Shouldn’t Google,
Yahoo, and Microsoft practice neutrality if they’re going to demand it from
others?
There has been a
lot of coverage in the news lately about “net neutrality”. Basically, net neutrality would guarantee equal
internet access by law.
For example, it
would make it illegal for a provider of DSL to block your access to Vonage or
to provide Vonage users a lower level of service (bandwidth) than other
internet traffic. It would also make it
illegal for a provider to charge a premium for better (faster) service.
The proponents
say that it protects the consumer. The
opponents say that it limits their funding to improve the internet and forces them
to give corporations access to infrastructure benefits for free.
I am not taking a stand here for or against net neutrality. I’m highlighting an inconsistency:
The companies demanding
neutrality are not practicing it themselves.
Microsoft is one
proponent. They are in the news right
now too:
In April Google complained to competition authorities in America and Europe that an upgraded version of
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser, to be released later this year, may
unfairly harm competition because it could send search queries to Microsoft’s
own search-engine by default.” “Damned if you do”, May 4, 2006, The Economist print edition
Does that sound
neutral?
What about Yahoo!
and Google?
Don’t they give
their own products (or affiliate company’s products) preferential
treatment? Has anyone but Firefox ever
had an ad on the Google homepage?
Try to combine
services from both Google and Yahoo! according to your preferences. You’ll immediately start to run into difficulties. Why? It’s because
each company takes steps to integrate and promote its own affiliates. Yahoo doesn’t want you to use Google’s
calendar or Blogger and Google doesn’t want you to use Flickr.
As a small
business, I certainly want to insure that I continue to have access to services
that I need, network effectively with business partners, and market my business
through an ever improving and accessible internet at a cost I can afford. I also understand that every one of these
companies is a for-profit enterprise. So
am I!
But (as naïve as
it may sound), I don’t like to do business with hypocrites!
Net Neutrality is
covered in detail in several articles and blogs:
NET
LOSSES, by James Surowiecki, The New
Yorker, Issue of 2006-03-20
Liz Strauss, on Successful Blog, has an excellent Net Neutrality page
with just about every link you could find useful.
Technorati tags: Business, Net Neutrality
The issue is more akin to old-time Vegas and the mob, with the telcos playing the role of.. well, not Vegas.
What they’re saying to content providers – like, say, bloggers – is in essence “Nice web site you’ve got there, be a shame if anything happened to it…”
I found this link for Liz that lays out the case for why letting the telcos mess with the core infrastructure design of the ‘net is an extremely bad idea.
Pay special attention to point number 4, because that’s exactly what the telcos want to do.
‘Course, the telcos also don’t want you, the public, to think about the fact that the internet was created and funded through public money from the get-go, including a $200-billion dollar tax break in ’96 for infrastructure they were supposed to build with the money. Infrastructure that has yet to be built.
Funny that – the end user pays to connect, so do the content providers, over lines that have already been paid for by the public. Now the telcos want to be paid a fourth time for the same thing – nice work if you can get it, eh?
Back in 1994 when we were introduced – as a society – it was labeled as the last free frontier. It was unregulated by government and it was regulated by the human creative mind. Why have we become so repressive to what is on the Web. Everyone should have access, but being a true capitalist, if I want something better, I want to be able to pay for that. Granted I should not be forced to by some corporate crud because he was the big dog who made for me to get there, but I should be able to designate where I want to be on the information highway.