Is Google undermining net neutrality?

I’ve beaten up on Google when I thought it needed to be done, and even warned that “Google is becoming Microsoft’s evil twin” in a column earlier this year. But the recent attacks on the search giant, spurred by a story in The Wall Street Journal, strike me as overblown and possibly off base.

Net neutrality is worth fighting for, but we should lower our voices and check our sources before we burn Ed Schmidt at the stake.

Google, of course, can certainly take care of itself without my endorsement. And the impact of its announced intention to “colocate caching servers within broadband providers’ own facilities” is still murky. But the recent brouhaha flushed out a number of old and discredited arguments against net neutrality. Let’s talk about it, and I’ll try not to shout.

Net neutrality started with Ma Bell

Just to be clear: Net neutrality doesn’t, to my mind anyway, mean that companies whose networks are being overwhelmed by digital content shouldn’t charge customers more for consuming more bandwidth.

Back in the pre-VoIP days, we paid more for talking longer on the long-distance network; we still pay more for using more water and more electricity. So it’s hard to argue that we shouldn’t pay more for consuming more bandwidth, as long as service agreements are absolutely clear. (Often they are not, but that’s another story.)

It’s worth noting, as the Journal story pointed out, that telephone carriers have always been required to route all traffic at the same speed. A big company couldn’t pay more to have its calls connected faster than a residential customer across town. In essence, that’s the origin of network neutrality.

[ InfoWorld’s Ephraim Schwartz tracks bandwidth killers. | See why InfoWorld’s Tom Yager believes bandwidth caps are bad. ]

Henry Blodgett, a former Wall Street analyst who now comments on stocks and technology at Yahoo and the Silicon Alley Insider, heaps scorn on the notion of net neutrality, calling it “absurd,” and likens the big providers to a delivery service, saying, “FedEx charges different rates for different delivery times. Where are all the cries for ‘mail neutrality’?”

Not to be nasty, but that really is absurd. To begin with, nobody in the United States is locked into FedEx. If you don’t like them, go to UPS or the U.S. Postal Service, for heaven’s sake. Sure, any of those companies can charge any rate it chooses, but none controls the market for quick delivery of goods. There’s simply no analogy to the Internet. Blodgett is confusing net neutrality with tiered pricing.

AT&T and Verizon want to do something that’s very different and a lot more dangerous than adding some surcharges for high consumption. They say they intend to create faster lanes on the Internet and charge content companies a premium to use them.

To begin with, unlike the world of package delivery, we don’t have a high number of carriers. Moreover, some of the big providers, like AT&T and Comcast, also provide content. Hmm. See a potential conflict of interest here?

Say I run a business site and AT&T decides to charge me more because of the content I deliver. In return, I get to use the fast lane. If I say no, and my competitor (also a content provider) says yes, his site will load a lot faster than mine. Guess which one will attract visitors and sales from my advertisers? I’m in even deeper trouble if I don’t have the option of finding another provider, which is a real problem in many parts of the country.

That sort of imbalance could stifle the development of innovative new sites that need good bandwidth to strut their stuff.

Google’s response

Here’s what Richard Whitt, Google’s Washington telecom and media counsel , has to say:

Google has offered to colocate caching servers within broadband providers’ own facilities; this reduces the provider’s bandwidth costs since the same video wouldn’t have to be transmitted multiple times. We’ve always said that broadband providers can engage in activities like colocation and caching, so long as they do so on a non-discriminatory basis.

Critics are calling that position a reversal of Google’s long-held support for net neutrality, a characterization the company rejects. Whit goes on to say that “caching represents one type of innovative network practice encouraged by the open Internet.” Fair enough. But is edge caching really different than providing a so-called fast lane?

Whitt says, “By bringing YouTube videos and other content physically closer to end-users, site operators can improve page load times for videos and Web pages. In addition, these solutions help broadband providers by minimizing the need to send traffic outside of their networks and reducing congestion on the Internet’s backbones.”

OK, but If I’m a little guy who can’t afford to have colocated servers on the premises and my larger competition can, am I still getting a fair shake? I’m not sure.

I think this is an important issue that needs to be discussed rationally. That’s why I’ve quoted Whitt at more length than I normally would and suggest you read his blog for yourself.

President-elect Obama has stated his support for net neutrality, but since everything in politics is subject to change, I would encourage everyone who cares about the issue to let the new administration know we want Obama to stick to his guns, even if he does have to get rid of his BlackBerry.

I welcome your comments, tips, and suggestions. Reach me at bill.snyder@sbcglobal.net.