In EU, Google Accused of YouTube "Free Ride"

An anonymous reader passes along a Financial Times piece that covers a push by EU telecoms to get Google to pay them directly — years after US ISPs began rattling that sword, to little effect thus far. "Some of Europe's leading telecoms groups are squaring up for a fight with Google over what they claim is the free ride enjoyed by the technology company's YouTube video-sharing service. Telefónica, France Telecom, and Deutsche Telekom all said Google should start paying them for carrying bandwidth-hungry content such as YouTube video over their networks.... Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to 'dumb pipes' because the internet search and advertising company pays the network operators little or nothing for carrying its content. Rick Whitt, a senior policy director at Google in Washington ... said Google was spending large amounts on its own data networks to carry its traffic to the point where it is handed over to telecoms companies round the world." Note that FT.com operates on a "first few per month free" paywall basis.

Comments

dumb pipe

[slart42]

Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to 'dumb pipes'

And I 'dumb pipe' is all I ever expected from my ISP, and it is what I'm paying for! If they want Google to pay for delivering the content, I will get access for free, right? Bullshit.

Why don't telecoms pay google?

[astrashe]

If we're not going to buy into net neutrality, why does it follow that google should pay the telecoms? Why shouldn't they pay google for enhancing their service?

If google stopped serving pages to people connecting through specific ISPs, those ISPs would go under. Who here wouldn't change their provider if they couldn't get google? You wouldn't really be on the net without google.

Accounting

[TapeCutter]

"This starts to look like a circular dependency. We might as well not charge anybody and thereby save money on accounting."

Remminds me of the story about the rich man and the poor village....A rich man walks into a hotel in a poor village where all the bussinesses are in debt. He gives the hotelier $100 for a room on the condition that if he doesn't like it he will take the money back and leave. The hotelier gives him the keys, confident the rich man will like the room he takes the $100 and pays the grocer for the food he bought on credit. The grocer takes the $100 and pays back the farmer the money he owes him, the farmer uses it to pay back the blacksmith who then goes to the hotel to pay off his debt to the hooker who in turn gives it to the hotelier for past rent. The rich man comes back dissatisfied with the room, takes the $100 and leaves the village. Nothing has changed but the village is now debt free.

Re:Interesting

[Sockatume]

You're using "The EU" to refer to both the EU's competition regulators, and EU-based businesses. The former have nothing to do with the current action, and the latter are behaving as they would be expected to in an unregulated free market: petulantly and with no regard for their customers.