Google goes "evil"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-green/breaking-google-goes-evil_b_676021.html

by mcantelon • 16 years ago

153 88 16 years ago

yanw3• 16 years ago

I know Google became the poster-child for net neutrality, but why aren't other big internet companies that have shied away from this debate being labeled "evil"? The agreement text doesn't describe anything that differs from the internet as it is today, it just leaved loopholes to appease Verizon investors and to show the gov't that their not needed, the usual bullshit.

sigzero2• 16 years ago

When your motto is "do no evil" people tend to call you on it when you do.

yanw3• 16 years ago

Did they? The agreement have some good point as well as compromises, nothing particularly earth shattering, if you want something different call your senator, not Google.

enomar• 16 years ago

Their motto is "Don't be evil": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dont_be_evil

kiba2• 16 years ago

Personally, I find regulations to be possible vectors for regulatory capture. People act as if regulations is the only solution, rather than asking if previous regulations cause the problem in the first place.

Aaronontheweb• 16 years ago

So did Google essentially lie to the public about this last week or have I misunderstood?

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/05/google-verizon-net-neutrali...

yanw3• 16 years ago

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_verizon_propose_...

kenjackson• 16 years ago

When are people going to give up this notion that companies are evil or good? Companies try to make money and crush those that try to stop them. it's just when you're big, you get to do the crushing. When you're little, you're dodging giant feet trying to step on you.

Google and Apple are now unquestionably large. And they are crushing things that stand in their way.

Just remember, "Don't be evil" as a motto to make money. Until you can no longer make sufficient money with the motto. Then being evil is almost certainly the only way.

kiba2• 16 years ago

Organizations are not individuals. Organizations are composed of individuals. One individual in one part of the company can do good thing, while another individual can do something. It is still important to realize that the design and structure of organizations influence the behaviors of individuals.

However, it is also important to realize that all organizations, not just corporations, wishes to grow to sustain its members. They will grow and change. They will continue to exists even long after their purpose is accomplished. Sometime, organizations get cancers that rotten them to the core, much like the RIAA, the MPAA, and California. Sometime that's due to the rules being modified or being poor in the first place.

Giants guy hate cannibalizing their business. They're so big that they move very slowly. They may get economy of scale, but they also got dis-economy of scale. New guys are not constrained by traditions or size inefficiency. So they will be able to seize opportunities left or cannot be reached by giant people. So giant guys don't always have the advantage. There is a place for the small mammals in the world of dinosaurs.

rue• 16 years ago

> When are people going to give up this notion that companies are evil or good? Companies try to make money and crush those that try to stop them.

Trying to crush those that oppose you is pretty evil, all things considered. Particularly for a cause as banal as trying to make more money (usually when you do not even need to) rather than, say, fighting space aliens.

raganwald• 16 years ago

    When are people going to give up this notion that companies are evil or good?

Hey, I didn't start it, Google did. If a politician stands up and says, "Elect me because I'll do the best backroom deals for you, my constituent," you know what you're getting. You don't elect her and then complain that she's in bed with lobbyists.

But when she calls for transparency in government and bringing a new broom to the legislature, you have every right to be outraged when she's discovered steering fat consulting contracts to her college buddies.

It's not an issue of whether Google is evil. It's an issue of whether Google is Hypocritical.

thebigshane5• 16 years ago

Google is not an elected representative either. They work for the market, not the people.

metamemetics• 16 years ago

The dalai lama would disagree

"companies are living, complex organisms and not profit machines. The profit should therefore not be the object of a company, but rather a result of good work. Just like a person can't survive for long without food and water, a company can't survive without profits. Not that I would ever reduce the purpose of a human to that, as eating and drinking are the only prerequisites for a meaningful life."

"When we search for organizations that have the capacity and ability to improve our world, global companies are at the top of the list. In particular integrated global corporations are in an ideal position to support developing countries to close the gap to leading national economies." http://www.dalailama.com/news/post/362-exclusive-interview--...

treeface• 16 years ago

>Google's decision to cut a deal with Verizon wreaks of either impatience or fear. Either Google wasn't willing to wait for the Verizons of the world to crumble and die -- and therefore moved it's own business development timeline up 5 or 10 years at the expense of the entire American public. Or, Google feared doing the dirty work that comes with being a leader -- despite launching a "Google Fiber for Communities" program that competes head-to-head with the decrepit incumbents, Google feared actually having to fulfil their potential to defeat the bad guys.

Maybe someone can correct me on this, but as far as I've been able to determine, Verizon's been the one pushing FTTH more than any other company with FiOS. Google might have this pet project, but Verizon has put quite a lot of money into laying new fiber.

SnowLprd• 16 years ago

Correction: Verizon used to push fiber-to-the-home. They shelved FiOS months ago: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/27/verizon-shelves-plans-for...

moskie• 16 years ago

I think we have a lot of Chicken Littles reacting to this news.

All the articles that speak out against this agreement are mostly just laundry lists of no-network-neutrality doomsday scenarios, and are not even attempting an unbiased discussion of what this proposal is actually saying.

The proposal explicitly solidifies network neutrality for wired services, which is good. But it's true, this proposal does not cover wireless service: "Because of the unique technical and operational characteristics of wireless networks, and the competitive and still-developing nature of wireless broadband services, only the transparency principle would apply to wireless broadband at this time." Those last three words are important. This proposal is not advocating for wireless service network neutrality, but it also is not advocating against it. And perhaps most importantly, this proposal explicitly leaves the door open for discussing wireless service network neutrality in the future. So I think we should be able to accept this as a first step, then afterwards continue to advocate for similar practices to be implemented for wireless service as well.

It also suggests that ISPs be able to have content and services specific to their subscribers, as long as it does not "threaten the meaningful availability of broadband Internet access services or have been devised or promoted in a manner designed to evade these consumer protections." I suppose people can be up-in-arms about that, but I think that's a reasonable target: ISPs can do what they want as long general internet access is not compromised.

illumin8• 16 years ago

This is a good article. Google and Verizon basically said "we are supporting net neutrality, as long as it only applies to the parts of the internet that we have no interest in". Wireless and new services like TV are not included. This is not net neutrality. This is Google/verizon profit guaranteed utopia. New business models need not apply.

moultano4• 16 years ago

Failure to recommend regulation != opposing regulation.

sandipc• 16 years ago

I think Google definitely cares about wireline broadband...

patrickaljord• 16 years ago

> "we are supporting net neutrality, as long as it only applies to the parts of the internet that we have no interest in"

Except Google makes most of its profit on wireline broadband...

waterlesscloud• 16 years ago

Today.

dman3• 16 years ago

Ive long felt that there is an eerie parallel between Google and Standard Oil (the historic Oil company owned by John D Rockefeller). Heres a quote from the wikipedia page for Standard Oil - "The company grew by increasing sales and also through acquisitions. After purchasing competing firms, Rockefeller shut down those he believed to be inefficient and kept the others. In a seminal deal, in 1868, the Lake Shore Railroad, a part of the New York Central, gave Rockefeller's firm a going rate of one cent a gallon or forty-two cents a barrel, an effective 71% discount off of its listed rates in return for a promise to ship at least 60 carloads of oil daily and to handle the loading and unloading on its own.[citation needed] Smaller companies decried such deals as unfair because they were not producing enough oil to qualify for discounts."

delano• 16 years ago

That sounds like they found an efficient deal for both sides.

pi3832• 16 years ago

The industry and consumers were much better off with Standard Oil controlling most of the industry. It stabilized markets and led to more efficient crude and refined oil production.

Charuru4• 16 years ago

Err actually I think this is the exact opposite of the Google situation, where Google would be paying MORE to deliver their stuff.

Lol?

dman3• 16 years ago

The relativistic comparision is not to what they used to pay, but what their competitors will pay in the new reality.

akeefer3• 16 years ago

This is a pretty terrible article: the author basically mis-represents what actually happened, and then dismisses any possible legitimate motive for Google doing what it did with no argument, merely by asserting that such a motive can't possible exist.

Maybe, just maybe, Google thinks that massive government regulation of the still-nascent wireless internet market will do more harm than good at this point, and that we should consider the question later once we have actual empirical data about what works and what doesn't? Is that really such an illogical position to adopt?

jshen4• 16 years ago

"that really such an illogical position to adopt?"

yes, because once giant corporations make a tiered wireless internet take hold there is absolutely no chance of untiering it.

akeefer3• 16 years ago

You might disagree with it, but it's not illogical. There's a big, big difference between saying "I don't agree with Google" and "there's no possible logical reason for their position, therefore it must be evil." What you're expressing above is one possible interpretation of how the future could unfold, but different, intelligent people can easily disagree about that.

moultano4• 16 years ago

So, because Google and Verizon didn't come to an agreement on wireless internet, that's equivalent to Google supporting a tiered wireless internet? That seems like a pretty big jump to me.

nl3• 16 years ago

It's possible that in the wireless space tiered access might make sense. I'm not a wireless engineer but my understanding is that wireless access suffers from overcrowding a lot more than wired access simply because the overall bandwith within a given frequency band is a lot lower than a bundle of optical fibers.

Given this limitation I think we should be very careful in saying that a given solution should not be allowed. I can imagine scenarios where tiered pricing models would be very beneficial to most people.

For example, imagine a business setting up wireless security video cams. Thoughtlessly, they set them up to record and send video in HD. A few of those pointed at a rapidly changing scene (eg, a road) can chew though a lot of bandwidth. The owner of those cams doesn't care - why should they? They just pay a flat rate and the fact that everyone else's access is bad isn't their problem.

If an access provider could charge extra for that traffic then it would give the cam owner motivation to fix the problem.

(Yes, there are other solutions - a price per Gb of traffic is an obvious one. But my point is that I'm not convinced other options should be outlawed yet)

btilly• 16 years ago

Somehow we started with a tiered wired internet (see, for instance, how AOL worked back in the mid-90s) and now for all intents and purposes have an untiered wired internet.

I suspect Google has faith in the ability of previously unknown players to create compelling new content in the common. And once you have compelling new content in the common, no ISP can long succeed that fails to provide decent access to said common.

The worst outcome from the wireless question mark is a revisiting of the net neutrality debate, with the successful example of the wired variant to spur the debate.

thebigshane5• 16 years ago

     there is absolutely no chance of untiering it

That's a pretty strong statement. Why is there absolutely no chance?

DrJokepu• 16 years ago

As much as I dislike government regulation, I dislike "corporate innovation" (in the bad sense) much more.

nanairo• 16 years ago

Maybe not, but that's not what the Google-Verizon letter says.

It does not suggest that massive government regulation (or in fact any regulation: no need to turn it into a dichotomy) will do more harm than good. Their point is that it's unnecessary.

gojomo• 16 years ago

Adam Green is being hyperbolic to boost his 'bold progressive' activist organization's campaign. Assign his words no more weight than when you receive direct mail with alternating paragraphs in ALL CAPS and an RSVP about how important it is for you to DONATE NOW.

Tichy• 16 years ago

There already is a channel that offers only limited access to information, and people pay for it: TV. I guess if people are content with limited channels, why not let them. It also doesn't bother me much that I can not watch TV through my internet connection.

Overall I am not worried, because there should be enough people who would want a free connection. Competition should do the rest.

buster• 16 years ago

Although i'm not american, and so it doesn't affect me, i think this sounds like a good move from google. I fail to see the horrible, evil plan when i read the original article http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/joint-policy-... .

Would someone care to point me to the evil in those 7 points? To me it sounds like "we want the internet more open and transparent for the customers". That's good for american customers, isn't it? Why evil?

Charuru4• 16 years ago

I'm still not quite sure why this is terrible.

Will this decrease bandwidth for all the smaller sites? I don't see any reason why it would, unless ISPs go over capacity. In which case if they do, then everyone would suffer... and paying some money to suffer less does not seem so unfair to me.

We already have tiered internet on the consumer side, ie, DSL vs Cable vs Dial-up vs FiOS. I don't see what difference it makes if there are also tiers on the content provider side.

The real problem seems to be one of capacity; any issues is caused by a bandwidth scarcity, and that would have to be increased. What these people are discussing is just a way to allocate the remaining bandwidth, in which case 'fairness' is completely impossible. There's absolutely no way to determine who deserve the bandwidth more arbitrarily... Putting it on the market seems pretty reasonable!

Anyway, I hope new service provider startups come into being that will make the investments to improve infrastructure, though from what I understand that seems to be a completely thankless job...

Please don't vote me down just because you disagree, I actually do not understand many of these positions and this is a plea to be educated.

Thanks.

bodski2• 16 years ago

With wireless you can't just keep increasing capacity forever.

The problem is that there is a theoretical limit to how wireless infrastructure can be improved. Sure, new generations of wireless tech. are improving the bandwidth available every few years. But RF frequency bands are a limited resource and sooner or later Shannon-Hartley's theorem [1] will dictate that the only way to improve bandwidth will be to increase power levels received at user's antennae (either by increasing effective transmission power or clustering cells more densely). But doing this will deliver ever diminishing (logarithmic) gains and an increasing public health risk associated with increased RF levels.

Couple that with the fact that wireless is going to be the Internet in the coming decades (for many youngsters it already is) and you are faced with a problem of how to allocate things fairly.

Wired Internet resources on the other hand can be upgraded effectively forever. If the demand is there we can keep laying new fibre whilst maximising the existing lines with new modulation techniques etc. The same cannot be said of wireless technology.

It is precisely because of these major contention issues that wireless spectrum should be protected under net neutrality regulations, its need of regulation is in fact greater than that of wired Internet. When there is an approaching hard limit to bandwidth available why would we want to allow the parties with the biggest wallets dominate the traffic? It is precisely these sorts of situations that governments are for, without them monopolies will naturally form at the expense of the populace.

Imagine if governments around the world said, let's solve (or rather ignore) the problem of car traffic congestion by allowing employers to bid for priority access to the roads on behalf of their employees, and businesses to bid on behalf of their customers, even though everyone has already paid their own car tax, fuel etc.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem

Charuru4• 16 years ago

I see, but what about the fundamental problem of bandwidth scarcity? If it's not the market that allocates, is there a fairer way?

danielsoneg• 16 years ago

Seems to me like a lot of the furor over this announcement has to do with Verizon's involvement - there seems to be a de facto assumption that if Verizon has said it's good, it's bad for the consumer.

I have my own opinions on that statement, but if I were Verizon's PR dept, I'd be drinking.

DTrejo• 16 years ago

Is there something wrong with being overcautious in this case?

thebigshane5• 16 years ago

wouldn't the term "OVERcautious" imply too much caution? Caution is fine, great in fact. But too much of anything is ...

Ixiaus2• 16 years ago

This is a sensationalist article and the author read into it poorly. Something is bound to happen, there will be some sort of compromise between complete network neutrality and telecom dominance; primarily because neither camp will get all of what they want. This deal is great news because at least something is being preserved!

If you truly care don't just support network neutrality, support projects like GNUnet (https://ng.gnunet.org/) or FreeNet that actually enable people to use the internet anonymously and securely.

itistoday2• 16 years ago

In in a "tiered internet" projects like GNUnet and FreeNet are at risk.

Service provider routers with deep packet inspection and similar technology will simply turn a little dial until bandwidth for GNUnet et. al. slows to a trickle.

That's why this is such a touchy issue.

Any attempt on the part of Google/Verizon to not come out directly in favor and clearly stating support of Network Neutrality, is in fact a PC way of saying that they don't support it.

Ixiaus2• 16 years ago

Would it be that feasible to detect anonymized and encrypted GNUnet traffic? The packets would be largely scrambled, no? Unless you knew that sending/receiving nodes were in fact GNUnet endpoints - you could infer what the traffic is, based on that - otherwise they shouldn't be able to reliably determine whether it is an encrypted SSL browser session or an encrypted GNUnet transmission (I may be missing a crucial piece of information here, please fill me in if so!).

I would imagine that coming out and clearly supporting it would be a difficult PR move to swallow. The extreme of net neutrality ensures that the internet remains open regardless of what is being transmitted; this includes everything from illegal content, socially taboo content, legal content, and liberal expression of thought/idea/opinion. While many critical thinkers would correctly say that "supporting an open internet maintains innovation and the free exchange of ideas and that it is often a self-regulating entity that should not be stifled" they also forget that many many people do not see it that way. There is quite a bit of archaic thinking that qualifies an "open internet" as a harmful medium because that openness allows for the unregulated transmission of thought dangerous to the state, child pornography, and other illicit materials and subjects. Those same people that believe it must be regulated are locked in a state of believing it is people they must control rather than themselves (I know that sounds unnecessarily philosophical, but, it really is the truth).

Is this worth fighting? Are we making headway? Maybe a little. But the establishment is established while the progressive roots of free thinkers is protean (it is necessarily so, otherwise we wouldn't be progressive). The goal should be to keep pushing, slowly, persistently, and steadily while exploring mediums and clever ways of circumventing the silliness of people that believe regulating something as transformative as the internet will actually work.

Hell, it's all a bunch of old people coming up with these policies! In 20 or 30 years, people in political power will be those young people that were born with the internet and were witness to it - the internet already made its impact and the momentum is far too great for anyone power to stop it. It may be muffled for a bit (if even that), but it won't be stopped.

NginUS• 16 years ago

If these guys really cared about their cause, wouldn't it make more sense to provide a text field like YouTube does to embed the ad on your own site, rather than, or in addition to trying to raise money to pay for it?

jmtame• 16 years ago

i've been dissatisfied with every article i've read about this subject, and it's something that i care deeply about as a supporter of network neutrality. just like every other article, it's linkbaiting and taking the opportunity to bash google when the only alternative is to let congressmen make up these rules on their own with the telecoms (not the type of situation you want to be in).

if anyone is going to negotiate the formal policies of network neutrality, i can't think of a better company to do it than google. the formalization has to happen one way or the other, we've already seen that the fcc's power is questionable at best right now.

engadget wrote the best explanation of the tradeoffs here: http://i.engadget.com/2010/08/09/google-and-verizons-net-neu...

einarvollset• 16 years ago

Jared, from the linked article:

"it's hard to reconcile the stated need for net neutrality in this agreement with a giant exception for wireless networks, which are quickly becoming the most important networks of all"

gruseom• 16 years ago

If the narrative continues to grow the way it's growing, Google are going to backpedal on this the same way they've backpedaled after making other mistakes. It doesn't matter much what the particulars of the deal are or how unfairly they're being misinterpreted (if they are); there's a risk to Google's brand here and they're smart enough to protect it.

The reaction against this deal is emotional. How many people have studied the details? I haven't. It doesn't matter because people have such strong feelings about net neutrality and -- on the whole -- rightly so. These feelings may be limited to the small tech community but that community's importance is greater than its numbers and includes a lot of people inside Google itself. If this doesn't die down in a couple days, expect some sort of adjustment from Google.

moultano4• 16 years ago

I've learned something about the news today.

If A has a good reputation and B has a bad reputation, and A and B come to a compromise, it makes the reputation of A worse, and doesn't make the reputation of B any better, regardless of what the compromise actually is.

Verizon is so toxic that them just being a party to this taints it for everyone it seems. If this agreement were something that Google was _demanding_ of Verizon rather than something they agreed to with Verizon, everyone would be praising it.

zmmmmm3• 16 years ago

The biggest problem I have with this is that the rationalization for why the "unique characteristics" of wireless networks require no network neutrality is completely missing.

Limited bandwidth? But why does limited bandwidth mean it's ok to prejudice services? Why does that make it ok that YouTube can purchase prioritized service over GlueTube? Doesn't having a limited resource make it more important to share that resource around rather than less important? Isn't that the way it works everywhere else (eg: limited water supplies usually mean we regulate the price and ensure Grandma doesn't have to pay way more than BigCompany or we know that Grandma is getting no water).

The "still-developing nature" of the service? I still don't get it. If anything the immature nature of the services mean that the nascent network needs more protection, not less. We just don't know how it is going to evolve - ok fine - but doesn't uncertainty counsel more caution rather than lack of caution? We can always relax rules later if they are determined to be harmful. It will be very hard to wind back a non-network-neutrality situation once that has emerged and established itself if we determine it is harmful.

Perhaps I can buy these arguments if they are made sufficiently, but there just isn't enough detail here to make a sound logical link. I'm not going to say they are evil, but I do think Google has got some explaining to do.

moultano4• 16 years ago

It seems like caution in most circumstances is _not_ to regulate it.

itistoday2• 16 years ago

"Regulating it" has the wrong connotation when associated with Net Neutrality. It suggests an evil-facist government-controlled internet, when in fact it's the exact opposite.

Net Neutrality is government enforcing non-control of the internet, over everybody. It says that no one, including the government, can make the internet a non-level playing field. Like national parks, it's a Good Thing™.

zmmmmm3• 16 years ago

I guess the argument I would make against that is that the risk of starting with network neutrality is low because it is approximately what we have now (I'm sure someone will provide counter examples, but I would still say it is fairly much the situation). There is more certainty in maintaining the status quo than adventuring into unknown territory.

mattmaroon3• 16 years ago

I laughed out loud at "wireline" internet becoming irrelevant in a few years. Even when I'm surfing the web on my phone, I'm doing it on wifi as often as on EVDO. Then there's the 10+ hours a day in front of a computer.

Cellular internet is a long way from offering the speed and convenience of broadband. And even then, the cost of landline internet is just so much lower that we'll see wi-fi continue to proliferate.

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

3G is roughly as fast as DSL, isn't it? Like 1.5Mbps. 4G is supposed to have 100Mbps down, and 50 up. That's plenty fast.

And the cost of wireless internet is cheaper. I pay $30/month for my unlimited data plan with T-Mobile, and I pay $60/month for my FIOS.

mattmaroon3• 16 years ago

No, for two reasons. 1, What you're quoting is a theoretical maximum, actual rates are substantially lower. 2, The latency is brutal. Most of the net (especially as viewed from mobile devices) is very small files delivered frequently, which makes latency a much bigger factor in overall experience than speed. Ping times on even the strongest 3G connections are much higher than even an average wired broadband connection.

Also you only pay less for your wireless internet because the average consumer uses WAY less of it than wired. Per megabyte we're spending far more on those wireless data plans, and as soon as the rate of use grows I think we'll see them start becoming metered.

noodle2• 16 years ago

i disagree. the wimax in my area is actually pretty good. not great, mind you, but i could see the entire industry improving in a few years such that its equal to or better than land line based access.

mattmaroon3• 16 years ago

Yeah? I can't wait to check it out, Sprint is supposed to have it in my area by the end of summer. Can you reasonably bittorrent on it?

I've read some stuff from people who say that wireless net is a long way from being able to sustain the sort of activity people use on desktops without serious improvements given the amount of spectrum it has available now. However I wouldn't be surprised if metering solves that problem.

Google goes "evil"

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