

Tech Companies, Google Sold You Out - malbiniak
http://gigaom.com/2010/08/09/tech-companies-google-sold-you-out/

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navyrain
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
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>

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gamble
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?

~~~
tensafefrogs
> 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?

~~~
gamble
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.

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spinchange
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.

~~~
illumin8
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.

~~~
woodrow
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.

~~~
illumin8
I realize that a DOCSIS cable modem has a ton of bandwidth available to it.
Each 6 MHz cable channel can send around 27 Mbps to the subscriber. Upstream
is more difficult. If there wasn't any regulation, what is stopping cable and
fiber to the home ISPs from just dialing down the Internet portion of your
package until the competition can't fit in it any more?

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plnewman
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.

~~~
sp332
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

~~~
chadmalik
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.

~~~
pyre
Privately-owned, but publicly traded.

~~~
sp332
Yup, I got that wrong. I was overplaying it for rhetorical effect anyway :-)

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Marticus
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."

~~~
jdrock
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
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.

~~~
stcredzero
When/where available try out Sprint 4G/Clear if you can live with 6mbps.

~~~
pyre
I've heard conflicting reports of reception and/or speed with Clear. Clear
apparently isn't good for things like gaming (horrible latency) and/or large
file transfers.

~~~
stcredzero
I can download 175 MB or 4 GB bittorrent downloads just fine. It's getting
things uploaded which takes a little persistence.

Latency is horrible. I consider this a plus -- no temptation.

~~~
nl
And this is why the proposal leaves wireless out.

It _may_ be possible to use technical measures (QoS etc) to reduce the latency
problems on wireless for applications that need low latency (eg Voip).

Do we really want to regulate _now_ to rule this out? I have very mixed
feelings on this.

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mirkules
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)

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yanw
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.

