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.
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.