Google accused of turning its back on Net neutrality
The problem with defining Net neutrality so the government can regulate it is a little like the problem of defining obscenity so the government can ban it: You know it when you see it.
That shorthand didn't work very well for the U.S. Supreme Court, and it's not working that well for Google, as a report in Monday's editions of the Wall Street Journal made clear. The article said that Google "has approached major cable and phone companies" with a plan to "place Google servers directly within the network of the service providers," in apparent violation of the company's long-standing exhortations that Net neutrality means everything-must-be-treated-equally.
Google promptly replied to the Journal in a post Sunday evening by Richard Whitt, its Washington telecom counsel. Whitt dubbed the Journal story "confused" and "hyperbolic," and offered this elaboration:
Google has offered to "colocate" caching servers within broadband providers' own facilities; this reduces the provider's bandwidth costs since the same video wouldn't have to be transmitted multiple times. We've always said that broadband providers can engage in activities like colocation and caching, so long as they do so on a non-discriminatory basis.
All of Google's colocation agreements with ISPs -- which we've done through projects called OpenEdge and Google Global Cache -- are non-exclusive, meaning any other entity could employ similar arrangements. Also, none of them require (or encourage) that Google traffic be treated with higher priority than other traffic. In contrast, if broadband providers were to leverage their unilateral control over consumers' connections and offer colocation or caching services in an anti-competitive fashion, that would threaten the open Internet and the innovation it enables.
Perhaps the Journal was hasty; the story dwelt little on the technology being used (which is the heart of the matter), included little comment from Google itself, didn't mention caching, and mostly explored what this could mean for Washington politicking next year.
But if there's a bit of confusion here, that's to be expected. Much like pornography is in the eye of the beholder, so is Net neutrality.
In a February 2008 post on its public policy blog, Google said: "Some major broadband service providers have threatened to act as gatekeepers, playing favorites with particular applications or content providers, demonstrating that this threat is all too real."
Let's read that a second time. Early this year, Google was upset that broadband providers may ink deals--"playing favorites"--with certain content providers. That was then. Today Google is actively encouraging broadband providers to ink deals with certain content providers--that is, itself, especially for YouTube videos. (Here's Google's own definition of what should and should not be permitted.)
Of course, Google includes the obligatory disclaimer that anyone else should be able to enter into deals with broadband providers for colocation or caching as well. Fair enough. But if one of the justifications for Net neutrality was to protect the ability of the next Google or Yahoo or Facebook to become popular without cozying up to AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, well, that particular justification seems to have evaporated.
This is hardly the end of Net neutrality regulations. There's no indication that President-elect Barack Obama has changed his mind about its desirability, and liberal advocacy groups are planning a legislative push in 2009. Web firms may still find it useful to attempt to shackle AT&T, Comcast, and so on with vague and open-ended rules. But what this episode should demonstrate is that some of Net neutrality's most vigorous proponents may not like it when those same vague and open-ended rules apply to them.
Disclosure: The author is married to a Google employee.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan.
I believe the threat isn't when a content provider inks a deal with an ISP to co-locate content servers. I believe the threat is when a content provider is given preferential speed for the end user to access their content, or a lack of access to other content providers altogether. If you want a comparison, think of why payola was banned.
That's how simple this issue is.
First, I invoked Google's own words ("playing favorites" with particular content providers). A few months ago, they didn't like it. Now they do.
Second, you're right that denying "access to other content providers altogether" would be a very bad thing, and against the principles on which the Internet was founded. Pretty much all of us can agree this would be a bad thing. But the problem with your argument is that Google et al. supported vague and broad legislation that would have gone much further than this. It was not limited to prohibiting blocking -- if it did only that, AT&T etc. probably would have supported it.
Now, were Google to induce those ISP's it has deals with to artificially slow down traffic to any of the hypothetical competitors mentioned, that would be a clear violation of net neutrality and what we really don't want to see.
Just building their infrastructure better than anyone else, however, is just good business and at the end of the day better for all their users. Hard to find fault with that.
As for Payola being banned? Bah. Payola is flourishing like never before. It is merely handled through an intermediary referred to as "independent record promoters" these days. Since Clear Channel and a few other large players owns virtually all Radio in the US now after it was stupidly, boneheadedly, darn near criminally deregulated, not only is there payola, payola is centralized and institutionalized like never before. That's why music stinks, why artists are copies of each other and why we keep getting the same musical pap regurgitated time after time after time... and then they wonder why records don't sell. When you have to play for airplay, it may seem to make sense to go for the "sure thing", ie regurgitated pap... Radio deregulation was a disaster for everybody except Clear Channel and the "indies", basically.
This is really bad, because it enable the ISP the opportunity to charge for lower latencies to your website. Thus giving you a relative advantage over your competitors.
If they were to spread their servers in a more decentralized fashion in order to reduce their latency, it would have been fine by Net Neutrality principles as they would not be allowing ISPs to give preferential treatment to anyone.
Wake up people, just because it is Google does not mean it is not against Net Neutrality. Look at the problem in an objective fashion. As much as Google rightfully put pressures against anti-netneutrality advocates, they are going against their own principles here. People would have been (rightfully) all over the place if it would have been Microsoft or Yahoo that was about to ink that deal.
I just wanted to add that this "collocation" agreement would be fine by Net Neutrality's principles as long as long as it would be free and accessible to everyone.
MSFT could just set up a deal so that Windows computers had faster, more reliable Internet access through various ISPs by allowing them access to several different points of reference for internet connections at the same time, wired and wireless at the same time, for example. By not allowing other software manufacturors access to this technology without paying for it, MSFT gains an edge over the competition. It's not that it is artificially hindering those other competitors, it's just gaining an upper hand by utilizing business deals, rather than new technology, in order to gain market share. What Mam00th was saying is simply that ISPs would be allowed to show favoritism to certain sites, allowing them to be artificially faster while not allowing others to be faster. It's like having a race, but allowing 3 people a headstart. It's wrong. Either start at the line at the same time as everyone else and compete or get out of the race. If this technology is to be employed, it should be employed by all, for free. It would make a faster Internet and, by doing so, it would make a lot of very happy customers.
Google are paying to colocate Googles own servers closer to some of their customers. Thus reducing network usage through that particular ISP - traffic to Google sites for the customers of that ISP go up to the colocated Google equipment and is returned directly without using bandwidth from that ISP to Google and thus clogging up the rest of the Internet. It is a good thing for everyone, including Googles direct competitors - the traffic to Yahoo should be appreciably faster from that ISP because less of the Google traffic is in the outgoing pipe to clutter it up!
It is still Google providing the content, and they aren't paying for any preferential access, increased bandwitth to the ISP's customers or traffic shaping in any way shape or form, as far as I can gather - they just place their own equipment closer to the customers.
They do that in other ways too, not the least of which is having their own huge data centers spread out all over the globe, also with the aim of providing customers quicker and more local access to Google data. Would you argue that doing that is also against net neutrality? That would be utterly nonsensical.
Apparently, to take this argument to its logical extreme, any company with more than one access point to the Internet is against net neutrality, then? Come on!
Net neutrality is about data traffic being treated equally. Google TCP/IP traffic should have the same priority as my TCP/IP traffic, no more no less. That is also what is happening here, as far as I can tell - Google can just use their financial muscle to build their own networks smarter and more distributed than I could. As long as nobody is impeding my traffic compared to theirs for money, this issue has absolutely nothing to do with net neutrality.
Colocation has nothing to do with this. Putting their servers closer to users will enable faster access, possibly reduce both Google's, and the ISP's bandwidth costs, and, importantly, not hurt any other services.
In other words, the little guy is in a bycicle race when Google is being allowed a Harley, just because it can afford it.
Anyone that doesn't think cable companies will, given half a chance, segregate those that receive superior content because they're paying fees (e.g. on a comcast high end "package") from those that might receive something less is kidding themselves. I'm not singling out cable companies - even if they do represent something just below pond scum - as most organizations that can collocate servers will act the same.
Is Google becoming somewhat of a bad actor? Funny how billions of dollars can make some activities seem more "acceptable".....
If companies want to prioritize some content, they should have the freedom to do so. They should also be able to hire people based on genetic/racial data. In the end they will be the ones shooting themselves in the foot.
Net neutrality is about not letting the internet access providers give priority to some data, or diminish the performance of a competing service or content. Co-location is about trying to reduce costs and improve performance. It won't give google content any higher priority over yahoo or microsoft or anybody else, it will just lower their cost of transmission and reduce their server footprint.
There is nothing malicious or unfair in this approach. Google has more money than most companies, that gives them economies of scale, which is always going to exist. The WSJ is confusing two different issues in an attempt to make google look bad.
The following was taken directly from the Google Public Policy Blog listed in this article.
What isn't okay?
If all these different activities are acceptable in Google's view, what should the broadband carriers not be allowed to do? The answer is those last-mile activities that would discriminate against certain Internet applications or content with an anticompetitive intent. These would include:
* Levying surcharges on content providers that are not their retail customers;
* Prioritizing data packet delivery based on the ownership or affiliation (the who) of the content, or the source or destination (the what) of the content; or
* Building a new "fast lane" online that consigns Internet content and applications to a relatively slow, bandwidth-starved portion of the broadband connection.
Read the second one. By prioritizing the data packet delivery, Google is going against what it says isn't ok. It's asking to be allowed to cache its data packets closer to the customer, thereby prioritizing its data packets. It's also asking to be put in the "fast lane" by being put closer to its customers while its competitors are left in the "slow lane" of the general internet. There's a reason Google looks like the bad guy here, it is.
I'm appalled that your ability to distinguish these situations is so poor. I can't help but think that this article must be flame bait.
In any case, the only companies with enough wherewithall to colocate servers at the ISP would be Microsoft, Google, Oracle, IBM, Apple and possibly, a slim possibility, Yahoo.
Think Google doesn't want to own the world? If this were Microsoft such a hue and cry would be raised, the European Union would immediately object, the Feds might get involved and the lovers of all things Google or Apple would scream bloody murder.
I agree that the WSJ is the last newsrag to know about the Internet and that they put implications into the article that might have been, shall we say, the view of the rag. But that doesn't change the fact of what Google wants to do. And that's simply make sure they have first access to the 'last mile'.
Get realistic. Eric Schmidt and all Googlers want to own the world. They can't.
That is more like the current motto that Google has been gaining through their actions and behaviors. They can say what they would like the world to believe, but the reality of the situation is all too clearly different.
But in the end, I am not sure it really matters. Google will get what they want regardless, so... why get upset over it?
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by bdennis410
January 8, 2009 5:25 PM PST
- The answer to Net Neutrality is separating Content from Infrastructure, just as anti-trusters did with TV programming in the 70's.
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(28 Comments)What does this mean?
No infrastructure owner-cable, FIOS, wireless, powerline,satellite-could own the Content transmitted, but must charge the consumer metered bandwidth usage,; metered usage is one the face Neutral, you only pay for what you use. Obviously, some Content providers will choose to "package" services, from Internet, to telephone, to Entertainment (channels? Pay Per View? a la carte Weather anyone?)
Net neutrality then exists, splendidly, with competition from every level of Content and service provider, in a fluid environment, allowing for new services and products to be offered, purchased, and consumed with full transparency.
Thus, Net Neutrality is easily achieved, with a free marketplace once again providing the widest possible choice at the range of costs based on consumer choices.
Monopolies need not apply, and hopefully won't have a seat at the decision-making tables of the FCC and Congress and certainly won't wind up with a "piece of the pie."
Don't be mislead and misused by any Comcast, Verizon, Charter, Time warner, AT&T or anyone who tries to sell you that they are "entitled " to both offer Content and Bandwidth access and charge for it.
I believe that if you take a look at the future of what the Internet should be-Anything, Anytime, Anywhere- that future offers the most choice and value to consumers. Anything that restricts Content provider access to infrastructure on any basis except technical and reasonable cost is to be avoided at all cost and discriminates in favor of one Content over another,
In this battle, Consumers MUST be the arbiter of what they want, and it must be Anything, Anytime, Anywhere.
Everything flows from that consumer-friendly philosophy.
Think of it this way; the government provided the monopoly apparatus that allowed the infrastructure to be built in the first place, then allowed over $200,000,000,000 Billions of excess profits (that's Billions with a Big "B" folks) through allowing those monopolies to be maintained long after the investment was recaptured and huge profits earned. It's as though you leased your car to provide transportation service, and long after the car company recovered their cost, and profits, they still charge the same price. Not only that, they continue to add on accessories to the car at huge markups, and continually raise the price of your lease, "just because."
The Content providers, HBO, Showier, premium channel providers, special event Content, are forced to go along, otherwise they have no access to subscribers.
How must better to have the infrastructure providers charge a la carte for Content, only acting as the conduit from provider to consumer, and charging for the bandwidth used, Everybody wins, but the consumer most of all.
Maybe it's time to treat Infrastructure providers the way we used to treat utilities. that is; they are allowed a reasonable return on capital, have regulated requirements of service levels, and are just a" commodity" to be used for the benefit of consumers.
No? How about treating them like AT&T after the breakup, and in the ensuing years the price of telephone handset went down " you only get a color choice of Black and ...Black", technologies not even considered were allowed access to the infrastructure (Carterphone Decision) and much more; we all benefited, and can again if we force government to legislate separation of Content and Infrastructure.