Google’s Counsel Tapdances on Net Neutrality
August 13, 2010
Richard Whitt, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)’s Washington telecom and media counsel, issued a “Myths vs. Facts” talking points post on the company’s public policy blog today, on the heels of outcry over Google’s agreement in principle with Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) on ground rules for the net neutrality debate.
While many see the “legislative framework” that Google and Verizon have proposed for consideration as a step backward, Whitt insists that the policy proposal is an effort to push net neutrality forward from where it stands now: stalled out at the intersection of commerce and regulation, and likely to be run over by a bus driven by lobbyists from the telecom industry.
While it’s true that the net neutrality debate has been stuck, I think Whitt protests too much. Google’s position is a tapdance between the ideals of true net neutrality (where any service or application provider can count on getting the same sort of treatment for its Internet Protocol packets as anyone else) and the interests of the telecom and broadband companies Google has partnered with as a technology provider.
The version of net neutrality that was laid out in the Google-Verizon proposal fits neatly around Google’s own business interests and those of broadband and wireless providers.
The best thing that can be said about the Google-Verizon proposal is that it would codify the status quo for the wired Internet — everything that’s currently available via wired broadband would be protected. That’s good, theoretically, for those of us who use voice-over-IP services like Skype and watch Internet television on sites like Hulu. At least these services won’t be able to be degraded or blocked by a broadband provider that would rather have customers use its own branded version of those services.
The major problem is that the lion’s share of innovation going on now in Internet development is in the wireless realm. And that’s one of the places that Google is willing to let net neutrality slide, as Whitt says, “in the spirit of compromise.”
But that compromise is made less of a blow, Whitt contends, by the widespread competition in the wireless space: “The wireless market is more competitive than the wireline market, given that consumers typically have more than just two providers to choose from."
Maybe Whitt has one of those Google Nexus phones that came without wireless provider lock-in. (You know, the ones Google stopped selling?) While the wireless market may be competitive at some level, buying into the smartphone market with any carrier brings with it a time commitment that few would call “competitive.”
Then there’s the matter of “non-Internet” broadband services. The Google-Verizon proposal would allow broadband providers to exempt services from net neutrality that were “separate and apart from the public Internet,” so that the broadband providers could offer them as a service “without allowing them to impede on the Internet itself.”
Whitt said this provision doesn’t allow broadband providers to “cannibalize” the Internet and carve off services it can block or for which it can bill for faster delivery. But what constitutes a service based on IP that is “separate and apart from the Internet”? Anything that doesn’t have a Web interface?
Do gaming networks, like Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)’s XBox Live and Blizzard Entertainment Inc. ’s Battle.net, constitute something “separate and apart”? Are Internet television services like Boxee and Netflix “separate and apart”? And on the business side, what about access to cloud computing services like Amazon Web Services LLC ’s Elastic Compute Cloud, or Salesforce.com?
It’s true that the Google/Verizon proposal does offer a legislative and regulatory advantage over no net neutrality at all. But it’s cynical for Google to say that the compromises in the proposal aren’t influenced by Google’s business relationships with wireless and broadband providers. And sometimes, a little bit of freedom is just as bad as no freedom at all.