Tech Companies, Google Sold You Out

http://gigaom.com/2010/08/09/tech-companies-google-sold-you-out/

by malbiniak • 16 years ago

80 51 16 years ago

Marticus2• 16 years ago

Doesn't seem like it - managed services will be handled different ways by different ISPs - which I would argue would allow (eventually) for smaller ISPs to say "well yeah, we offer x, y, and z and AT&T doesn't do that" and have a decent market share if x, y, and z are widely demanded.

Even the article's writer says that "after the conference call and reading the agreement, I’m not sure there’s much to say beyond the fact that this agreement basically keeps the network neutrality situation the same."

jdrock2• 16 years ago

I feel like you're trivializing the barriers to first match basic services provided by ISP giants and then provide competitive differences on top of that. One of the reasons people are clamoring for net neutrality legislation is that the relevant markets don't have significant competition to make neutrality happen naturally.

eavc• 16 years ago

Absolutely.

We have two options for high speed internet here. AT&T and Comcast. Comcast is the only option that gets me above 10Mbps.

The only alternative on the horizon? AT&T's new service. At least that'll be a viable alternative to Comcast, but it's still hardly what one could call variety.

Where do I live? Atlanta, in the city limits, less than three miles from the heart of the city.

Marticus2• 16 years ago

Understandable, but the point I was trying to make more than anything was simply that Google "wasn't" actually trying to hate us, not really. The title biasied before I even hopped.

spinchange2• 16 years ago

Getting really tired of conspiritorial hand flapping posts from people who have no telecom / network engineering perspective.

I give both of these companies some credit for using their leadership positions to at least offer a framework to the industry and public at large - something the FCC and all the other carriers heretofore have been completely unable to do.

Of course that doesn't jive with the whole, "they're trying to destory the internet" meme.

jdrock2• 16 years ago

While Stacey (the author) isn't an engineer, she's probably talked to and gotten the perspectives of many more people in this space than most of us here.

jonknee• 16 years ago

And she also makes more money when writing about controversy. No one's going to make their page view bonus by saying everything is fine.

spinchange2• 16 years ago

I can't comment if that is probably is the case or not, because all I have is this post, and it's not cited here.

What I do see is fear mongering built almost exclusively on "what they didn't say," "what ifs," and worst-case conjecture.

And I can appreciate those fears, but I also know they conveniently get more pageviews than addressing QoS, or the reality that traffic prioritzation must happen on some level (by type, not source) to accomodate delivering all these services.

It strikes me that the alternative to two pretty "pro-user" companies proposing a framework to deal with an unresolved set of technical issues is to have less open, less "pro user" companies deal with it with their lobbyists behind closed legislative doors. At least initially, I'll trust the devil I know.

nanairo2• 16 years ago

I may be wrong (I am not American and don't follow everything that goes over there). But I thought that the FCC was trying to push for some reform, and the reason why they got stuck was because of the massive backlash by the carriers (and others).

Can anyone confirm one way or the other? Thank you.

maqr3• 16 years ago

As an American, my observation is that the FCC always sells out to the highest bidder or the loudest complainer.

That's why all of our cell providers have a different band allocated to them, and why AT&T got the best GSM band while T-Mo gets worst.

It's also why we can't show boobies or say 'vulgar' words on over-the-air television.

Removing vulgarity creates the illusion that public interests are being protected. In my opinion, auctioning off radio frequencies and selectively enforcing regulations shows a more accurate picture.

In this particular case, I don't think the public cares much about net neutrality, while the corporations are clear in what they want. I see no reason why the FCC wouldn't side with the corporations instead of the indecisive (and not yet inconvenienced) public.

btilly3• 16 years ago

The problem is that the FCC tried to just dictate net neutrality, carriers took it to court, and the court said that the FCC had overstepped its authority. So the FCC wants to get the authority to impose whatever rules it wants, but doesn't have it yet. The Google-Verizon deal could preempt legislative efforts to give the FCC that broad authority, and instead prompt efforts to get something like this deal either embedded in legislation or agreed to voluntarily by the major players.

See http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/07/business/la-fi-fcc-c... for confirmation of the FCC's position.

paul92903• 16 years ago

How is this good for the Internet? Offering to cut deals with established players like Skype and Pandora who have the capital they've earned off the current free Internet? How can the little guy in his garage out innovate a Skype or Pandora and then bring his wireless Internet service to the masses? The masses dont care about the guy in the garage only what they are fed; their WISP (wireless ISP) is going to market the heck out of their partners(established players) whose service runs the best on Verizon because they ponied up.

I can't see how this good for the free Internet and the little guy starting.

btilly3• 16 years ago

How can the little guy in his garage out innovate a Skype or Pandora and then bring his wireless Internet service to the masses?

I can't believe that so many people have so little perspective. By far the most important tier in the proposal is called "the Internet". If history is any indication, "the little guy" is guaranteed to out innovate, time and time again. And as a result the service people will care about most will be called "the Internet".

Sure, Verizon is free to prioritize traffic so that telephone calls don't get dropped and people's TV works even when a DoS attack is going on. But neither Verizon nor any other provider can afford to make the internet suck, and as long as it doesn't suck the guy in the garage is free to deliver what we haven't dreamed of yet.

Don't forget, we've seen the tiered internet before. It is what broad access started with in the mid-90s where services like AOL and Juno had their nice little walled gardens and, on the side, offered access to the big scary internet. And guess what? The walled gardens weren't attractive to consumers then, and won't be now.

So if the utilities go along with this agreement then breathe a big sigh of relief, and get on with your lives. Because it gives them all the rope to hang themselves trying to do what won't work, and give you the guaranteed free space to innovate to your heart's content.

illumin83• 16 years ago

I'm getting tired of people saying there is nothing to worry about here. The article mentions potential 3d video services as a possible business model on the Internet. 3d video requires 4x the frames as HD - you're going from 24 or 30 fps up to 120 fps. So, imagine Verizigoogle offers this fancy new 3d Youtube as a premium service, not subject to net neutrality at all, on it's own dedicated 100 megabit pipe.

You want to compete with that, but Verizigoogle only leaves 20 megabits for all other traffic. You're effectively shut down. The consumer has a 120 megabit pipe but 100 megabits is reserved for "premium content". This is exactly the opposite of net neutrality, yet it is exactly what Google and Verizon are proposing and expecting us all to swallow.

tensafefrogs3• 16 years ago

> The article mentions potential 3d video services as a possible business model on the Internet.

"The internet" is covered in the proposal. This mythical 3d video service would have to be outside of the internet - a completely new service.

If verizon wants to create this new service, and use up all their available bandwidth on it (and therefore reducing their available internet bandwidth) then that is their choice, but I imagine their customers would just switch to a different ISP that offers better speed.

woodrow• 16 years ago

There's confusion here between services being offered over IP and services offered via/from the Internet. Your access connection from $ISP, especially if it's DOCSIS or fiber, typically has more capacity than the bandwidth of the Internet connectivity they're selling you. It probably wouldn't be viable to offer you and everyone else that bandwidth to the Internet for business and technical reasons, but there is enough capacity between your house and $ISP's network to offer other services. As long as this doesn't affect your Internet connection, it shouldn't be a problem.

Any impingement on your network connection then becomes a truth-in-advertising issue -- getting what you've paid for -- as has been taken up in the FCC's National Broadband Plan and elsewhere regarding companies that label their connections as "up to" N Mbps. Holding providers to their promises here seems like a more serious issue than being concerned about VZ offering crappy video-on-demand via a separate bandwidth pool.

I agree that it would be nice to have a big, dumb pipe to the Internet by which we can all choose the 3D video services we want, but that's going to require serious competition in access or some sort of public utility for access provision, neither of which seem likely in the US.

jsz02• 16 years ago

I'm a network engineer at a telecom. It's a very dangerous precedent to set for a variety of reasons. The big one that stands out to me is the wording of legal vs. illegal traffic. That's very concerning. It also raises some interesting questions for my industry (cable) If we move your cable modem out on the pole and shoot a wifi signal into your house are we not wireless providers? We can argue the same rules should apply to us. Now that the precedent is set that wireless is a special anti-competitive clubhouse I think we're going to see some major changes in future strategies. Why invest in wired infrastructure? It's a loser. Many of the big cable companies (Cox, TWC, Comcast) are dipping their toes into wireless already. This will just accelerate that trend. We'll expect the same deal from Google.

plnewman2• 16 years ago

It doesn't sit well with me that this discussion is seemingly being led by corporate, rather than public, interests. I would like to see Julius Genachoski reign the debate in and push a policy through.

It also should be pointed out that Google's proposal is a _proposal_ and not yet written policy.

sp3324• 16 years ago

Is a federal agent with no skin in the game and appointed by Congress really so much more trustworthy than publicly-traded corporations with customers and shareholders?

I just don't see why you assume that Google and Verizon are acting counter to the interests of the public, but you trust Genachowski.

Edit: publicly-owned -> publicly-traded

plnewman2• 16 years ago

Notice that I chose the phrase "reign in the debate". And I would say that the FCC has sufficient "skin in the game".

Google/Verizon, to their credit, have put out at least some of their proposal for public consumption. I just don't see how a policy put forward by a corporate entity (or alliance in this case) could be anything but biased to that entity.

chadmalik2• 16 years ago

Uh, you stated the answer yourself. Corporations are accountable to their shareholders. They maximize profit, that is the only thing they do, and that is in fact a legal obligation that public company boards can be sued for breaching. You call them "publicly-owned" corporations but that is incorrect, they are in fact PRIVATELY OWNED.

The government including regulatory agencies like the FCC have a responsibility to take public interest into account - yes it is never done perfectly - but the FACT is that the decision-making process for governmental entities is entirely different than it is for private corporations.

navyrain2• 16 years ago

The division between wireless and wired seems really artificial to me. Yes, the current state of technology means a megabyte over air is a good margin more expensive than over wire, but I don't believe this is worth codifying into law.

Personally, I'd like to see a restriction on what can be called "Internet". An internet connection in my mind implies neutrality. If your network only provides a subset of the content on the internet, you shouldn't be able to call it "Internet", but instead call it something obviously lesser, much in the same spirit that requires Cheez Wiz be called "cheese product".

klous• 16 years ago

Pedantic note: Since 1973, Cheese Wiz or similar no longer requires the word "imitation" ..."Thanks to the FDA's willingness, post-1973, to let food makers freely alter the identity of "traditional foods that everyone knows" without having to call them imitations." Source: http://www.alternet.org/health/77330?page=entire

msg• 16 years ago

My impression was that the distinction between wireless and wired had less to do with cost and more to do with interference.

gamble2• 16 years ago

So what exactly does google do that justifies their our-shit-doesn't-stink reputation? It seems like they behave exactly like any other self-interested major corporation when the chips are down. They were for censorship in China before they were against it. They were for net neutrality until Verizon offered to cut them a deal. Are there any cases where "don't be evil" made a bit of difference on a non-trivial issue?

nanairo2• 16 years ago

I think back in the days there were a lot of cases.

And also Google felt like the underdog taking on the hated Microsoft.

Then one day we woke up and Google was massive, and doing just as much underhanded/questionable policies as the next guy.

tensafefrogs3• 16 years ago

> They were for censorship in China before they were against it.

No. Google tolerated it, but was never "for" censorship.

> They were for net neutrality until Verizon offered to cut them a deal.

What? Google has always been against net neutrality. In fact, this new policy proposal helps net neutrality. The main thing people seem to be mad about is that it doesn't go far enough. So how exactly does that make them evil again?

dschobel• 16 years ago

Your second point is patently wrong: http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality_letter.html

gamble2• 16 years ago

What is the difference between taking part in the scheme and being 'for it', exactly? Google was perfectly free not to participate, but they made the call that the growth potential of China was worth being in partnership with a repressive regime.

As for your other point, Google was the most prominent company supporting net neutrality. Three years ago they were prepared to spend billions buying spectrum to prevent exactly the kind of deal they're pimping today.

tensafefrogs3• 16 years ago

whoops, just realized that should say "Google has always been FOR net neutrality".

jsz02• 16 years ago

Add supporting Flash to the list. If both Apple and Google had took a hardline against Flash we'd be on the path to a better, more open, Internet. It might have been a little painful in the short term I admit. It seems to me they decided that it was a competitive advantage and that's all that really matters.

yanw• 16 years ago

Tech companies? what exactly did those tech companies do during this whole debate, nothing, they stood idly by and let Google try to do something, they have only themselves to blame not Google.

mirkules• 16 years ago

I couldn't help but notice this happened the same week ex-Senator Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens died. What a strange coincidence. (non-sarcastic)

Tech Companies, Google Sold You Out

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