Can someone explain to me how they think less than full net-neutrality benefits Google? I didn't understand that argument in this article, or any of the previous ones.
Google's problem is not that net neutrality is bad for them, exactly, but that Verizon loathes it. And Google is utterly dependent on Verizon pushing Android. Half of all Android phones are Droids on Verizon, and you can ascribe a lot of that to Verizon's aggressive marketing campaign. In fact, I think you can argue that Android is more Verizon's brand now than Google's. So Google has a lot to lose by antagonizing the linchpin of its mobile strategy.
In addition, now that Android sales have taken off Google isn't an outsider looking in at an industry whose gatekeepers could easily shut them out from mobile search and advertising. They own the #2 platform, and they've got enough pull to ensure that Google gets a piece of the mobile pie - which means that net neutrality isn't worth as much to Google as it was two years ago.
This article is spot-on. Google was enthusiastic about net neutrality when it was essential to their financial success. Now that it has a cost, they're discovering the virtues of compromise... which wouldn't be an issue without the relentless Google PR about how principled they are. As pg said once, the trick with declaring that you're not evil is that people will hold you to it.
Exactly correct. Google can afford to stand up to the Chinese government, but not Verizon. This should tell us something about what we've allowed the wireless "market" to come to.
Indeed. Isn't it interesting? Apple (according to rumor) puts in a big order for CDMA chips, and at just about the same time Google hastens to curry favor with Verizon at the expense of their own reputation.
Gosh, it's almost as if Verizon has just recently made some kind of strategic deal to achieve a position where Google needs them more than they need Google, and has therefore begun dictating terms.
And eventually someone is usually right. Apple really was in negotiations with Intel, they were secretly maintaining an x86 branch of OS X, they really did have a fully touchscreen-controlled iPhone in the works, etc. Rumors aren't always right, but they're not always wrong either. And I find that smart people believing the rumors is generally a good sign that they're about to be revealed as true.
Yeah, practically every Apple product in recent years has been leaked before the official announcement. The difficult part is separating fact from the false rumors and fabrications.
Except that the proposal for wired networks has giant loopholes, and one can easily interpret this deal as a fig leaf designed to get the issue off the table so that the network providers can create a reality on the ground that makes further legislation impossible.
It seemed to me that the loopholes are designed to exactly cut around the services people are already offering, like prioritizing your cable tv over your cable internet, and blocking botnets.
Closing the door to the country club works if you're already inside when the door closes. Google's agreement with Verizon positions them inside. Startups and companies offering services we haven't even dreamt of yet are on the outside.
Doesn't the agreement position existing web services like HTML over HTTP in an advantageous position over services yet to be named? And doesn't Google's current revenue stream depend on this?
Since Google dominates current services, it doesn't need to monopolize them, just ensure that anything new coming along has some hurdles to clear.
Well I certainly give you credit for delivering an argument that I haven't heard before, though I don't know how you'd get that out of the proposal. Is HTML over HTTP how you're interpreting the "public internet" bit?
It's not only on the app layer:
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One is a provision that would let broadband providers offer "additional, differentiated services," that would be not be subject to the same rules as the open internet. These would possibly include "health care monitoring, the smart grid, advanced educational services, or new entertainment and gaming options."
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Isn't that necessary though? If your surgeon is operating on you remotely, don't you want those packets prioritized over my LOL Cats download? It seems there are services that are impossible to provide without quality of service guarantees.
Speculation: net-neutrality compromise in the wireless space could help Google's relationship with carriers. Google can't afford to fight with their Android partners while they have Apple to worry about.
The idea is that a non-neutral net favors people with deep pockets. Google has deep pockets, therefore a non-neutral net benefits Google. Google can pay big money to prioritize their traffic to their devices over other traffic that cannot pay. That creates a barrier to entry and competition that does not exist today.
It's not like Google is going to go ahead and say "well let's squash the competition by paying for prioritized traffic for all of our properties." It will be more like something along the lines of "hey let's get android OS updates onto user's phones faster, we can pay to have that "updating service" have higher priority than normal http traffic." Updates are big files, and people don't want to wait hours for an OTA download, so bump up the speed a bit. But from there it is a slippery slope.
I don't see that as a slippery slope. Those sorts of subtleties are exactly what makes this a complicated issue to address with law, and exactly what this agreement tries to define with some specificity.
But it doesn't, really. I think that that sort of service could be allowed even for wired traffic with the language they are using. And, at the moment, they are putting no restrictions on wireless.
As it is, if any of the telco's started seriously violating net-neutrality, that could actually become a catalyst for real legislation. That is a check on the isp's. If we adopt this suggestion into law, it gives the giants something to hide behind. "Oh, you don't like that we are selling a "video service" that pipes youtube to your phone? Well, bring it up at our review a year from now." A year is a long time in this industry. Perhaps a year from now they claim that they can't afford to pay for the LTE infrastructure being utilized for this youtube pipe without the special service fee, or people will just dislike having their youtube run at a slower bandwidth. so it continues.
By saying "anything goes" we are letting the isp's set the terms of net neutrality. And the isp's have a terrible history when it comes to treating customers right.
Google wanted to prevent Apple from signing a non-neutrality deal with Verizon.
Everyone always forgets how vulnerable Google is to competition. Best case for Google is net neutrality, second best case is to have signed deals with the top ISPs to prevent its competitors from signing google-harming deals with them.
Not sure why all my comments about this and Google's China stuff are blindly modded down w/o any reply/argument. If you disagree, explain why, maybe you'll convince me!
After years of failing to reach a deal, Verizon is finally getting the iPhone 4G.
Verizon's network performance makes QoS an issue. Imagine facetime over the mobile network, etc. Chances are Apple is very concerned about the Facetime experience and wants non-neutral QoS to benefit it.
Further, Google is making tons of money on mobile ads, etc. All Apple needs to do is direct search traffic to Bing (or to Apple's own search engine) and that's a significant revenue boost.
Search is no longer a hard problem. Microsoft cloned Google search fairly quickly and is very likely to help Apple by offering a good deal on revenue sharing.
These factors combine to suggest that Google is VERY worried about an Apple/Verizon deal.
Imagine if tens of millions more iPads are sold, each with Verizon 4G and non-net-neutral search redirects.
Does anyone really think consumers would care? Bing and Google return almost identical results, and Apple is probably less than two years away from being able to engineer its own Google caliber search engine.
I think that what people forget about Google is that in spite of all the brilliant engineering (which is surely unrivaled) most of the actual revenue comes from simple search which is very much threatened by net non-neutrality.
Google was forced to backpedal on its previous stance out of the necessity to stop Apple from making a google-killing deal with Verizon.
All this is speculative and based on speculation about how successful Apple's devices will be on Verizon (and how little customers care which search engine handles their searches). But Billions of dollars are enough to make any company change course on a dime.
It was about time someone said something to this effect. Net neutrality aside, Google is a public company. They have shareholders. From what it sounds like, Larry and Sergey are more or less full blown academics and therefore idealistic. Problem is, they aren't the parents of a Stanford project anymore but instead a multi-billion, multi-national corporation with thousands of shareholders, employees and customers.
Could they have approached net-neutrality with a "cut off your nose to spite your face" approach? Absolutely. Could they have won out in the face of adversity? Maybe. Would it have been good business? Most assuredly not.
Google in acting in self-preservation; nothing more, nothing less. They aren't martyrs. I can understand if you are upset about them not admitting this fact, but anything else is naive.
From what it sounds like, Larry and Sergey are more or less full blown academics and therefore idealistic. Problem is, they aren't the parents of a Stanford project anymore but instead a multi-billion, multi-national corporation
Patronizing comments about "academics" and "idealism" ought typically to be delivered before the target's company has attained megasuccess. Larry and Sergey's competency to lead a multibillion-dollar corporation has been proven for many years. More to the point, so has their ability to do it in a less evil way, a way that raised the bar for everyone. The issue is not whether it's possible for Google to be Google; we have an existence proof for that. The issue is whether Google is breaking its own values, and if so what the consequences will be.
Would it have been good business? Most assuredly not.
This wretched argument, so sure of its own hard-nosed realistic businessism, is just what people were saying 10 years ago to prove that Google should sell banner ads. Oh sure, that home page was cute. But look at all the money they were leaving on the table! Well let's just remember how things turned out: by sticking to their guns, rejecting that thinking, and putting users first, Google made orders of magnitude more money than they would have had they followed that path. (How do we know this? Because countless counterexamples ended up in the dotcom garbage bin.) Oh yeah, and they changed the world and the industry forever.
I definitely believe the agreement is necessary for Google to have regular access to its current channels looking forward (both across the net and especially with Android through Verizon). Yes, it is good for business.
There may be a huge outrage over it, but I tend to doubt it.
Furthermore, the anecdote "Sergey Brin did not want to cave to any of the Chinese demands to operate inside of mainland China, but Eric Schmidt talked him into it", if true, is pretty good evidence that the founders are more idealistic. I don't think that is patronizing.
I think this is spot on. The problem here isnt that Google did what it did, it's that they shouted about it for the other side for so long, and then switched teams. The same thing with China. If you're going to take a hard stance on something, then do it and people will respect it for you. But Google is turning into all talk and no walk, and walking straight into the next Microsoft.
If they had just said from the beginning that they were out for their own interest (just like everyone else), and not tried to play the good guy even when it would hurt them, then nobody would be surprised by this.
Actually, the "most assuredly not" in your post is debatable. One could put forward the argument that they've had the buy-in they've had -despite brouhahas like the gmail context-sensitive ads- largely because the tech/expert community at large understood they were headed by idealists. That trickled down through op-eds and family/friends recommendations.
Would an "all or nothing" net neutrality position be, erm, unconventional business? Absolutely. Would anyone have believed before Google's arrival that an ad company would be the single biggest name on the Internet? Again, debatable.
Good point, but I think Google sees the writing on the wall. Would they like pure net-neutrality? I am sure they would, but I think they are realists and know that in the end, profits win. They want a piece of those profits and are trying to compromise a lesser of evils.
That depends on how this outrage develops. If it turns out that it hurts recruiting in the future, damages morale, or flat out pisses off a sizable number of people who now have a beef with Google, then it may hurt them more than it helps them. Granted, all these side-effects are intangibles; hard to measure and mostly ignored. However, the question of does it make business sense is a bit more complex than tallying up the balance sheet.
With respect to corporate governance, you can basically ignore the public shareholders in this case.
In addition to the fact that the law affords managements a lot of leeway in determining how to maximize shareholder value, Larry, Sergey, and Eric hold voting control due to the dual share class structure that public shareholders agreed to when they bid for shares in the IPO.
You can think of it as a limited partnership with three general partners.
I found this the most interesting part of the article:
In private conversations with Googlers and ex-Googlers over the past couple of days, the vast majority of them seem to be disturbed by what Google is doing here as well.
If that's accurate, it's significant: it means this isn't all a big misunderstanding, and hints at how much damage Google could potentially do to itself here.
I still think they're smart enough not to let that happen, though it does look like they've painted themselves into a corner. I wonder if they realized how tremendous an asset their standing up for net neutrality was.
Since cellphones are merely a convenient connection to a backbone network, would it make sense to develop and promote a wifi system with automated handoff between access points that can bypass cell protocols altogether? Being in the clutches of Verizon and ATT doesn't sound like a good strategy.
