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Comment by yanw | Hacker News Reader

Google spokeswoman: “We have taken a backseat to no one in our support for an open internet. We offered this proposal in the spirit of compromise. Others might have done it differently, but we think locking in key enforceable protections for consumers is progress and preferable to no protection.”

I have to agree, Google is getting flak here although they are the only company that stood for net neutrality. They are being pragmatic here and everyone is ignoring the good points in this agreement. Also being ignored the fact that this is non-binding agreement that is designed to speed the debate.

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This deal is just a fig leaf. Google supported net neutrality when it suited their business goals. The moment Android took off it became a non-issue for them. If anything, they should be taking more flak. Google's enjoyed an incredibly soft treatment by the press thanks to their positioning as a company that puts ethics before profits. Yet on the issues that matter, it's increasingly clear that Google's ethics are highly situational.

They succeeded in getting Verizon to agree to net neutrality on the wired internet. Isn't that a strict improvement over the status quo?

No it is not. The status quo is that no one has yet made any binding decisions, and the telecom operators will try to get away with what they can until the FCC slaps them down.

Google just succeeded in getting Verizon to agree to net neutrality on the wired internet in exchange for removing any possibility of net neutrality on the wireless internet (which Google claims is the future of internet).

>in exchange for removing any possibility of net neutrality on the wireless internet (which Google claims is the future of internet).

[citation needed] This is explicitly not true according to the text of the agreement. The agreement says that it is too early to determine whether net-neutrality provisions are necessary for wireless networks, because it's a newer market and there is much more competition.

That kind of "let's wait and see how it looks until it evolves before we regulate" attitude is precisely what caused the current stagnation in the wired market.

The market fundamentally is under heavy regulation; wireless can't work without heavy-handed regulation of who can use what spectrum. We can't just stop at that kind of draconian regulation (which is necessary) and say that a little thing like non-discriminatory access to your absolute monopoly is too much.

Sure, but isn't it better to legislate net-neutrality for the wired internet than not do anything at all? If this was the only legislation that could conceivably pass, would you vote for it?

However there are fundamental economic reasons why the wired market should lead to natural monopolies and the wireless market should lead to more competition. Therefore there is good reason to wait.

Furthermore bandwidth is limited. The proposal is not what Google wants, it is what they were able to get Verizon to agree to. I read that clause as very much of an, "We agree to disagree, and agree that our areas of agreement are worth pursuing anyways."

Google is not the government. Google is just one company. The way people are talking about this you would legitimately think that Google ran the tubes, or something. They don't.

Google is at least getting a discussion going.

Google is telling the FCC how they might want to do things precisely because they're just one random company that couldn't possibly influence anything?

Also, they know who you are, Mr. ergo98.

>Google is telling the FCC how they might want to do things precisely because they're just one random company that couldn't possibly influence anything?

Just as Verizon tells them how they want to do things. As does Microsoft, and Apple, and every other big tech company.

You grossly overstate Google's significance.

Google is not there to "get a discussion going" - it's there to guide things towards its own interests, just like Verizon et al.

The point here is that Google is just another huge, evil(1) company among others like it, and that all its recent talk about openness is just PR-bullshit.

(1) Whatever your definition may be.

http://xkcd.com/463/

That is an extremely naive view of things, Google is a publicly traded for profit company, any good or ethical maneuvers they make are just surplus, they tend to do it more than most, I suppose if they were completely rotten no one would criticize them this much as people would expect the worst.

Could anyone explain the Android Net Neutrality link for me?

Everything Google does goes over the internet. Youtube in particular needs high bandwidth and seems like the kind of thing that would be throttled to protect cable TV. Yet everyone in the media is obsessed with the Android link and claiming Google no longer cares about net neutrality as a result of Android. But not actually explaining why this makes any sense.

Is it just because Verizon is pushing Android hardest out of the US carriers? Seems a bit weak.

Completely changing your stated principles on the importance of net neutrality and openness in the wireless sphere, because it suites your financial situation, is not "compromise" it's hypocrisy.

In the U.S. companies can't have principles that don't suit their financial situation. If they try to, the board is exposed to shareholder class-action lawsuits.

Exactly, the glaring problem here isn't that Google or Verizon make a deal that is beneficial to their shareholders. The problem is the complete ineptitude of the government to design regulatory law.

In time perhaps we will view the failings of the FCC as the failure of MMS, I hope not.

I was under the impression that Google put a special clause in their charter(?) that gave them special permission to make decisions that appear to go against their bottom line.

I'm not aware of any such clause, are you thinking of "don't be evil"? What you may be thinking of is some of the weird voting rights arrangements:

"In an unusual provision for a technology company, Google will create two classes of shares with different voting rights, a move that aims to guarantee that founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page will maintain decision-making authority"

A clause like that doesn't affect the type of lawsuits I am talking about.

I think you're right; I can't seem to find anything that gives them special non-profit-seeking privilege. The only thing related is the "Don't be Evil" statement in their Owners Manual for Shareholders that states:

"Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served-as shareholders and in all other ways-by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company."

I guess the exceptionally weak phrase "even if we forgo some short term gains" included in a non-legal document isn't really much protection.

See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1053179

That's not entirely true. Red Hat has stuck to the Open Source and Free Software movement since its founding, and I don't think it has strayed from that or compromised, even when Microsoft offered a "patent deal" then waged a proxy IP war via the SCO lawsuit.

They've been granted some defensive patents, but publicly pledged not to use them except to defend themselves and Open Source software.

They're on track to make their fist billion in revenue at the same point as Microsoft did in its existence.

They did so knowingly at the expense of long-term profit?

They could've gone into a similar (or probably more lucrative) deal as Novell did when Microsoft gave them $350 Million dollar "patent cooperation" and Suse license over a few years.

Red Hat turned it down outright. Think of how much that would've benefitted Red Hat. That was well more than half of their revenue at the time. They stuck to their principles at the expense of that type of massive profit. It paid off.

But we should still hold them accountable when they claim to have principles and then violate them.

The attitude in the agreement towards wireless is that it's too competitive to regulate right now, basically anything could still happen that isn't a "complete change" it's just a wait and see compromise.

I don't believe you can get into bed with a US telecom and stay clean. It's impossible.

Except for Apple, who have done very well. They have not compromised to most carrier concerns, you don't find an ATT logo on the iPhone, or dodgy software apps you can't remove, or hardware switched off. Apple has done more to change the carriers than anyone else.

Sure, they have had to pull some apps (although both ATT and Apple deny it was due to the carrier).

Apple has only one single carrier in the US, so how many carriers did they exactly change?. Did they start to sell unlocked GSM/CDMA phones to anyone who wanted?

As the article states

"ban cool apps for no real reason (Google Voice on the iPhone for one), cripple apps to protect business models (Skype on the iPhone) and outright ban data-heavy apps from third parties (Slingbox for the iPhone), all the while promoting their own app (MLB’s iPhone app)."

Looks like compromise to me, all in its best interest of course.

Maybe you are forgetting what it would be like before Apple? Carriers would regularly disable bluetooth or downloading. You could only get apps from their store. You could only get ringtones from their store. etc...

Apple changed all carriers, since they are less locked down. On Android, you can get apps from the google marketplace, not just the carrier store. Ringtones can be had easily.

Nonsense. I had a windows mobile phone, and could do all of those things. In hindsight, windows mobile had a pretty awful user interface, but it wasn't apple that caused those things to happen.

yanw, the article points out what they had previously said before this comprimise. I like the old position, not the new "only partially completely incorrect" model.

from a post on Google’s official blog in 2007: “The nation’s spectrum airwaves are not the birthright of any one company. They are a unique and valuable public resource that belong to all Americans. The FCC’s auction rules are designed to allow U.S. consumers — for the first time — to use their handsets with any network they desire, and and use the lawful software applications of their choice.”

You don't think the large amount of Android share that is Verizon based had anything to do with coming to a deal here? A possibility perhaps? Oh and now that we know Google can do evil, just a little bit, can we go back to China please?

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