Google responds: Facts about our network neutrality policy proposal
googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com
googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In no ways am I defending Baidu or China. I am just saying they didn't leave because of their lofty morals.
So they risked giving up 40% market share for the hell of it?
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?
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 ...
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.
I'm still hugely disappointed but maybe it was naive to think a corporate entity could ever have true principles.
At least, it is from the public's perspective. For Google, it's a win, but only in terms of adapting to a business reality rather than resisting it.
At this point I'm just dying to find out what they saw on the horizon that made them come to a full stop.
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.
Here is a good starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_democracy#Oppressi...
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?
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.
you're just being naive.
I just think this ham-fisted mess of a blog post is a shining example of why Google got its ass handed to it by a superior lobbying effort.
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.
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.
> Posted by Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media Counsel
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090129_interview_richard_whi...
From Linked-in profile:
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
> MCI, Inc. is an American telecommunications subsidiary of Verizon Communications.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.
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.
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.
Deleted comment
Good thing that phrase doesn't occur anywhere in the linked post.
Or is your aversion to any use by a corporation of the word "facts"?
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.
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.?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?"
How is that not giving in?
Now, you can still argue that despite competition mobile internet needs regulation. But that's a much tougher argument to make.
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.
as for the future they say: "for now, while Congress keeps a watchful eye."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So, parent was hyperbolic, but not bullshit.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Anyone can adopt "Don't be evil." The catch is that people will hold you to it.
I'm new to this. Care to explain what is this "public Internet" you talk about? I always thought there was only the Internet.
Thank You
Google said public Internet.
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.
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.
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 EFF discussed this in their recent post on the matter.
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.
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.