The truth about net neutrality and the big money behind it

Finally, a truthful article was published on Wednesday about the little known fact of who really invented the debate about net neutrality.  When you finish here, click on it -- it's a must read.  The story was published in a most unlikely place too - The San Francisco Enquirer - the big hometown newspaper serving the Silicon Valley.  And guess who they identify as the inventor of this hot political debate...

Initially, network neutrality was the demand that network carriers ignore the Internet's fundamental inequality. Google had good reason to advocate this, because it is advantaged by a status quo in which money buys privilege. Any move by carriers to selectively boost speeds for fees dulls the advantage Google has secured for itself by building huge complexes of hundreds of thousands of computers.

There you have it.  Net neutrality, and all the puff about fairness, equality and openness is all about "money buy[ing] privilege."  And this time, I didn't say it, Google's own hometown paper did.

Searching is one of the Internet's real strangle points.  Don't get me wrong.  I give Google a lot credit for having the foresight to invest heavily in servers and software years ago so they could become the dominant search engine.  That's what entrepreneurship is all about. 

Government defined net neutrality equals government regulation of the Internet.

Now Google runs to Washington hoping to inflict heavy regulation on others, like ISP's.  Why?  Because they want to protect their own dominance in directing Internet traffic.  They are outraged when someone suggests that they need to be regulated while they simultaneously seek to regulate others. 

Admittedly, they're good at this game.  They cloak their self interest in public interest.  They create a perception that ISP's are doing dastardly things to everyone's Internet experience even though the facts don't support their assertions. 

They call it "neutrality" when they ask the government to prevent ISP's from having legitimate business relationships with anyone who may be additive to their customers' experience.  Like they need Washington to give them even more of a competitive leg up.  So what they've done is to effectively strangle the competition while it is still in the metaphorical college kid's parents' garage.

Google and Yahoo

Now they want to align themselves with the distant second in Internet search - Yahoo.  They don't want Washington to interfere with their ability to become even more dominant.

Instead of a search market where three players compete vigorously for eyeballs, this deal would create a status quo where the top dog enjoys an 85 percent market share and the ability to set prices for search ads with no fear of being undercut by its much weaker sole competitor. This should set alarms clanging wherever antitrust and personal privacy concerns are held dear, but it hasn't.

Don't get me wrong.  Google truly is an innovative company and I respect them for that.  But I lose all respect when they run to Washington and ask policy makers to heavily regulate others who may, someday, pose a threat to their dominance.  If they're successful, they become fat and lazy because they don't have to continue to innovate to remain competitive. 

And that's simply not good for consumers.

Reality Check!

I was in Washington for two days this week.  I was there to discuss important issues affecting my customers' Internet experience.  I thought about how much time I spend in DC and for a fleeting moment, I wondered if I was guilty of similar contradictions. 

It took me less than a nanosecond to remember that when I'm in Washington, I'm asking policymakers to appreciate the competitive nature of our industry.  I ask them not to regulate the burgeoning (and successful) broadband business so everyone is forced to innovate in order to remain competitive.  Google also has a deregulatory message but only for their role in the Internet experience.  Meanwhile, they simultaneously seek to regulate others with a very heavy hand.

I'm sorry.  That kind of behavior just pisses me off.

Comments

[bofkentucky]

Google's request for a neutral net is a very altruistic position given their domination of many sectors of internet content. If someone builds a better youtube tomorrow on a neutral net people can transition to it without hinderance.

What the Comcast's and Verizon's of the world have proposed is prioritizing itunes music store traffic versus yahoo or microsoft's music store. Apple would use their dominance in the pay-per-track audio market to negotiate a positive throttle rate with the major isp's for themselves and/or a negative throttle rate for their competitors, furthering their dominance of the market.

The real danger is in the phone market, both the telco's and cable co's have investments in phone deployment they would love to hang onto without skype, vonage and similar products buzzing around cutting into their margins. Any ISP has the capability to cut "unblessed" voip off at the knee's just like comcast has attempted to do with bittorrent or att and apple have done with voip over wifi calls on the iphone.

Not to long ago you were complaining about the telco's sitting on dsl to protect their T-1 markets and Comcast and TW had to fight telco protectionism on the telephone interconnect rules in North Carolina. The telco's complain about the cable companies fighting them tooth and nail on statewide video franchising. It looks to the consumer that instead of two "equals" wanting to fight each other on equal terms, driving down pricing and increasing quality of service that both industries would rather attempt to destroy competition leaving the customer with a monopoly for all their data, voice and video. Neither side has proven themselves worthy of the trust to not hinder their customers

[sineswiper]

I believe that Google's role in Net Neutrality is not financial or anything sinister. Characteristically, they don't behave in that matter. It's really a POV issue, and how each side believes they are trying to ruin the Internet.

The Wikipedia article on Net Neutrality has some good insight on why this issue was even brought up:

"In early 2005 the FCC enforced network neutrality principles in a documented case of abuse involving Madison River Communications, a small DSL provider that briefly blocked VoIP service."

Before that, it was just talks and papers. Now, some ISP decided to -BLOCK- VoIP service, including 911 service, in the name of promoting their own phone service. The Internet exploded with this grave concern that any ISP could interfere with Internet service for profit. This is not unlike the porting numbers issue that Verizon got smacked on.

The sides provided their positions. The pro-NN side wants to make sure that nothing like the MRC indident doesn't happen again, and further prevent even slowing down a site for company gain. The anti-NN side wants to make sure that massive P2P traffic from the 2% of the network doesn't overtake the network, and can still be managed for the rest of the 98% that just want to surf the web, read emails, and play games.

BOTH sides have valid arguments and concerns. I think the sooner either side realize this, the better they can hash out a proper compromise.

[Scott Ritcher]

Is the issue of net neutrality relevant in markets where there is only one cable internet provider?

If Mr. Willner is so pissed off about the marketplace being regulated, let's open up the Louisville market to competition.

"They are outraged when someone suggests that they need to be regulated while they simultaneously seek to regulate others."

[Moose Head]

No competition in Louisville? What about Dish or DirecTV? Don't you get AT&T's offers for their combined service.

If you don't like Insight, there's a competitor just a phone call away. Not that you'd catch me attaching a satellite dish to my roof. Insight has always treated me just fine.

[Richard Bennett]

I'm glad you like my piece, Michael. It was published in the San Fran Chronicle on Wednesday, and reprinted in the Washington Times on Saturday. It isn't often that these two papers agree that a particular viewpoint should be aired, but they did in this case.

Commenter bofkentucky is a little off-target on the role of neutrality in Google's strategy. Google owns a private network of very expensive data centers, which intersects the public Internet at several points. Some 20% of the Internet's traffic comes from Google/YouTube. This traffic isn't regulated by Net Neutrality.

And it's the sheer volume of traffic that Google releases on the public Internet that gives them control over Vonage, Skype, et. al.