Google vs. Google On Wireless Net Neutrality
from the we-were-for-it-before-we-were-against-it dept
While I still think that uproar over Google and Verizon'sOn the flip side, Google is trying to defend itself against these attacks by pushing back on a few points. Unfortunately for Google, there's a wonderful search engine called Google, which can be used to dig up things said by a company called Google in the past. Over at Broadband Reports, Karl Bode has noted some of the... changing sentiment of Google policy lawyer Richard Whitt. For example, in the latest blog post defending the Verizon
First, the wireless market is more competitive than the wireline market, given that consumers typically have more than just two providers to choose from. Second, because wireless networks employ airwaves, rather than wires, and share constrained capacity among many users, these carriers need to manage their networks more actively. Third, network and device openness is now beginning to take off as a significant business model in this space.But... here's the very same Richard Whitt in 2007 (pdf), making the argument that mobile providers were already abusing mobile networks and required more openness:
wireless providers block many common Internet applications and services outright, frequently do not allow network attachment of any device but their own, and reserve the right to terminate service arbitrarily for using other services that do not conform to a short and vaguely-defined listAs Bode notes, nothing has magically changed to make this competitive market any better. Instead, what's changed is Google's heavy investment in the mobile space:
So what changed? Google did. In 2007, Android wasn't a major mobile OS, and Google didn't have multi-billion-dollar wireless advertising relationships with Verizon and AT&T. You'll also recall that Google had hopes of bypassing the carrier retail experience completely -- hopes that flamed out rather spectacularly with the death of the Nexus One and their online phone store. The policy shift is clear and indisputable, as is the motivation: Google doesn't want consumer protections (be they privacy, or network neutrality) to impact wireless ad revenues.Again, none of this should be seen as a surprise, but just a reminder that, in the end, Google is going to do what it believes is best for Google. There's nothing wrong with that -- it's just that, in the past, Google tended to realize that what was best for consumers was also best for Google. Now... it doesn't seem quite as sure of that. I think this is generally a mistake that Google may come to regret. Even if this
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Filed Under: contradictions, net neutrality
Companies: google, verizon
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Right, because the number of providers makes the market soooo competitive when the industry standard is to lock consumers into two year contracts with punitive ETFs.
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Re: Scote
I understand that Tmobile doesn't cover everywhere, but they do cover the vast majority of people. If more people actually stood up for their rights and took up deals like that, then you wouldn't have this issue.
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Finally Google is showing its NEW colors or is that TRUE colors?
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Re: Finally Google is showing its NEW colors or is that TRUE colors?
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Re: Re: Finally Google is showing its NEW colors or is that TRUE colors?
Just as prostitution is the oldest profession, pointing out the stupidity of those who frequented prostitutes is one of the oldest of human "other" activities. (*usually practiced by 'unpopular' prostitutes and hunters who rarely caught anything)
; P
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Re: Finally Google is showing its NEW colors or is that TRUE colors?
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Public Knowledge video on YouTube
http://tiny.cc/8zxn6
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I read the link that was at your link Mike...
Google looks out for Numero Uno
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Re: I read the link that was at your link Mike...
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Re: Re: I read the link that was at your link Mike...
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Re: Re: I read the link that was at your link Mike...
Google = evil
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Uhm... so there's nothing wrong with the recording industry doing what is best for themselves?
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Hey, maybe they are wrong -- maybe the record labels will find a way to turn this mish-mash of artificial scarcity and expensive litigation into a sustainable business model -- but I've yet to see any particularly convincing arguments for that.
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Indeed. I just think what they've done isn't actually what is best for themselves. That's the point.
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It's a Schick already.
Google was the perceived to be the only company left, that vowed to stand for "what's right" and they feel betrayed.
Frankly, those people just weren't paying attention.
Google's CEO said, just over a week ago:
"true transparency and no anonymity is the way forward for the internet - In a world of asynchronous threats it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it."
Come on guys, Google's "do no evil" is a Schick. You have to dupe lots of people into believing you can be trusted with all sorts of data. That's why this move was really not too bright. They should have just kept it in the shadows like the devils deals of the past.
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Sorry...
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Of course, you're probably right, but that doesn't mean your aren't paranoid.
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Actually, it kind of does.
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I agree that it's pretty amusing to watch all the reactions to this, and everyone claiming that Google has finally gone "Evil", but aren't they all forgetting that Verizon played a part in this 'policy framework' proposal as well? We never saw a proposal from only Google, nor one from only Verizon, so how can we jump to the conclusion that this is exactly what Google wants, instead of thinking that this is a compromise between the two? Verizon has a history of walking all over customers, and if I had to bet money, I'd say they're more against net neutrality than they are for it. Perhaps Google came to the table fighting on all kinds of things that Verizon wanted, and this was the compromise that Google felt comfortable enough with to associate itself with. If you've read their blog post about it, as I'm sure you have, they mention at the end that it's simply a proposal and they call for the real policy makers - AND the American Public - to voice their concerns and preferences to Congress. When was the last time a corporation was willing to share their views on a specific policy so openly?? Does the government even know the meaning of the word 'transparent'? (You've shown me plenty of examples that they don't...) When was the last time you got a really good idea of what was in a bill going through congress before they voted on it?? (the ______ act of ______ ?? what's that about again?)
I don't want to sound too much like a Google shill, as I am still a little bit skeptical, but the mere fact that Google published the proposal for everyone to read and criticize makes me think they aren't getting everything they want out of it either, and are hoping the public will get up in arms about it. If we let Verizon and Congress talk this out themselves, I'm all but certain that we'd never have seen anything substantial about the regulations until it was too late to do anything, and they'd have been much more in favor of the ISP's than this one is.
My theory is that Google knows exactly what it's doing, and that is preventing any ISP from buying regulations that favor them (business as usual...). To explain the lawyer speak....I can't imagine Verizon would let Google get away with a response like "Well, we didn't like this, but had to leave it in there or there was no way Verizon would have agreed to it."
All the advertising deals in the world are useless if no one trusts your company enough to visit those sites, or click those ads, or use that brand, and Google knows this, probably better than anyone in history. Couldn't it be that they're just trying to expose the evil of everyone else involved?? In order to stop something bad from happening, they have to let people know it's happening right? What do you think about that?
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Most of the commentary on this proposal seems to focus on how Google hasn't matched the high ideals of the critics. Very little of the commentary seems to note that actual forward progress has been made toward net neutrality in the wired space with one of the largest carriers in the US voicing support. That alone is almost enough to move the industry because that means there is always a credible 'net neutral' carrier for the consumer.
In the wireless space the way is deliberately left open for later legislation to follow the wired precedent- which will be all the more likely if net neutrality proves to be a 'successful' policy.
The trouble with high ideals is that they say nothing about how to actually get from here to there. The Google/Verizon proposal is a step forward and offers a way to break the current FCC deadlock. And, yes, it turns out that real world progress in politics involves some degree of compromise.
Importantly, however, this proposal still permits a close to ideal outcome in the long term. If no progress is made soon then we risk the worst of all worlds (no legislation, no open carriers and an un-virtuous circle of control and more control).
I would love to see strong Net Neutrality laws in place but there have already been 5 abortive attempts to pass this regulation. Honestly, just go and read the wikipedia article on U.S. Net Neutrality and tell me how to get from the current gridlock to strong net neutrality laws. Now look at the Google/Verizon proposal again. It looks to me like progress at a time when the fight for Net Neutrality is looking particularly dark.
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The reality is that Google is now defending it's position in wireless as a compromise while laying out what it sees and the reasons why. The problem is that while doing this they're being rather disingenuous about it saying that what they want is to allow for new serves and applications in wireless space without cannibalizing "open Internet" (whatever that is) space. The problem there is that these services currently exist on the Internet and don't seem to be causing much of a bandwidth fuss.
And, in spite of, or maybe because of, Google's agreement with this arrangement wireless will remain forever a private playground no matter what Google says.
What it does is create an open/public/something Internet for wireline and a collection of private Internets for wireless. In fact, I'd go a step further and say it creates a series of permanent private networks whose only relationship with the Internet is that it's carried over TCP/IP. Likely with carrier/vendor lockin. And the giggle that Congress may step in in the future to address "consumer" complaints of abuse.
IF you buy that it's a good idea. If you find that frightening or a roll back in time to such things as Compu$pend and other private networks it should scare you to death.
Me? I'm scared to death that this has the distinct possibility of killing/fracturing the goose that lays the golden eggs not about net neutrality should something like this go ahead.
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You fail to mention that that carrier has basically given up on it's wired network and has decided to concentrate on wireless instead. So it's little surprise they would readily accept wired neutrality in exchange for wireless non-neutrality. That's not progress at all.
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Corporations don't exist for their sake, but for public benefit.
Google is like all other corporations: amoral and immortal. We'd better keep *limits* on such entities. -- One way that I propose is for charters to absolutely expire after a quarter century, all the corporation sold off, to keep economic ferment going rather entrenched monopolies.
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Re: Corporations don't exist for their sake, but for public benefit.
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Re: Corporations don't exist for their sake, but for public benefit.
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Public Corporations and Capitalism
Those who answered "no" were eliminated from further consideration for employment. But hey, that's just the nature of public corporations maximizing profits in a capitalist system. Nothing wrong with that, huh?
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Looks like a variant of Button, Button.
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'net neutrality'
and that the bargain has implications for net people as well as phone folks, it is not the biggest issue. The big question is who is going to control the major bandwidth of the future: Cell phones or the internet? For the last few years I thought the cell phone carriers were gaining ground. A hotel manager who uses a jail broken generation 3 Iphone to make free phone calls on open wifi networks everywhere, epitomizes the differences and the struggle between giants from both these two worlds, for primacy. For a long time I feared the more parochial cell phone giants wanted control of the Internet. I not longer believe that to be true. I also believe that whatever inroads increasing cell phone access makes in the internet world, those inroads will not change the essential underlying democracy of the Internet world.
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Re: 'net neutrality'
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Google truly does no evil. Or do they? There is this one article I read at http://tech-senses.com/ called called “How doing Business With Google Almost Killed A Company”. That is probably the most evil thing Google has ever done.
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The government has already placed great restrictions on competition, otherwise this wouldn't be a problem.
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Scarcity
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