Network Neutrality Defenders Quietly Backing Off? 171
SteveOHT writes "Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers. The story claims that Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon have quietly withdrawn from a coalition of companies and groups backing network neutrality (the coalition is not named), though Amazon's name is reportedly once again listed on the coalition's Web site. Google has already responded, calling the WSJ story "confused" and explaining that they're only talking about edge caching, and remain as committed as ever to network neutrality. The blogosphere is alight with the debate.
No worries. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No worries. (Score:5, Insightful)
If it is granted that no morality will be accepted universally as good, but rather individuals will judge the good and evil of someone else's morality according to their own, then it seems reasonable that we don't expect Google to never be considered evil by anyone. Rather, what seems most important about about a corporation trying to have a morality that is independent of (and governs over) their inherent purely capitalistic (not a bad thing) motives/actions, is that their morality remain consistent.
Consistency, and the reasonable expectations it produces, seems to be at the core of developing any relationship that requires trust. For example, I (like most people) avoid making friends with people who believe that it is a good thing to steal things of great value from their friends, but I also avoid making friends with people who flip-flop on their "stealing valuables" stance. That's pretty basic, right? What's relevant here, though, is that I would much rather that my friends/acquaintances/etc be consistent about their beliefs, than being a flip-flopper, that way if I can adjust my own expectations and actions accordingly (i.e. lock up the valuables when they're coming over).
Well, when it comes to businesses, by default I expect them to always be trying to do whatever they can to make the most money. And I have no problem with this - I love the free-market. But, I have an additional attraction to companies that try to restrict their capitalistic tendencies for the sake of the betterment of society and the individuals that compose it, especially the more I agree with their definition of betterment, or "good". However, it seems that one of the better ways for a company to be consistent in its morality would be for that morality to be defined by one person. Although a single person can develop contrary/inconsistent positions within their own morality no matter how hard they're trying to be consistent, this likelihood of inconsistency generally increases all the more, the more individuals you add to the mix.
It would be absurd of me to expect Google's morality to be identical with mine. There will be plenty of things we disagree about. As long as they're consistent, though, I'll at least feel confident in supporting them when I agree with them, and not, when I don't.
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Unless the power makes that person bat-shit crazy. That's the usual way of things with one guy with too much power.
If he doesn't succumb to it, congratulations. They already bought DoubleClick...
The need to make a profit and not just blow through cash, can make one bat-shit crazy, of course.
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Don't bother reading WSJ for tech (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Don't bother reading WSJ for tech (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't bother reading WSJ for tech (Score:4, Informative)
Google's proposed arrangement with network providers, internally called OpenEdge, would place Google servers directly within the network of the service providers, according to documents reviewed by the Journal. The setup would accelerate Google's service for users.
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The matter could come to a head quickly. In approving AT&T's 2006 acquisition of Bell South, the FCC made AT&T agree to shelve plans for a fast lane for 30 months.
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They also said that Google have changed their stance. If you look at this Google Public Policy Blog post [blogspot.com] from last summer:
Beyond that, we also believe that broadband carriers should have the flexibility to engage in a whole host of activities, including....Employing certain upgrades, such as the use of local caching or private network backbone links
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I don't know why such bullshit gets through the slashdot filters, frankly. If you look at the tags on any given article it's clear that most of the slashdot community knows exactly what is going on, even despite attempts to get us up in arms over another misleading headline, or half-baked no-facts 'story'.
Why not just start serving your audience, instead of begging for hits with false, misleading, overblown or just plain stupid headlines
Re:Don't bother reading WSJ for tech (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had a suspicion for a while now that the number of comments a story gets ties into Slashdot's revenue stream somehow. Not quite sure what the specifics might be - maybe ad revenue based on page hits or something, but the unsubtle and often pathetically trollish comments the editors ad to some stories are obviously an attempt to stir up lots of argument and comments. If it's not based on revenue, then it's either boredom or social experiment, but it definitely is deliberate.
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I don't think it is deliberate, I think it's simply that the Slashdot editors are primarily the types of people who believe anything you tell them, so when you go and whisper into their ear "Hey, I heard everyone is backing off from supportung net neutrality", they jump up, run to their PC, find a relevant article submission or make their own and hit submit.
It strikes me more as really careless and gullable editing than something done with malice or intention. I think you're giving the editors too much cred
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Re:Don't bother reading WSJ for tech (Score:4, Funny)
it definitely is deliberate.
They could just be incompetent.
Re:Don't bother reading WSJ for tech (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure what bizarro-slashdot you visit, but the one I read generally does not have readers that are aware of what is going on. First, because two or three people tag an article correctly (that's all it took last time I did some testing with the tags) does not mean that even a simple majority of the users/readers understand the story. Second, one need only read through the comments at a low threshold on just about any mildly-confusing story to see that this is the case. Thankfully, we do have a moderation system that generally works pretty well to help filter out the nonsense. And finally, this article is one of those rare instances where an editor here actually did add something to help clarify the issue.
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I'm glad that Slashdot restores the truth with accurate headlines
I'm glad that this is rated funny, but considering the damage that this disinformation, deliberate or not, can cause to the principle of net neutrality, I suggest that we discuss here on Slashdot the ways to make the Wall Street Journal accountable for this dirty info bomb. Let's leverage Slashdot and the Net to turn the table and question the origin of this story. I know: "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence". Well, if it is only incompetence, let's expose the idiot who wrote th
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9mm.
Applied with the requisite amount of cordite to the back of Rupert Murdoch's head.
I am not kidding.
You, Sir, are a Troll, kidding or not.
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You can always rely on slashdot to get the headlines right. You just have to wait until they've tried everything else.
- Winston Churchill.
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Nor blogs.
I'm currently studying a variety of blogs as part of a research project - examining their content, presentation and language use.
My main conclusion so far has been that they're God-awful.
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Ok, I have a question for you. I assume you're looking at a number of metrics, accuracy, timeliness, grammar, etc. I think most of us would agree that accuracy is the most important, but it is also the hardest to identify if taken in isolation. So my question is, can a reasonably well informed person identify an inaccurate blog post based on other cues, such as grammar and language use?
The reason I ask is I get a reasonable portion of my news from blogs - and I think I'm pretty good at telling which ones
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Here's a theory for giggles:
The quality and relevance of content on any given blog is proportional to its distance from the source of the original information and the author's mastery of the subject. Proper grammar and spelling are taken as a prerequisite to any high quality communication.
Good: Blogging from inside companies about company politics, activities and product development. Blogging from inside or about any source of information from an initial source that has competence and a threshold lev
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Here's what I'll say, reporting on press releases is always sloppy, but sometimes unavoidable. Reporting from inside the company is quality neutral: blogging from inside with a grudge is generally bad (exception for whistle blowing), blogging from inside without a grudge, i.e. objectively is good (exception for PR sanitized blogging - which is worse than reporting on press releases AND might be difficult to detect). Real investigative journalism is better than an inside man blogging.
If you don't use decen
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Edge Caching (Score:3, Informative)
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google pays (Score:3, Insightful)
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Which is exactly the same.
"You can pay extra to be in the fast lane"
is the same as
"If you don't pay extra you'll have to stay in the slow lanes"
because you end up in the same situation if you don't pay and get the same perks if you do pay.
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it becomes the slow lane since the bigger the difference between the 2 services the more reason for those with deep pockets to pay for the better service.
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Service that ANYONE can buy... non-exclusively.
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Service that ANYONE can buy... non-exclusively... just like any randomer can get peering with AOL.
in order to provide a decent website you'd then have to pay packet protection to all the hundreds of little ISP's around the globe to make sure that those on the other side of their networks will get your packets even though you've paid for your connection and your customer has paid for their connection.
Fantastic idea!
Lets kill of the chance of ever seeing another successful internet startup that isn't being ba
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No No No. I think you are reading the Article wrong. This has nothing to do with packet shaping or data manipulation services. Google wants to put hardware in locations around the globe so that someone in England hits a cached version of Google instead of having to go across the Atlantic and the States to search the net. There is no talk of dropping MSN packets or prioritizing Google packets. This is purely about locating hardware.
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Excepting of course that google is a free service to anyone who can type google.com into a web browser. This would simply mean there would be fewer hops between users and google's servers, therefore a better quality of service to the user. It has absolutely nothing to do with the user paying anyone.
Its like paying a higher price for a better location if you run a retail store. The customer doesn't pay for it, the business does.
Re:google pays (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is exactly why NN is a good things.
A flat internet favors startups with a good idea.
The idea that you can hook up to the net and your packets get the same priority as anyone elses means that you can compete with big name companies. Hell google is an example. A couple of students with some good code did things better than the giants of the time.
Now imagine the same scenario but where google searches were slowed down because they weren't able to pay for the "fast lane" and you might be hearing the term "yahoo it" or "micro it" instead of "google it"
But if one groups gets a fast lane, one group with money gets to put their shops on the highstreet, then it pretty much kills the chances of that kind of competition.
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So, you advocate restricting everyone (Google, MS, and yourself) to 56K modems so that everyone has a fair shot at having the same Internet? Because that's essentially what's at stake here. From what you just said, it's anti-competitive for me to have a cable modem with faster upload speeds than your service and I should therefore be limited to the same connection that you have regardless of my financial backing.
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So, you advocate restricting everyone (Google, MS, and yourself) to 56K modems so that everyone has a fair shot at having the same Internet? Because that's essentially what's at stake here. From what you just said, it's anti-competitive for me to have a cable modem with faster upload speeds than your service and I should therefore be limited to the same connection that you have regardless of my financial backing.
You've always been free to pay for a faster connection at YOUR end. The anti-neutrality people want to let you ALSO pay them to slow down your competitors' speeds at MY end.
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You really missed the whole point of NN.
Your connection to the net has nothing to do with it.
You might have a fat pipe or you might be on 56k.
the important thing is that when your packets are half way around the globe passing through some router belonging to a random corporation that they get treated the same as the packets of they guy next door to you.
The anti NN lobby wants to make it so that that random company half way round the globe can charge you extra to not have your packets dropped/slowed in favou
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Right... so how is that different from Google putting servers in local ISPs around the world? That's what this "story" is about. Someone ranting that it's anti-NN to let Google place caching servers in key points on the net. (Effectively buying themselves a faster connection.)
It's not like the competition cannot do the same thing. NN is about the data. Not the starting location of that data. It's about removing packet shaping and other Quality of Service restrictions so my game data packet has the sam
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Right... so how is that different from Google putting servers in local ISPs around the world?
Paying money for something physical (e.g. servers or bandwidth) is fine, because anyone is allowed to pay the same money for the same hardware and the same bandwidth. Paying money to an ISP so that they configure their routers to give your packets higher priority than their competitors (i.e. an artificial limiter) is not fine.
It's about removing packet shaping and other Quality of Service restrictions so my game data packet has the same amount of playtime as your business proposal packet.
That isn't what Net Neutrality is about at all. Net Neutrality is about fairness in traffic priority regardless of source and destination. True Quality of Service configuration is not
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Yeah, That's my point... but his isn't about Google paying for higher priority... This is about edge caching. It was reported inaccurately and everyone is jumping on Google for something they never said.
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No, it's completely different. In one case, you have cars that have a special lane with a higher speed limit. That would be an un-neutral network. However, in THIS case, that's not happening. Google is effectively putting MORE CARS on the already existing lanes. The cars themselves don't go faster, but there are more of them, meaning when you call for a car, you are likely to get one sooner than before, because there is likely one closer to you than there would have been.
Having more servers doesn't mea
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Oh I was replying to an earlier post which was basicly saying NN isn't needed.
I don't really have a problem with google adding more servers all over the place.
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This has nothing to do with "speed" (bandwidth or data rate) and everything to do with latency. Just because someone has pushed their content to servers that are closer to you doesn't mean those packets get some sort of bump in their priority.
Re:google pays (Score:4, Insightful)
Google is placing servers closer to you which is why it's faster. The server is physically closer.
Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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If Google were more libertarian than liberal, I would expect them to be proposing a referendum in California to sweep away all of the franchising laws so that there are no local or state limits on who can enter what Internet or TV market.
Part of the logic behind franchising laws is that they give more revenue to local governments, but so what?
Might be kinda difficult right now, isn't California (among many others) having some budged difficulties?
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Re:NN defenders should hedge their bets (Score:4, Insightful)
Conflict of interest central (Score:5, Informative)
The WSJ is now owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns ISPs in Europe. For him net neutrality is a threat to a potential revenue stream. All we're seeing here is the 'editorial independence' of the Murdoch press.
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He's also a major content provider through all ISPs. On balance I would assume that he has more of an interest in neutrality than against it.
This is academic to me since I don't think for a second that the WSJ would bias a story like this in the way you imply.
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Then you should really read Private Eye some.
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Top hit on google.co.uk. I don't know whether the guys across the Pond have anything similar. In any case;
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/ [private-eye.co.uk]
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As I posted above, if you don't believe that Murdoch interferes with the editorial line of his titles then you should really read the Private Eye.
Of course, all proprietors do this to some degree. The sheer extent of Murdoch's media empire makes his manipulations more dangerous, as they are often driven by commercial interests of other arms of his empire (see the Sun's constant promotion of Sky and criticism of the BBC as an example).
This is not to say that I think that Google can do no evil. I don't partic
Robin Hood (Score:2)
Is this kind of carry on not just asking for a "useful" virus? (Not proposing it)
There are plenty of smart people out there who are for net neutrality and a number of them might consider it lawful (or even their duty) to exploit the infection vectors that have served botnets for so long, to provide an "inoculation" that reverses the effect of this unrequested distortion of the network - "stealing from the rich" so to speak, which will inevitably "give to the poor".
I don't get it... (Score:3, Insightful)
struggle to see what the problem is here really. It sounds rather like Google are buying dedicated (virtual) pipes to move data around. Millions of companies already do this and no one complains. Flame away, I get that foot in mouth feeling.
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So you are stating that the telcos idea of neutrality means that the Internet is their domain and nobody will place servers on their backbone. You are also saying that anyone that can afford to use the Internet on a thicker line than anyone else is violating the neutrality guidelines.
So, hand me you're broadband modem. You are abusing your monetary expenditures in order to bring the Internet to your computer faster than others. We can't have you connecting at a faster rate than anyone else!
This is not so
Net Neutrality only protects the underdog (Score:4, Insightful)
net Neutrality is like election finance reform. The people trying to gain access are all for it, but once access is gained, the urgency seems to fade away.
Google needs net neutrality where it is weak, but exploits sweet heart deals where it is strong. The ISPs should be careful, in this economy, the infrastructure that they depend on can be bought by Google or Microsoft. More over, if Google or Microsoft could buy or build a few major backbones, they'll be screaming bloody murder FOR net neutrality.
I think Google has done the numbers, though. They are banking on semi-truck sized compact portable data centers and using existing the existing backbone as merely the pipeline for cache coherency. So when you run google apps, you are getting your applications only a few hops away without sprint in the way.
I will paraphrase an old expression, never under estimate the data bandwidth of a semi-truck sized data center driving two days across country. Think about the number of raw terabytes that can be shipped vs transfered over the backbone.
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A backbone is a commodity provider and if AT&T doesn't play nice with Google, then Google can go to Sprint, or Verizon, or Level3, or any number of cable companies that are increasingly getting into the game.
If Google wanted to build the last mile, you're talking serious expenses, that even Google can't afford. Look at Verizon, who is spending $20B+ on retrofitting some percentage of their footprint with FiOS. The vast maj
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I will paraphrase an old expression, never under estimate the data bandwidth of a semi-truck sized data center driving two days across country. Think about the number of raw terabytes that can be shipped vs transfered over the backbone.
I think my Gramma used to say that.
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I think in time, Google will have a vested interest in becoming an ISP. While distributed data centers might reduce the total long-haul bandwidth they need, getting preferred access to the local loops is what is critical for Google Apps and SaaS in general.
A Google or MS can quickly subvert the stranglehold the LECs have today in major metropolitan areas if they have a competitive incentive to do so.
Is Net Neutrality a Myth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Net Neutrality is somewhat a myth. Network providers already prioritize their own traffic in many ways like edge caching. Or, they might change the way data is serviced to allow a more requested provider better access. Absolute Net Neutrality is a myth.
What we want to prevent is the practice of shoving a provider purposefully shoving third party content aside in order to better highlight their own content. For example, setting up your network in such a way that a Google search takes three to four seconds to return results while the provider's search results are instantaneous. Users will switch to the faster provider's search engine. Or, maybe streaming content from iTunes or YouTube is no longer smooth. You attempt to listen to a song or play a video, and you get a lot of caching going on. However, the provider's own video and music service is smoother with no caching.
This is the true issue. Is the same firm that provides the pipe (or if you live in Alaska, the tube) to your computer using its advantage to push other business they're way.
There were two types of monopolies that the government use to watch over. One was a horizontal monopoly where a single company captures a vast majority of the market and can use their clout to prevent others from entering the market, thus eliminating competition. An example of this was Standard Oil.
The other, lesser known monopoly was the vertical monopoly where the company controls the entire vertical distribution. Two examples: One was the three television networks. They were prohibited from producing their own shows for the longest time. The reasoning is that if they could, they could favor their own productions over third parties. Instead of hundreds of independent production studios, there would be three who could control payments.
Another example is Boeing. At one time, Boeing was not just an airplane manufacturer, but also owned an airline. This meant that Boeing could favor its own airline with newer equipment at cheaper rates, thus giving its airline a cost advantage over other rivals. This was back in the days when airmail was an important revenue stream for airlines, and Boeing could outbid its rivals. The government separated United Airlines and United Technologies from Boeing back in the 1930s.
This is the actual problem. Local providers of service should not be content providers too. Otherwise, their content would have an unfair advantage over other content providers. This should be enforced not just in the Internet, but also with cable and satellite television providers. You can either provide the pipe to the TV, or you can provide the content over that pipe.
If local providers of Internet service didn't have their own content they were pushing, there would be no issues with net neutrality.
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If local providers of Internet service didn't have their own content they were pushing, there would be no issues with net neutrality.
What a load of bollocks.
The primary threat is the telcom's stated intention of demanding kickbacks from successful companies in order to remain successful. It is selective price discrimination as protection money: "That sure is a popular website you got there. It'd be a shame if something 'happened' to it."
What you're describing is only possible after they've already turned th
And who wants cheap prices anyway? (Score:2, Funny)
Lawrence Lessig's response (Score:5, Informative)
Missing from the article, however, is the evidence that my view is a "shift" or "soften[ing]" of earlier views. That's because there isn't any such evidence. My view is the view I have always had -- whether or not it is the view of others in this debate.
google has the money to cover all it bets (Score:2)
Google's Response... (Score:2)
WSJ not confused, Google trying to confuse (Score:2)
If you read Google's response, it is pretty clear that they are trying to obfuscate the issue. What they are talking about is paying to put servers and data inside the ISPs and so gain an advantage for their content. This is exactly the scheme that AT&T proposed and Google condemned. Their reply is a technical splitting of hairs and a diversion. Cache end servers, etc, is all just "we want our data to have higher access and priority and will pay for it". Admit it Google, you're busted.
What the Goog
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It's not even remotely the same thing.
It may seem to be splitting hairs to you, but renting server space(and generally reducing the overall traffic on the internet at the same time) is not the same thing as changing packet priority, and does not violate net neutrality.
Net Neutrality isn't about ensuring that everyone's packets get there at the same speed(that's not even physically possible unless every ISP mirrors the entire internet locally), it's about ensuring that all packets are treated the same. Buyin
Re:So Google pays money to the ISPs... (Score:5, Informative)
No!
You get "fast-priority" because Google put a server closer to you.
This is similar to what Akamai does.
So it's not unfair around the internet, only that google gets faster because it's closer
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...and which is also what google have been doing for quite some time, if i remember correctly - they have datacenters around the world _already_.
so, another case of journalist not getting it ?
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Well, this is why network neutrality is so hard to get right. Of course it's not much different from what Akamai does. Of course anybody could do it. But of course it's going to shut out the majority of sites in favor of those which can afford to get in bed with all the last mile ISPs. If Google and all the other big ones go right to the ISPs, why would any ISP work on upgrading their internet connections? Most users will think that other sites are just slow, when in reality the slowness is caused by a dras
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....You see, this move relieves the ISPs from upgrading backbone capacity...
But if this move of having local cache servers makes for less traffic on the backbone, is that not the same thing? How is this different from an ISP running a proxy server?
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Re:So Google pays money to the ISPs... (Score:5, Informative)
Which has NOTHING to do with "Net Neutrality", even though the anti-neutrality people don't QUITE seem to get that it doesn't prove their point or that anyone's turning their back on things.
Net neutrality is about applying the same consistent rules for all content and not munging for "quality of service" reasons the stuff. If Google's stuff gets there to you more robustly and quicker, it's because it's spending quite a bit of money putting HARDWARE they maintain closer to you and more of it.
The stuff the net neutrality people are harping on about is where the crap the ISP's are shovelling gets priority unless you pay them protection money.
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Yeah, that's how I read it too. Telcos think "neutrality" is equivalent to money somehow. It's strictly about removing quality of service traffic shaping. If there is a big dog in the house that's eating all your bandwidth, offer to save yourself and let them host closer to the node.
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I'm sure they get that just fine. Unfortunately the truth has little to do with power-hungry people trying to get their way.
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If the ISP can make a business case of it, then they're welcome to go for it.
If customers want fast access to sites that aren't cached locally, they'll move to another ISP with bigger upstream pipes.
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No, it's not, because Yahoo is paying to ISPs, and so is Altavista.
That's why the ISPs like it so much. It's all working exactly the same as today - if all your customers have "premium" contracts, that means the quality of service is still the same overall, as no-one has priority over anyone else - except that you charge everyone extra for the "premium".
It's like Akamai or Amazon (Score:2)
No, it's like how if you download something from Amazon, you download it from a local s3 cache instead of them copying it over the backbone multiple times. This provides MORE bandwidth for everyone, including Amazon's competition.
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You also get marginally faster access to Yahoo or Altavista, because fewer requests to Google are clogging the same backbone links that go to Yahoo and Altavista. Google's just making the network more efficient by moving the data closer to you. They're not squeezing other people out.
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The RSS headline I got was "Network Neutrality Foes Quietly Backing Off?"
This was fixed by the time I got to the web.
Talk about confused...
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This can be turned around - there's just too much money to be lost by paying twice for the same bandwidth.
And Google, and Microsoft, and Yahoo, and Amazon are all in the "paying twice" camp, not in the "charging twice" camp. Which is why I'm skeptical about the claims.
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This ISN'T insightful.
This isn't backing out. If you understood what Net Neutrality actually meant, you'd understand that this is quite a bit different.
In the Google story, all they're doing is putting dumb bit shovels closer to you.
In the thing that people for 'net neutrality' are talking about, the ISP gives higher priority to the content THEY provide and unless you pay tribute to each ISP, they do nothing or actually degrade your priority, meaning you stuff gets to you slower or not at all- depending on
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I mean wouldn't it create a disincentive for the ISP to upgrade their network except for the peers to their Premium Business Partners (TM)?
Whether they actually degrade net traffic, or do so via apathy and lack of innovation, isn't the end result for users the same? Isn't this apathy what Microsoft is so often accused of, and due to their monopoly, is accused of having a much more severe impa
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Its not, thats the point.
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What with Google's admission that they manipulate search results I won't trust them anymore.
Hold on... you don't trust someone because they're honest about something? I don't quite follow your logic here... Whether you like or dislike what they do, you can't say they're not trustworthy if they come right out and say "yep, this is what we do" (unless they're lying)
If a company came to me and said, "give us all your data so we can sell it to other companies!", I'd trust them. I wouldn't do business with them, but I'd certainly trust them to do exactly what they said.
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Straight out of political science, one way you can be fairly sure someone's promise is trustworthy is if he tells you something that could in no way improve your opinion of him.
Textbook example: Mondale's promise to raise taxes. I believe he would have done it. Saying it only hurt his electability.
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I still think that the results I get from Google are the result of their search algorithm. However their search algorithm is manipulated by various factors (many of which I'm sure they don't tell me about, and some that they do), and I have no problem with that. If I want information about French Poodles, I'll type "French Poodle" in to a Google search box and get some links to useful information back - honestly, as a "searcher" that's all I really care about. I don't mind that some results may be priori
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So since the US taxpayers paid for that cable that means we should get to say how it's used. I agree with you.
It wasn't just the telecoms that now "own" it that paid into its construction cost you know.
We had a huge hubub about telephone lines some time back and THANK GOD we can actually choose our long distance providers now or else we'd be in a libertarian nightmare of monopolies and high prices.
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That's no moon. It's a Google Data Centre..
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Google is becoming the first open source evil empire
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Anyone else misread the title?
Yeah, I did.
First I thought they were Baking off, but nahh... the days of TCP/IP bake-offs are long gone.
Then I thought they were Acking off; that is, saying "Yea', I gud yer data" in the language of TCP, but I couldn't make sense of the "off".
Next I thought they were Hacking off, but I couldn't figure out what they hacked off, or of what they hacked it.
But finally I got it right: Network Neutrality Defenders Quietly Taking Off. Finally they've gone airborne and started doing some real work!
Nice troll. Co