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Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal published an article that suggested that Google was abandoning the idea of net neutrality by asking to create "a fast lane for its own content." The interpretation by the Wall Street Journal of what was actually happening was quickly refuted by Google.
The confusion arose because Google proposed something that has been done for a long time, and that has nothing to do with net neutrality. It's called "edge caching." In Google's public policy blog, they explained what edge caching is.
edge caching -- temporary storage of frequently accessed data on servers that are located close to end users . . . 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.
Further, Google confirmed its support of net neutrality.
Dana Blankenhorn & Paula Rooney's blog at ZDnet commented in Media used by cable to create Google scandal,
Edge caching is about access, not delivery. It’s about making it easier for people to reach you, not creating a tilted playing field. It’s about competition, not monopoly.
The Democrats and President-elect Obama have supported the concept of net neutrality. But the new chairman of the FCC under Obama has not been named yet. Because of that, Save the Internet sent out this email reminder:
It's not up to AT&T and Comcast -- or Google -- whether we have Net Neutrality. It's up to us, the public, and we're not giving up the fight for a free and open Internet. Now is the right time to remind our leaders that Net Neutrality is a top priority.
In the mail from Save the Internet, they asked people to sign the petition for President-elect Obama found at freepress.net to serve as a reminder that the people still want net neutrality to become a reality.
Nancy Scola, at techPresident, said
The dust-up shines light on two facts that are often ignored in polite company. First, that reporters can sometime get things very wrong. And second, that "net neutrality" is, as an operating principles, not without its messiness at the edges.
Wendy Davis at the The Daily Examiner pointed out,
Other net neutrality advocates, like the Open Internet Coalition, quickly denounced the Journal article and rallied to Google's defense. Markham Erickson, executive director of the group, says that the type of plan that Google is considering "is an accepted, legal and beneficial step by network operators to improve access of content by consumers."
One of the clearest examples to date of a net neutrality violation occurred when Comcast secretly slowed peer-to-peer traffic. There, Comcast didn't give anyone -- consumers or peer-to-peer companies -- notice of its plan in advance, and there was no possibility of anyone paying extra for faster delivery.
Instead, the company decided to degrade one particular type of content on purely arbitrary grounds. It's hard to see how OpenEdge has much in common with that type of network management practice.
See The FCC Holds Hearings on the Comcast Strangle Hold on Bandwidth for additional background information.
With a counter-opinion, Richard Bennett at Broadband Politics spoke directly to me in Google Gambles in Casablanca with his contention that Google's denial that they are seeking a "fast lane" only muddies the waters. He said,
The Internet is not a network, it’s a complex set of agreements to interconnect independently owned and operated networks in various ways. There is no standard agreement, and this story doesn’t report on a new one. What it simply shows is that money buys performance in the technology space, and that should come as no surprise to anyone. Google has to do something like this to avoid being clobbered by ISP-friendly P4P as well as by Akamai.
Yes, Virginia, network neutrality is a myth, and it always has been.
Thanks for noticing me out here, Richard.
Whether Google is trying to get ahead in an unfair way as the Wall Street Journal suggests isn't really the point. To me, the point is that the issue of net neutrality is back in the public eye. Which is right where it needs to be. Ask yourself why this issue keeps coming up? It's because the United States stinks at broadband access, and people are fighting over every little crumb. See We're Number 15! for a refresher on just what a sorry broadband
