet over analog services, like DSL and cable modems.
The best you can do is force them to treat all IP traffic equally. Then they can't cripple Youtube or Skype without crippling the entire internet. The next least heavy-handed thing I can think of doing is simply forcing all digital services onto the public internet, which would be neat but a bit too ambitious.
I know regular HNers are always saying how the community is becoming more like reddit and digg, and I knew there was an inevitable gradual change... but, threads like these really start to scare me.
There is very little factual, rational discourse in this 100+ point and 100+ comment thread. There are lots of passionate opinions and that's great but the naivety, over-confidence, strict idealism is, I think, really counter to the hacker culture/philosophy that makes this community appeal to me.
I'm not here crying the sky is falling; I just want those passionate arm-chair politicians to take a step back and reconsider the virtue of practicality and getting the best out of a bad/difficult situation.
"MYTH: This proposal represents a step backwards
for the open Internet.
FACT: If adopted, this proposal would for the first time
give the FCC the ability to preserve the open Internet
through enforceable rules on broadband providers. At the
same time, the FCC would be prohibited from imposing
regulations on the Internet itself."
The last sentence seems to be exactly what net neutrality advocates have been endorsing; a regulated internet that prevents ISP's from favoring certain content providers. Why would Google tout this as a benefit? Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but this sounds like a reversal. Please clarify what they mean if I'm wrong.
What even net neutrality advocates want to avoid is the FCC becoming the "objectionable content police." The FCC should be able to enforce net neutrality, but not create new regulations regarding content.
The EFF discussed this in their recent post on the matter.
Thanks, hadn't read the EFF discussion, but I was not aware that content censorship was even at issue in the net neutrality debate.
Given that this is an official statement from a major stakeholder and given the technical/legal/societal implications, I would have hoped for more precise language.
I can still see this sentence being used to justify tying the hands of the FCC when new issues arise due to technological advancements; the whole Comcast judgment brought into question the scope of their regulatory authority & this proposal seems to significantly restrict what could potentially be required to ensure NN. IMO the issue is too important for this type of ambiguity and proposed restrictions on the FCC should be fully aired & vetted.
Transparency in how providers muck about with wireless connections is nice and all, but honestly, what real use is transparency unless you can act on it. Between the wireless industry's pervasive contracts, and the low number of provider options, the average user has little recourse when they get poor treatment.
Google is pretty much telling us that it is too much to ask that we have choice, transparency and neutrality on our public airwaves, a common good. I do not agree.
Google and other folks mention "political reality" as the reason for compromise. Folks, that just means we dont want to work hard at it, or make waves. If this country is truly democratic, then we, the people, have the power. We have the power to make not only Verizon and Google kneel to uus, but the FCC and the knuckleheads in DC.
On a quick read this sounds more like they're throwing the word "facts" around pretty loosely. More like re-mything. "in the spirit of compromise" is the key phrase. The thing about de-regulation is that companies don't get stricter with themselves. The initial proposal is as tight as it usually gets.
Read the article and when at the very beginning I saw it was written by a lawyer I had a bad feeling about what the rest of it would be like. And I was right.
Compromise? That doesn't sound like the Google I know and love.
Google has always been known for their lofty ideals and their principled founders. They are the company you can trust to walk away from billions of dollars before compromising what they believe. We saw that in their interactions with China. We saw that when they owned up to the data they accidentally collected driving down the street. We saw that when they changed their rules to make it harder for spammers to put adsense on temporary landing pages.
I've been a Google fan boy for a long time but this week they lost my respect.