Google and Verizon In Talks To Prioritize Traffic (Updated) 410
Nrbelex writes "Google and Verizon are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content's creators are willing to pay for the privilege. Any agreement between Verizon and Google could also upend the efforts of the Federal Communications Commission to assert its authority over broadband service, which was severely restricted by a federal appeals court decision in April. People close to the negotiations who were not authorized to speak publicly about them said an agreement could be reached as soon as next week. If completed, Google, whose Android operating system powers many Verizon wireless phones, would agree not to challenge Verizon's ability to manage its broadband Internet network as it pleased."
Update: 08/05 20:03 GMT by T :
nr3a1 writes with this informative update excerpted from Engadget: "Google's Public Policy Twitter account just belted out a denial of these claims, straight-up saying that the New York Times 'is wrong.' Here's the full tweet, which certainly makes us feel a bit more at ease. For now. '@NYTimes is wrong. We've not had any convos with VZN about paying for carriage of our traffic. We remain committed to an open internet.' Verizon's now also issued a statement and, like Google, it's denying the claims in the original New York Times report."
Get ready to Bend over America (Score:2, Insightful)
What ever happened to Do No Evil
Point of view is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:3, Insightful)
They realized they could make money on this internet thing.
Re:And so it begins (Score:3, Insightful)
So long as there is a healthy amount of cash to go with it, Google will be a proponent of anything you like.
Re:And so it begins (Score:4, Insightful)
Google is for net neutrality when the lack of net neutrality could cost Google money.
Google is against net neutrality when the lack of net neutrality could gain Google money.
In related news, Google is a publicly-traded for-profit corporation with an eye on the bottom line. Get used to it.
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the internet was pretty cool while it lasted.
Is there anything excessive greed can't ruin?
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Point of view is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, and as soon as this happens how many other companies then Google will queue up to get their website content delivered faster to consumers?
Of course Verizon won't increase the bandwidth to get this content delivered faster. They'll prioritize the paid content over the unpaid content, meaning that the small guys will be stuck on the "lower tier" of the Internet.
And of course, once Verizon are doing this, the other network providers won't want to miss out on the potential double profit of getting content providers and consumers to pay for the faster service
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:5, Insightful)
Google do not make all the worlds rules. One thing they are good at is adapting to them and trying to make the best out of bad situations. Google had hoped for legislation forbidding deals like these but when the politicians dont dare, google adapts.
Google has enough market power to effectively set the rules.
If Google said "We will no longer serve any Google content to any ISP which violates Net Neutrality", the debate would basically be over. You wouldn't even need any government regulation.
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:3, Insightful)
They got into the stock exchange. That means a lot of minor investors who would be quite content to own a not evil corporation, and a few big ones that dictate the policy and could not care less if it's google inc. or saddam hussein inc.
Anyway the problem is not (lack of) network neutrality. That's a symptom. The problem is network topology. Internet has become centralized. It cannot be a bastion of freedom that way and IMHO it developed so fast because it wasn't meant to be.
The way out would be mesh network overlays , or p2p, coupled with independent wifi ac points, and/or sneakernet.
And governments are not going to allow that for fear of terrorism and child porn of course.
Re:And so it begins (Score:1, Insightful)
In related news, Google is a publicly-traded for-profit corporation with an eye on the bottom line. Get used to it.
When I see cynical remarks like those, it forces me to re-evaluate my opinion on the "corporations are persons" type of talk. It's better to see them as persons, and ask of them to act morally, than completely let them off the hook, because it's a corporation.
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:5, Insightful)
The agreement means that Verizon won't be able to give their own video downloads an advantage like you describe.
In what way do you believe that your scenario (giving Verizon PPV an advantage over other video services like YouTube) helps Google make more money?
Very poorly thought-out troll. No cookie for you.
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:5, Insightful)
I would suggest the sun but I wouldn't want them to see that as a challenge....
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say it's impossible. Google is too big to ignore. Frankly, if something like that happened you'd see congressional involvement. The market as a whole, however, is bigger than Google. When the top players all want tiered services, eventually they'll find a way to get it, even if it means death to the internet as we know it.
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know where you live, but highways here aren't restricted by how much you. They are a public resource and encroachment by a company is a crime. As far as end users of the highways, its not a valid analogy.
Perhaps its time to declare the networks a public resource before its too late.
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:3, Insightful)
If Google said "We will no longer serve any Google content to any ISP which violates Net Neutrality", the debate would basically be over. You wouldn't even need any government regulation.
Wouldn't that be breaking net neutrality in and of itself?
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this evil? Seriously, two companies partner to provide better service to their mutual customers and you consider it evil? How about when AAA teams up with hotel chains to give me a discount, is that evil too? Or, when AAA partners with towing companies to ensure I am towed within a certain period of time (a form of tow truck QOS), is that evil? Google wants to provide a better service to it's customers/users - when did that become evil?
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:2, Insightful)
That is pretty disappointing to see, to say the least.
Any data discrimination opens the possibility for abuse, which google knows very well.
I dont want isps or google or anyone deciding which data is important and which is not, thank you very much.
How do you define video? Which format? No new format would have a chance of surviving if it is not given the same bandwidth as existing formats.
Startups will face another hurdle competing against the giants, if their type of traffic doesnt fit with existing schemes. ISPs gets to decide success or failure.
It will make a complete mess in the end, the first thing I would do if my torrents gets lower bandwidth than my voip is to use the new "torrent over voip" ofcourse.
How about using the money on making networks better, instead of protocol sniffing crap that can only make it worse?
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:3, Insightful)
If Google said "We will no longer serve any Google content to any ISP which violates Net Neutrality", the debate would basically be over. You wouldn't even need any government regulation.
That would be Google shooting themselves in the foot with a shotgun. A company whose primary source of income is advertising doesn't really have the option of abandoning a large (potential) customerbase, especially when several large companies would not wait to fill the void Google would leave behind.
Youtube? Easily replaced with some other flash video streaming site. Search? Why, Microsoft has just the thing for you. Calendar, mail, buzz and whatnot? Several alternatives exist. Wave? Nobody cares. (sorry, I couldn't help it). It's not that what they're doing is that unique, it's that they've got an incredibly large audience and did some really cool stuff at a time nobody else was doing it. Today, Google is trying to be everyone's everything exactly because they know that they're not unique, but at this moment in time they still have the advantage.
Oh, I'm not a fan of this deal at all, because I know that in the medium to long term this is going to end up costing ME money as a consumer somehow. It's also the ideal precedent that ISPs need to start bullying everyone else.
Drastic moves on either side would just upset the customers. Google can't afford to flip off all those users without basically saying they're unreliable, and Verizon can't deny access to Google without pissing off people who rely on Google for their services. But here's the advantage Verizon has: they can slow down traffic from Google when they feel other traffic should have priority. So when Joe Sixpack is showing Jane a video on Youtube and it starts to stutter and buffer he'll say "Damned Youtube" and happily stay subscribed to Verizon because the rest of the Internet works fine. And, let's not forget: some ISPs don't have any competitors in some communities, while Google will never have that kind of a bargaining chip.
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:1, Insightful)
Once again, New Jersey gets this backwards.
How about New York State Thruway? Or Ontario's 407ETR? These are toll roads... you don't pay, you take a slower route.
How about New Jersey Turnpike? It's a toll road... you don't pay, you take I-295, a FASTER route.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:2, Insightful)
I've been saying in all these Android frothing threads that Google wants one thing: your information which for them equals loads of cash. They don't give a shit about open software, freedom, or beating the iPhone. They are like a divining rod for money, period.
In the beginning they gave us great search which was a breath of fresh air. Then they gave us a fairly decent ad network which strangely reduced the noise. Then they made loads, and loads, and loads of cash off of these efforts. Then they gave us pretty decent webmail with scads of free space and a leap forward in online maps.
Then they saw an opportunity in a wet dream. They could make an OS which itself would eventually gather more demographic data on more and more people and make more and more money.
IT. HAS. NOTHING. TO. DO. WITH. OPEN.!!!!!
Period.
Skipped a load of details: http://www.google.com/corporate/timeline/#start
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:3, Insightful)
I get what you're saying about the differing technical requirements of different sorts of communication on the Net. Neutrality with respect to the end points of a transmission is a start, but it seems like allowing ISPs to determine the priority of different data types is still dangerous in the long run. One hypothetical example is a carrier that offers conventional phone service or mobile phone service could decide to de-prioritize VOIP. But more likely, it will mean that protocols that are more widely used or more associated with commercial interests will tend to get prioritized much more often than other protocols, as much out of ignorance as malice.
The most ideal situation would be a world in which we all knew enough about networking to decide the priority of our various connections for ourselves and packets at various priorities were rationed out by the ISP. Ultimately, you'd like the priority to be according to what will best satisfy the user's priorities with the ISP simply distributing the scarce resource fairly among users. I don't know enough about networking to know if that's really technically possible, though. Then there's the problem that most of us don't have the technical expertise to make those decisions, so it would probably fall to our OS or applications.
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait we have 10 major ISP's? Hold the phone. If we did we might actually have competitive broadband and make this whole 'net neutrality' issue moot.
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:3, Insightful)
On the toll road:
1) You only pay once, and so does everyone else.
2) You pay for travel (or for distance travelled). You don't pay a different amount depending on whether you travel from (to) a richer or poorer cities.
3) The cities don't pay toll road operators to let more vehicles travel to them.
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:5, Insightful)
Not if there's any truth the idea that google is the new microsoft.
You must be new here. Apple is the New Microsoft(TM).
And Google just became the new Level3. Let's hope Microsoft becomes the new Cogent.
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, it's important for VOIP to have a certain quality of service for clear voice calls, but different QOS rules may make sense for other data types
Do you remember when the millimeter wave full-body scans weren't going to be recorded? But now they routinely are? [slashdot.org] Remember when seatbelt laws would only be enforced in conjunction with another type of violation, but now they are an arrestable violation all on its own? [enotes.com] Maybe you don't remember these things, but I do, with countless other examples I could name, I see a trend....
If it's possible, they'll do it and they already have (Comcast vs Torrents, anyone? [arstechnica.com]) and the only reason they don't do it more is because people got pissy about it. [cnet.com] We need to get pissy about this, too. Somehow, despite lacking all these vital QoS rules, the Internet has grown to become the dominant global information network, winning out over many other networks having such things as QoS enforcement. (EG: Proprietary ATM networks, etc)
Sorry, but I like my Internet the way it is, spam and all. It really needs to be nothing more than a Network of Endpoints [worldofends.com] all sharing equivalent potential value. Let people decide what's valuable and what's not.
We need to be pissy about this issue.
Lets think about that (Score:4, Insightful)
If I buy a Verizon phone, everything except Google (and a few other wealthy content providers) is slower. If I buy an AT&T phone, its all a delivered at 'best effort' speeds. I wonder which phone I should buy?
Google is shooting themselves in the foot here. Their success as a search engine hinges on my ability to find some other web site using their service. If they buy their way to the top of the heap, so to speak, they are screwing over the content providers upon which they rely. Sure, the search loads faster. But my overall time spent staring at the screen is the same, since they slowed down the site I was interested in.
If this is due to coercion on Verizon's part, I'd be in favor of granting Google execs immunity for their testimony before Congress or to the Justice epartment.
Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score:3, Insightful)
Correction: people whose trip is worth more than the toll can take the express lane. Rich people by definition have more money than time, so this generally applies to them, but even normal people can take advantage from time to time when they feel it is worthwhile.
I actually think this is a pretty good way to allocate a scarce resource.
Uh, who do you suppose would be paying off the debt otherwise?
Re:Why hasn't the story been updated? (Score:1, Insightful)
"We have not had any conversations with Verizon about paying for carriage of Google traffic.
"Instead we're getting free priority traffic in exchange for unlimited free adwords & we'll lower page rankings on
articles critical of VZN. See.. nobody is paying (except the consumer)."
Haha (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This is an outright lie. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why hasn't the story been updated? (Score:3, Insightful)
We have not had any conversations with Verizon about paying for carriage of Google traffic.
Perhaps the NYT got only part of it wrong?
Doesn't anyone else find it odd they didn't simply say, "We have not had any conversations with Verizon about carriage of Google traffic"? Either their PR person is new or there is something under the covers here and they are simply semantically side-stepping.
Re:How do you figure? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hyper-reporting and politics did billions of dollars in damage to the tourism industries all through the Gulf states. The oil did very little damage. The administration needs to be apologizing to the thousands they put out of work for their illegal moratorium on drilling. But that is off-topic.