Google Wants Its Own Fast Track on the Web

[Blue Velvet]

The celebrated openness of the Internet -- network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic -- is quietly losing powerful defenders.

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.

At risk is a principle known as network neutrality: Cable and phone companies that operate the data pipelines are supposed to treat all traffic the same -- nobody is supposed to jump the line.

Google, with its dominant market position and its perceived ties to the Obama team, may hold the most sway. One of President-elect Obama's most visible supporters during the campaign was Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive officer. Mr. Schmidt remains an adviser during the transition.

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. Google has asked the providers it has approached not to talk about the idea, according to people familiar with the plans.

Asked about OpenEdge, Google said only that other companies such as Yahoo and Microsoft could strike similar deals if they desired. But Google's move, if successful, would give it an advantage available to very few.

In the two years since Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other Internet companies lined up in favor of network neutrality, the landscape has changed. The Internet companies have formed partnerships with phone and cable companies, making them more dependent on one another.

Microsoft, which appealed to Congress to save network neutrality just two years ago, has changed its position completely. "Network neutrality is a policy avenue the company is no longer pursuing," Microsoft said in a statement. The Redmond, Wash., software giant now favors legislation to allow network operators to offer different tiers of service to content companies.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122929270127905065.html?mod=rss_Page_One

 

[Blue Velvet]

Google responds

All of Google's colocation agreements with ISPs -- which we've done through projects called OpenEdge and Google Global Cache -- are non-exclusive, meaning any other entity could employ similar arrangements. Also, none of them require (or encourage) that Google traffic be treated with higher priority than other traffic. In contrast, if broadband providers were to leverage their unilateral control over consumers' connections and offer colocation or caching services in an anti-competitive fashion, that would threaten the open Internet and the innovation it enables.

Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday's Journal story, I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open.

P.S.: The Journal story also quoted me as characterizing President-elect Obama's net neutrality policies as "much less specific than they were before." For what it's worth, I don't recall making such a comment, and it seems especially odd given that President-elect Obama's supportive stance on network neutrality hasn't changed at all.

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/12/net-neutrality-and-benefits-of-caching.html

 

[fleshman03]

Bits Book Web Site:
A Wall Street Journal story about a proposed agreement between Google and Internet Service Providers suggests that Google is pulling a double-cross, given its prior commitment to Net Neutrality. Unfortunately the details of the proposal haven’t been made public. But the consensus of the knowledgeable is that the WSJ misunderstands what is going on and that Net Neutrality is not threatened by Google’s proposal. A greater worry is perhaps about the implications of Google’s increasingly monopoly power over bits, but that wouldn’t mean that its packets got delivered faster than those of some minor player.) Thanks to Steve Schultze for pointing me to this collection of comments.
Link

Enjoy

 

[mkrishnan]

^^ Agreed, this doesn't sound like it's really a violation of the spirit or the letter of net neutrality policies. However, that is a somewhat different matter from saying it is harmless.

What happens with Google in the future will be very interesting... at its current rate, it is very, very rapidly becoming too integral to the world and too integral to the internet to remain simply a publicly traded and relatively unregulated company. At the same time, Google is probably the first company to simultaneously weave itself into how so much of the developed and developing world work, as opposed to simply weaving itself into one country or a few countries in this fashion.

If Google continues for even a decade down the path they're taking, the benefits for the public will be immense, but the risk will become catastrophic in magnitude.

 

[Tilpots]

Geez, how much faster could http://www.google.com open?

 

[fleshman03]

Geez, how much faster could http://www.google.com open?

lol it's a plain white page with like 5 links and a search bar. Maybe if they took out a link...

 

[LethalWolfe]

Any other entity could employ them... as long as they can afford to financially compensate the ISP to the same level that Google can. Don't be evil, huh?


Lethal