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Net Neutrality Opponent Calls Google a "Bandwidth Hog"
Adrian Lopez writes "According to PC World, an analyst with ties to the telecom industry — in a baseless attack on the concept of Net Neutrality — has accused Google Inc. of being a bandwidth hog. Quoting: '"Internet connections could be more affordable for everyone, if Google paid its fair share of the Internet's cost," wrote Cleland in the report. "It is ironic that Google, the largest user of Internet capacity pays the least relatively to fund the Internet's cost; it is even more ironic that the company poised to profit more than any other from more broadband deployment, expects the American taxpayer to pick up its skyrocketing bandwidth tab."' Google responded on their public policy blog, citing 'significant methodological and factual errors that undermine his report's conclusions.' Ars Technica highlighted some of Cleland's faulty reasoning as well."
Seriously. If telcos want start to throttle Google, all Google has to do throw up a web page for the affected users with something like the following:
"Dear Google/YouTube user: Your ISP, ISP_NAME, doesn't believe that you should be able to access the web sites and services that you want to, such as Google or YouTube. If you don't feel that this is fair, please contact ISP_NAME at ISP_PHONE_NUMBER and let them know how you feel. You may also want to consider switching to another ISP, such as one of the following in your area: (insert auto-generated list of ISPs that don't throttle Google)"
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
The report makes a wild-ass-guess that Google pays $344M for its bandwidth, and that since (allegedly) 16.5% of a user's broadband bandwidth is for Google content, and consumers pay $44 billion for broadband in the US, Google is cheating "taxpayers" (WTF?) out of $6.9 billion.
Of course, the numbers are dubious to start with, comparing mixed fruit to oranges, and suggesting that a major Internet content provider (and consumer) should have to pay the same rates as residential broadband customers is flat out laughable (though perhaps a nice goal). If anything, all this report shows is that consumers are paying 21x more than Google is, suggesting those same ISPs are robbing them blind and (in this guy's case) stupid.
Prioritization based on "price paid" is moronic, and not seriously suggested, IMO. OTOH, prioritization is a perfectly legitimate tool for congestion management, which is at the core of the problem here. ISPs have historically oversubscribed based on the prevailing assumptions about customer utilization. Those assumptions no longer hold true, because sites like YouTube and applications like BitTorrent. ISPs can do one or both of increase infrastructure to match these new assumptions (at enormous cost), and/or implement some form of QoS to drop or delay one application's packet instead of another's, when congestion occurs (where a packet has to be dropped or delayed either way). You can still have a "fair price" being paid in either direction, and have a need for QoS (prioritization) to effectively manage congestion. This runs afoul of some definitions of "net neutrality", unfortunately, and is impractical to do anyway on an untrusted network (like the public Internet).
So ISPs are actually stuck between a rock and a hard place. You have to oversubscribe to be cost-effective (this is why business-grade 1Mbit data connections cost 10x more than consumer-grade; the former is not oversubscribed while the latter is). But since that ratio has to go down to match today's expectations (through no "fault" of the ISPs), ISPs have discovered that they have to invest in significant new infrastructure, and they're looking for creative ways to pay for that. Unfortunately, most telco ISPs aren't exactly creative, so this is what we get.
That man in the middle would still be selling dial-up if it weren't for the Google offerings that consumers want, specifically Youtube. There are others too such as Hulu and Veoh and even the major TV networks' sites that stream episodes on demand, plus all the Shoutcast streaming radio stations.
What this is really about is whether the ISPs still have common carrier status, and how that conflicts with their vertical service integration for services like TV and phone. These ISPs are charging for what is either free or for less money elsewhere.
The solution is very simple. The FCC grants the ability for these anti-net-neutrality ISPs to charge whatever they like for whatever content they choose to carry over their networks, in exchange for the return of every government subsidy and grant given over the last five decades, with interest, in addition to the rescission of their common carrier status. The government can then take that money and give it to companies that will act like common carriers and build net-neutral data infrastructure.
I work for Google, so I'm biased, but here's how I see it.
The Google search engine is supposed to be as useful as possible to users so that they will use it. Google adds some compromises to the usability of search (aka ads) so that the resources behind search are paid for along with a healthy profit.
That's the order of priorities as they have been repeatedly described to me.
Google search provides space where advertisers can pay for space that is simultaneously useful to users (something they're interested in investigating) and to advertisers (a selling opportunity). The first part (useful to users) is what Google is motivated to enforce, because then the ads also support the original statement: "The Google search engine is supposed to be as useful as possible to users so that they will use it."
I can't deny that Google uses usage data to improve the quality of search, but I'll assert that (1) everyone at Google is well aware of it's potential for "big brother" type scenarios and (2) everyone at Google is also aware that even a passing hint of misusing personal data would threaten the user trust on which Google's value is based. Google does better when people can trust Google, and I don't believe that an instance of data misuse would stay secret for more than a day. Far too many Googlers work there because they also trust Google's "don't be evil" policy. If Google was to breach user trust, employee trust would also be lost.
In conclusion: yes, Google system software is paying close attention to how you use Google. But no, it's not keeping a dossier on you. the goal of that software is most explicitly not to keep an eye on you, but to provide feedback so that the next time you use Google, it's even more useful to you.