Google accused of YouTube ‘free ride’

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8f5d6128-4400-11df-9235-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=rss

by swombat • 16 years ago

26 36 16 years ago

DarkShikari2• 16 years ago

These people operate on some sort of bizarre moon logic. Youtube doesn't "eat up your ISP's bandwidth", your customers eat up your ISP's bandwidth by using Youtube.

If electricity usage followed the same argument as they give, power plants would be at fault for their electricity being used.

Of course, your customers can't always easily be extorted for hundreds of millions of dollars, while (they think) Google can.

axod5• 16 years ago

Problem is that ISPs hate it when you actually use bandwidth.

I got an email from my ISP - BT, to say that I'd used 80GB of transfer for March, and that if I went to 100GB, I'd have my speed capped for the next 30 days. This is on their (and I quote) "UNLIMITED" plan. bleurgg

DarkShikari2• 16 years ago

Of course. But normally ISPs take it out on their customers, as opposed to taking it out on the services their customers use.

Most likely the problem is that they now can no longer blame the problem on "bandwidth hogs"--with everyone using Youtube, everyone uses the bandwidth that you advertised to them.

dsplittgerber2• 16 years ago

Years ago, I saw lots of "unlimited" cell phone plan commercials in London, every single one being subject to "fair use". How come it's that common in the UK? I think there are close to none "fair use" plans in e.g. Germany. Why the local differences?

some1else• 16 years ago

This just shows that telco's won't solve a thing by capping bit-torrent traffic. What they need to do is stop charging too little for the bandwidth and improve their infrastructure to support the market they expanded to.

Retric2• 16 years ago

Bandwidth is not a major cost for most large scale ISP's. The real problem is there is only so many way's for ISP's to cut costs and pissing off the customers that most use the service is unlikely to cause them to quit because they don't have any choice.

PostOnce• 16 years ago

This is completely irrelevant but I quite enjoy the phrase "bizarre moon logic". Kudos for coining it.

lsb• 16 years ago

The ISP's logic of people paying for getting bits as well as people paying for receiving bits gets you (in America) text messages that are $0.20 to send, and $0.20 to receive.

meroliph• 16 years ago

I believe this is more related to some of the peering relationships Google currently has. While it was a good idea to peer with Google in the past to benefit your customers, right now they are probably upset that their free peering arrangements are putting quite a bit of stress on their networks and it is quite understandable to want to start charging some money.

charliesome• 16 years ago

This is quite a good argument. If they have entered into a peering agreement then Google is freeloading off their services. However, an agreement is an agreement and the telco can't just pussy out because it's turned sour for them

kierank2• 16 years ago

Then they should cancel the peering agreement and pay transit charges to reach Google...and also reduce the quality of service that the customer receives when watching Youtube. Most peering agreements are relatively informal anyway.

For the larger providers reaching Google through transit routes, such transit would jeopardise other peering relationships which rely on traffic being balanced.

mcherm2• 16 years ago

If they were complaining about peering relationships, that would be just fine. Renegotiate the peering relationship! Perhaps instead of true (free) peering (what most telecoms have with Google, perhaps they should be paying Google something.

Asa-Nisse• 16 years ago

Fine, the telecoms can start taking payments from their customers to access youtube then. Lets see how many customers they'll get with that kind of deal. We (the users) already pays for the networks. This article is complete bullshit.

c1sc0• 16 years ago

"Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to “dumb pipes”" : yes Google, PLEASE do us that favor. Telecom's business should be to transport bits from point A to point B, nothing more, nothing less.

viraptor• 16 years ago

That's an interesting quote: "Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to “dumb pipes”". I wonder what description would they prefer now - especially what do they want to offer above the "dumb pipe" standard?

nazgulnarsil• 16 years ago

the telcos don't want the public to perceive them as "dumb pipes" because fungible commodities are subject to much fiercer competition.

mcherm2• 16 years ago

News Flash: telecom company whines "Our customers pay us every month to allow them to connect to YouTube, but YouTube is owned by Google, who is rich, and Google isn't paying us anything on top of what our customers pay us. Boo hoo hoo!"

kierank2• 16 years ago

Mr Alierta said that if no revenue sharing agreement was possible between the internet search engines led by Google and the network operators, regulators should supervise a settlement.

This is what strikes me as disturbing. Peering has been one of the success stories of an unregulated internet infrastructure in contrast to the hugely complicated PSTN system with all manner of complicated charging schemes. In this instance getting regulators involved would almost certainly complicate things. Bureaucrats won't understand the myriad of informal relationships that underpin the peering that runs the internet.

adolph2• 16 years ago

Peering strikes me as akin to free trade between countries. Can peering relationships survive large imbalances? If packets were trade and peering relationships borders, who are the net exporters and importers?

9point6• 16 years ago

Dumb Pipes? No. They're a series of tubes.

jonknee• 16 years ago

If either party should be paying it should be the telcos. No one needs to pay for monthly Internet access without content to access. They'll find that out the first week they drop Google.

dkokelley• 16 years ago

Aren't the telecoms hitching a free ride? I mean we all upload our videos to YouTube and Google so graciously hosts them for us, but the telecoms get to charge fees to their customers who want to watch these videos. Google should ask for some compensation for providing the content the telecoms need in order to sell their services.

Here are some quotes that have been changed to reflect the same logic applied the other way:

“These guys [telecoms] are using the content and they don’t pay anybody.”

"Let’s see the development of digital society in terms of the winners and the victims. And today, there is a winner who are the telecoms. There are victims that are content providers, and to a certain extent, YouTube. We cannot accept this."

*Bolded items have been changed.

Honestly, that's the same logic being used in the opposite direction. I could do this with almost every quote in that story.

adolph2• 16 years ago

I read the paper version of this and the other articles on the page had a similar bizarro-world quality to them. It took some time to see some logic to the ISP POV, which I think the article doesn't do justice.

Forget for a moment any notion of fairness or the traditional arrangement of customer > ISP > Internet as a whole. Take a look at the arrangement in terms of value transfer (give) and extraction (take).

The consumer-oriented ISPs give network connectivity (and maybe some other ancillary services such as an email account, anti-virus, NNTP, etc.) and take money from customers.

Google gives content (search may be more important to users, but content such as video is the focus in this case) and takes eyeballs on ads.

There is no formal connection between Google and the ISPs. There are two important informal connections: 1. Without Google (or other similar entities), the product of the consumer oriented ISP would be much less valuable to the customer. 2. Without the ISPs, Google has no way of giving its content or taking its eyeballs on ads.

At present, the ISPs perceive an asymmetry in revenue between [them and the consumer] and [Google and the consumer]. They are interested in connecting the dots from Google to the ISP in a more formal way. The only question is who has more to lose by pursuing their point.

Google can't take value from the customer without the ISPs. The ISPs' will offer less value to the customer without Google. Will an ISP without Google provide enough value to the customer to justify operating that way?

The relationship between each entity is not totally unfettered. The regulatory environment must also be considered. If the ISPs annoy the customers too much, there may be regulatory change (such as Network Neutrality, etc.). This in of itself may be good or bad for the ISPs and their complaints and threats regarding Google may be a diversion for the purpose of increasing their government supported monopoly power.

Google accused of YouTube ‘free ride’

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