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Google and Verizon In Talks To Prioritize Traffic (Updated)
Nrbelex writes "Google and Verizon are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content's creators are willing to pay for the privilege. Any agreement between Verizon and Google could also upend the efforts of the Federal Communications Commission to assert its authority over broadband service, which was severely restricted by a federal appeals court decision in April. People close to the negotiations who were not authorized to speak publicly about them said an agreement could be reached as soon as next week. If completed, Google, whose Android operating system powers many Verizon wireless phones, would agree not to challenge Verizon's ability to manage its broadband Internet network as it pleased."
Update: 08/05 20:03 GMT by T :
nr3a1 writes with this informative update excerpted from Engadget: "Google's Public Policy Twitter account just belted out a denial of these claims, straight-up saying that the New York Times 'is wrong.' Here's the full tweet, which certainly makes us feel a bit more at ease. For now. '@NYTimes is wrong. We've not had any convos with VZN about paying for carriage of our traffic. We remain committed to an open internet.' Verizon's now also issued a statement and, like Google, it's denying the claims in the original New York Times report."
What ever happened to Do No Evil
You aren't speeding some traffic up, you're slowing the rest down.
Backstabbing sons of ...
Isn't this basically along the same lines as the net neutrality debate? Funny, seeing how Google is a proponant...
Their motto has been thrown down the drain with the recent press releases, media coverage, and acquisitions. It's almost as if they're no longer the original company with their great philosophies.
:/
1. Investment in Zynga, a company who's CEO admitted to using forms of fraud to ensure the success of his company.
2. Acquisition of Slide, another company whose success is mostly based upon their acknowledged violation of MySpace's Terms of Service.
3. Discontinuation of Google Wave, a product which despite relatively low adoption levels, is very powerful and useful for many users. It's basically as awesome as GMail, but for a more niche market.
4. Now, (even though talks began 10 months ago) an agreement which undermines Net Neutrality... not by lobbying against it, not by crossing their arms regarding the issue, but by planning to make an agreement between another private company, as if the Internet were owned by them (Google)?
I'm dumbfounded. Simply dumbfounded.
I've sincerely been a Google supporter since a little kid, and loved their products, services, and philosophies... and for most of this time, I ignored most critics, since Google actually kept doing good for the most part. Now, all of that has changed. I'm very disappointed in Google.
you're a very bad Google and I'm gonna wish you into the corn field !
... then I drop Google. Period. End of story.
Looks like all us 'little' sites are getting booted off the internet soon.
Oh well. It was a good run, right guys?
To much anime is bad for the brain...desu.
Sorry. Couldn't help it.
The tone of the article suggests that the FCC's ability to maintain Net Neutrality is on life support. It appears as though Google have seen the writing on the wall and are trying to "stake ground" under what they probably see as a new business landscape.
Don't buy from Vendors which do this, and yes Google does have a choice though they may have to tumble into the mobile phone business.
According to this Bloomberg story, the New York Times is only accurate in that Google and Verizon negotiated net neutrality on everything but mobile networks, and hence Verizon will be allowed to do traffic discrimination on those lines.
But I find it a little odd to write up that story as "Google and Verizon negotiating an end to net neutrality" rather than as "Google and Verizon negotiating to preserve net neutrality on most internet connections."
so much for don't be evil...
...but seeing as you seem hell bent into walling off your part of the internet into compartmentalized corporate domains, we might not hear much from you in the future. Good luck with that.
The internet-subscriber is already paying for his/her content delivery. And web-site owners are paying as well for the upload of data. We are already paying twice. And now this...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I somehow get the feeling we are missing something here." agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content's creators are willing to pay for the privilege. " Suppose I have a 768kbps connection. Maybe what google is trying to do is allow things like youtube to stream at 3Mbps, *at no extra cost to customers* but youtube will absorb the costs. I think this could very well be the case.
Having 25mb/25mb Fiber on Fios, is great, until you go to Youtube.
Youtube has become so slow, most videos only partially load after 10 minutes, if they load at all. If you refresh a few times, you might get lucky and actually get an SD video to stream...
Youtube sucks.
You know why? Because their advertisements stream just fine! They're fast as lightning... but when they finish, and the video that you wanted to watch, should start streaming away.... It fucking dies like a grandma climbing a mountain.
Youtube fucking sucks.
This experience has been confirmed by several Fios users, and others around the web.
The days of going to Youtube, and having a video play... are fucking over.
Metacafe streams just fine... Vimeo... no problemo...
Youtube... is a fucking crap shoot... but their advertisements are lightning fast!!!!! OH BOY.
My @ss.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Eveyone keeps quoting the "do not evil" mantra, but we have something a lot more solid on Google's own site:
Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody - no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional - has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can't pay.
Creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight. Please call your representative (202-224-3121) and let your voice be heard.
Thanks for your time, your concern and your support.
Eric Schmidt
Source: http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality_letter.html
I'm not taking sides, and the details have not been announced, but it better not go 180 on the statement above.
By the way, the official press releases from the companies are set to be out on bad-news-Friday. Not a good sign...
... when the first lawsuit against an isp/cell provider will hinge on the fact that by filtering packets to control their speed, they're NOT acting as common carriers. Thus, they're willfully letting through whatever the hell people wanted to sue over.
Dear Google,
I am writing to you today with regard to what many people have been referring to by the name of "network neutrality". As a regular user of your web search and video streaming sites, I notice that there is a large amount of bandwidth being consumed delivering content from yourselves. And that, despite the majority of my internet bandwidth being consumend by content delivery from Google services, Google do not contribute to the costs of my internet connection.
Clearly this financial imbalance, whereby I fund Googles use of my home network, cannot continue. Therefore I think it would be in the best interests of both parties if we could reach a financial arrangement that would enable me to keep streaming Downfall parodies from YouTube.
I look forward to your response.
Regards,
Anonymous Coward
No surprise, really, but a shame.
Thanks to great content:)
IMHO, not only has Verizon become an evil glutton when it's come to data plans in combination with certain (all) phones which are marketed almost as bad as laptops and PCs are now-a-days (e.g. "Multimedia", "Great for checking e-mail and updating your twit-face account"), but THEN want to add tiered broadband access constraints at the user for something they *always* got, and now start referring to some access as *premium*? This shit is out of control.
This is what we were warning the FCC about if we didn't pass/enforce/etc 'net neutrality'. This path will end up putting content companies that cant pony up to the mafia.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If Google was that brazen in attempting to give major ISPs marching orders, you would see all of the major players throttle their bandwidth and prioritize Yahoo and Bing just to make it clear that Google can't control them.
Aren't "agreements" awesome?
It's the Boiling Lobster principle. You carefully word the first announcement as a "compromise", then later when it's OldHat, you "modifiy certain ancillary factors". (Nice juicy words sure to bore the public.)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The cancellation of Wave is actually a good point. It says that there's pressure on Google to tighten their belt.
Maybe I am incorrect in my presumption, but doesn't the government own the air waves that would be used in the mobile broadband area of limiting access. To me this seems like the FCC would be able to say no you are miss using the air waves that we gave you access to, and take them away. I could be completely wrong, and if so please yell at me with gusto.
... before "pay us to have your premium content accessible faster" changes to "pay us or we block you outright from our customers"
Where's the blame targeted at Verizon? Last I checked, they were the ones pushing the profits-over-neutrality angle.
If you don't like their business practices, don't do business with them. Simple as that. Businesses think in terms of dollars; it's the only way to send a clear message.
... at least according to people I know who work there.
I think you mean "Boiling Frog"...
It is not often that men of the same trade meet, even for merriment and diversion, but when they do, the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public.
What google should do is to pay the ISPs to block all of Google's competitors.
Please various state AGs shoot this down as an anti trust measure.
What would happen if a toll road gave certain trucking companies a higher speed limit. Say 75mph for their friends and 20mph for everyone else?
Net neutrality is one of these black and white issues and I am usually a fan of compromise and shades of gray.
I'll meet you all in the street. I have the pitch forks...who's got the torches?
Hmm. I've been using Google Wave on a daily basis for the past 8 months. I didn't realize I didn't like it. That's for clueing me in!
But... Until everyone has nasty little deals to favor certain content, I'll do everything I can to NOT do business with such evil companies.
Ask me about my sig!
It only makes sense to slash dot the legislature and executive about your feelings on this issue. Then and only then will steps be taken to keep the internet like public highways and not privatized toll roads with different cost lanes. Or we will all end up on the frontage road. Can anyone remember Fido?
As a customer of say Verizon, I don't want them slowing anyone's traffic down... and I feel it's illegal to block traffic or even throttle it.
But I see no reason why a customer can't pay to prioritize their own traffic. Just don't steal any bandwidth away from the buffet...
It would help if there were good service level agreements between broadband providers and their customers so we can insure that prioritized content doesn't eat into the bandwidth used by the bit buffet (they all you can eat service that most of us broadband customers have).
http://www.hawknest.com/
If verizon drops the exclusive with bing i'm all for it.
If 10 major ISPs decide tomorrow to do a "little favor" to Bing (God forbid), this would immediately and effectively hurt Google - massively.
Aw hellllll no. They'd do a GIANT favor to Google in many ways. As one, there would be MILLIONS of extremely pissed off customers. Also, the issue of net neutrality would immediately become the most pressing global issue on record. It would make the Deepwater Horizon fucku^H^H disaster look like a note in the margin of history. Furthermore, there's a high likelihood that a great portion of those pissed off customers would be lawmakers and FCC chairmen.... see where this is going?
It'd be wonderful for the shit to hit the fan in such a way that ISP's would be forced into net neutrality by some means (millions of angry customers in that case), but I don't see it happening. The history of the internet, over time anyway, will become just that, and the corporations that literally own the internet as we know it will take a giant shit all over the RFC's that were designed in good faith for the usability of all in the name of increased profits.
....But that's the world we live in. Maybe we'll come to like it some day.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
If net-priority-purchases becomes the norm for web app access and the comcasts of the world 'downgrade' everyone else, what is a small startup to do? They can purchase lane space by piggybacking on expensive Google priority lanes, or they will be left to being slow and unresponsive in the consumer eye. My guess is P2P will become more relevant at this stage. People will download and install apps that will serve from decentralized nodes as the only way to get around the money hording behemoth ISPs. But, even this road will be hard to maintain without a real net neutrality law.
Google is doing the exact opposite of "ending net neutrality". NYT seriously screwed up this time.
For a moment, I thought all hope was lost but, thankfully, they're still not evil.
Verizon is crippling Youtube bandwidth on FIOS.
Verizon is guilty of extortion. They are holding the user hostage, and forcing google to pay up to protect their brand.
Meanwhile, the FIOS subscriber, such as myself, finally have an answer as to why Youtube hasnt fucking worked for a year now.
Verizon FIOS... has just lost its sainthood.
If you value youtube, and use it... Do not subscribe to Verizon FIOS.
Google has denied these claims:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2367436,00.asp
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180192/Google_denies_talks_with_Verizon_to_end_Net_neutrality_
"The New York Times is quite simply wrong," wrote Mistique Cano, a Google spokesman, in an e-mail. "We have not had any conversations with Verizon about paying for carriage of Google traffic. We remain as committed as we always have been to an open Internet."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/05/gogle-denies-verizon-deal-net-neutrality
A Google spokeswoman told the Guardian: "The New York Times is quite simply wrong. We have not had any conversations with Verizon about paying for carriage of Google traffic. We remain as committed as we always have been to an open internet.
Verizon has also moved to dismiss the story. A company statement reads: "The NYT article regarding conversations between Google and Verizon is mistaken. It fundamentally misunderstands our purpose. As we said in our earlier FCC filing, our goal is an internet policy framework that ensures openness and accountability, and incorporates specific FCC authority, while maintaining investment and innovation. To suggest this is a business arrangement between our companies is entirely incorrect."
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Google have issued a response: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=188249
Upsetting how quickly everyone is willing to jump on the "Google is evil" bandwagon and slander their name.
it's under construction
From Google's twitter: "@NYTimes is wrong. We've not had any convos with VZN about paying for carriage of our traffic. We remain committed to an open internet."
If I buy a Verizon phone, everything except Google (and a few other wealthy content providers) is slower. If I buy an AT&T phone, its all a delivered at 'best effort' speeds. I wonder which phone I should buy?
Google is shooting themselves in the foot here. Their success as a search engine hinges on my ability to find some other web site using their service. If they buy their way to the top of the heap, so to speak, they are screwing over the content providers upon which they rely. Sure, the search loads faster. But my overall time spent staring at the screen is the same, since they slowed down the site I was interested in.
If this is due to coercion on Verizon's part, I'd be in favor of granting Google execs immunity for their testimony before Congress or to the Justice epartment.
Have gnu, will travel.
Maybe Google is forcing the issue here. They saw a horrible ruling go down, and basically nothing happened... so to force the issue, they "cut a deal" with Verizon. Now, the government needs to think about it's positions on the FCC and NN, and get people to wake up. Hopefully we see a couple other companies following Google's lead to speed things along...
"People get confused about Net neutrality," Schmidt said. "I want to make sure that everybody understands what we mean about it. What we mean is that if you have one data type, like video, you don't discriminate against one person's video in favor of another. It's OK to discriminate across different types...There is general agreement with Verizon and Google on this issue. The issues of wireless versus wireline get very messy...and that's really an FCC issue not a Google issue."
Basically, it's important for VOIP to have a certain quality of service for clear voice calls, but different QOS rules may make sense for other data types. For example, downloading raw data files can be bursty. Precaching future web pages or Javascripts doesn't have to always succeed. But, "you don't discriminate against one person's [data] in favor of another".
No, the entire point of the internet, which seems to have been lost when it's convenient to forget it, is that it's the edges which decide on what to do with content. The protocols can already say 'these packets are bulk' or 'these packets are low latency', but all the fluffy stuff in the middle (routers) should not be deciding what to do with packets based on their CONTENT. Its job is to be completely agnostic about anything flowing through them other than these simple hints and perhaps some stateful but non-discriminatory behavior to help with flow. Any kind of decision of the likes of "this is video" or "this is a web page" is just doing it wrong, and this isn't a slippery slope argument: it's turned into filtering, poorly setup transparent proxies, censorship and content-based throttling in so many examples that you have to be a completely newbie (or someone who benefits) to think it won't happen.
Eric, once again, seems to be telling us our definitions are wrong, and twisting the argument when it's convenient. No, his is wrong. You shouldn't be discriminating one type of CONTENT vs another, even if it's as "non-discriminatory" as video vs audio vs web. The only way to do that is by inspection of some sort, even if it's port number. Hell, I guess we'll just make all traffic look like it's going over a video transport to cheat the system, then? You see how easy that is to get fucked up?
I can put up with CEOs making dreadful mistakes which serve against the public interest every now and then, and honestly there's plenty of other reasons I quit, but I'm dismayed to see that Eric seems to be doing this so consistently.
Bye Google!
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Verizon is crippling Youtube bandwidth on FIOS.
Verizon is guilty of extortion. They are holding the user hostage, and forcing google to pay up to protect their brand.
Meanwhile, the FIOS subscriber, such as myself, finally have an answer as to why Youtube hasnt fucking worked for a year now.
Verizon FIOS... has just lost its sainthood.
If you value youtube, and use it... Do not subscribe to Verizon FIOS.
Is this true? Can somebody verify this?
I am currently a FiOS subscriber, and I too have had significant bandwidth and buffer issues, particularly in HD, even at the mere 720p level. The 1080p level is outright unusable. Which never made any sense to me, given the bandwidth numbers that I'm allegedly paying for.
I'll be canceling my FiOS subscription immediately if this is true.
Verizon just sold most of it's land lines to Frontier on July 1st; if they want to negotiate, they should be talking to Frontier, not Verizon. Verizon is trying to get out of the Internet business and become a pure wireless company; apparently they have decided they can't make any money supporting land lines, even if they are FiOS.
Ah yes, more responsible journalism from the NYT. Why anyone reads that rag anymore is beyond me.
This is evil and greedy? Since the road construction fairy is not likely to build and maintain roads for you, the state of Maryland is probably going to have to do it. Given that, the choices are: 1) pay for the roads using tolls, 2) pay for the roads using gas taxes, or 3) just take the money out of the general fund. I'm 100% in favor of a combination of 1) and 2) - since that way the people who use the roads are paying for it.
And the analogy to the internet is not that great - the "roadways" of the internet were built using government funds, subsidies, and in-kind assets like rights of way. Maintenance funds are coming from consumer ISP payments. The attempts of various ISPs to extract even more money from content providers really is evil, greedy rent-seeking, and I hope that Congress and/or the FCC put a stop to it.
We've not had any convos with VZN about paying for carriage of our traffic.
How many packets can a buggy carry? horsedrawn or motor carriage? Will thieves and rapscallions be cause for concern of packet loss?
No, it caused billions of dollars in damage to the fishing and tourism industries all throughout the Gulf states, putting thousands of people out of work. The response of one Texas rep: apologizing to BP for how mean the administration had been to them.
If that didn't get people marching on BP corporate offices, having "problems with the internet" (again) is surely not going to get them marching on Verizon's office.
Great tie in to the Civ V preview above!
The Verizons and AT&Ts of the world conflate the two aspects of neutrality you're talking about. They claim they're concerned about being able to provide appropriate QoS for VOIP applications, but then try to get the rules written so they can discriminate by content provider. Good for Google for making this distinction clear.
Quite frankly, I would leave any carrier that "speeds up" some special content. Why? Because do the math, how can they make it go faster? By raising the speed of light? Maybe they will bury a few thousand miles of fibre, just for Google? Come on! The only way they can make people who paid for the priviledge faster is by slowing everything else down.
They can do that directly (e.g. slow it down unless it is paid for) or indirectly (e.g. by using QOS and other routing tricks), but what happens is that they don't provide the best possible service anymore, unless someone pays extra for it.
Thank you, but no. I'd change to a carrier that provides the best possible service because as a subscriber I am already paying for that. So, Verizon and to all you other marketing monkeys at other carriers thinking about a stunt like that: How about I don't pay you my subscription fee as quickly as I used to, unless of course you book the special "speedy delivery" service? I'm sure my bank would love a piece of the action as well.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
New York Times is wrong. What's new? They lost their credibility a long time ago.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I have no idea why people hold to this meme that big corporations can afford things the smaller ones cannot.
That old joke about the salesman that says "I lose a few dollars in every item I sell but make up for it in quantity" is just a joke.
Big corporations need to hold down costs as much or probably even more than smaller companies. If they don't turn a profit their losses accumulate much quicker.
No, I suspect "Boiling Lobster" refers to the idea that it is real tasty unless you hear it scream when you drop it in the pot.
As long as we're not hearing any screaming, we're just going to love the new arrangement.
he is extremely powerful. and it is absolutely normal, and healthy in fact, to distrust such power and its potential misuse
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Motorola's next SuperDroid will be available in November.
Verizon has been quietly but massively ramping up retail sales positions in time for Christmas.
GoogleTV is slated for a November release.
I don't think the initial market for GoogleTV is going to be cable-over-broadband, if it ever was.
My prediction (if I'm not wrong about the hoax) is that Google will announce the initial offering of GoogleTv as a mobile service over the Verizon network on android powered devices. GoogleTV ® is still slated for a November release, and while it was initially (pre- the April court finding for Comcast) touted as a replacement for residential cable over broadband, I think that a deal with Verizon would show the actual target market (at least at first) is mobile devices, using the android framework. There is no established 'cable' in the mobile arena, the closest would be Apples' offerings and smaller one-offs like zulu -but they are no Comcast or Dish/DirectTV in terms of always-on, multichannel, live, scheduled, 'network' programming. Google would own the Verizon segment of the market, and I'm guessing there's a whole stack of patents to protect the T-mobile and AT&T segments for a while (as would lead time to market).
Having a deal closed ahead of time for guaranteed bandwidth would be crucial for the project to succeed, & after the April FCC-Comcast ruling they need to be first in line with at least one mobile carrier.
As /. doesn't broadcast news originated in The Onion, I reckon we should see the same for the case of NYTimes.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Basically, Verizon and Google are working on - even if they deny it publicly - a deal whereby they can charge people "user fees" to get their Google search faster, over the common Internet.
The only way to do that is to "shape" traffic - which is corporate "code" for SLOWING down all traffic for people who don't pay MORE MONEY to use the Internet.
Be afraid.
Be very afraid. ... no ...
More afraid than that.
This is very Unplus Good.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This, considered in light of the immediate flat denials from both companies and many of the NYT's columnists known predilection for allowing their ideological/political leanings to influence the truthfulness and/or accuracy of their stories & articles, leads me to suspect this is an attempt to put forth misinformation aimed at scaring/angering people and legislators with the aim to push them toward accepting FCC regulation of the internet.
I may be wrong here, but history has taught me not to take such things from the NYT at face value without more factual corroboration.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
There could very well be discussions regarding other forms of compensation--refusal to rock the boat when Verizon does bad stuff to others, for instance.
...is when is the media going to be held accountable for their blatant and purposeful (or not) reporting mistakes? In my job, if I made a mistake like that, my superiors wouldn't hesitate to terminate....
maybe the NYT is really part of the story here.
/. has turned into a broadsheet, rather than a specialist site. What's the point to it?
Seems to me like FUD, probably from some corp trying to justify the abolition of net neutrality
This is capitalism at its finest in action. If something like this is implemented, maybe fanboios, p2p filesharers, and the rest of us can simply spend a few months paying for only the lowest priced service available and we will see capitalism at its finest in action again as the tiered system is rolled back.
The problem is that like with television, too many people are addicted to it, so the populace will end up accepting tiered Internet as they did television.
If nobody paid for it, tiered programming on cable would not exist. Same for the Internet.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Honestly, there's just too many comments about "jumping down Google's throat" and "NYTimes is disreputable" for my personal taste. People do need to harass Google because they are essentially the public doorway to the internet for 90% of all users. As esteemed techs and monitors of all things internet we have a responsibility to be aggravated about:
Invasion of Privacy
Net neutrality disruption
Overtly capitalist policies
Most people don't think of the internet as anything except where you search for your friends and funny videos. Without some vigilant bastards watching what everyone else does to the ignorant, we'll all lose both our rights and our gateways. There is no reason to trust The Great Google anymore than you would trust The Great Gatsby. It all looks pretty as a peach on paper but no one knows what's inside a man, or a beast, until it's undone.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
We can always create Internet2 if they destroy the Internet
Dallas is precisely as the original poster describes it. Various other major cities are following their lead.
The scam goes like this. The private company goes to the various governments and proposes setting up tolls on existing roads, or extending tolls on roads already paid for, and kicking back a small percentage to the State.
The State sees it as free money, and suddenly Joe Sixpack needs a tolltag/transponder to get to work in the morning...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Encrypt your Mesh networks now!
they got caught at it.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I know some of the snobs in the UE find this hard to believe
What's with the hate, mmm? So, some guy was teaching you about some possibly better industry practices that seem to make dealing with phone companies a bit more pleasurable in the place where he comes from. Sounds interesting to me.
Are you angry someone else besides an American got the talking stick for once? Too bad. Time for you to take the blinders off, bubba. There's no monopoly on ideas. We don't have all the good ones. Sometimes, we get it wrong.
That's actually what makes us largely the same as them. We're both pretty smart and neither of us gets it right all the time.
By the by, if I could bend your ear a wee bit more, I'd impart that I think it's safe to say that any European hanging out at Slashdot is more than well aware the United States is its own nation. In fact, I'd go so far as to impart to you that, around this here playground they're rather painfully aware of our self-ascribed special status.
But I got you covered, homie. You won't be hatin' on our EU compadres over yonder, once you hop on a plane to go check the place out for yourself for several months (lumped or portioned -- it's all good, brother) to more observantly note their general demeanor. Give it a try.
You won't find yourself spewing that silly horseshit any more. I promise.
Who are you going to believe, the New York Times or some unsigned comment on Twitter?
To apply spin to this, awfully quick they are, yes!
Protest too much, they do, hmm?
Powerful, with the dark side of the force, this is.
Now, matters are worse.
You had me worried for a bit there, Google!
To much anime is bad for the brain...desu.
Sorry. Couldn't help it.
So Google supposedly (via Twitter) issue a denial.
I remember a very recent denial Google issued -
"No, we're not collecting WiFi data with Street View"
"Wait, I mean, we're not storing the WiFi data we collect"
"Erm, OK, but we can't do anything useful with it..."
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
On Thursday, the FCC dropped plans to build a framework for Net Neutrality
"The FCC had been engaged in closed-door meetings with companies such as Google Inc., Skype, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. to work out a compromise. But on Wednesday, rumors surfaced that Google and Verizon were close to hammering out their own separate deal on how to manage Web content.
The FCC warned against such a deal Thursday.
"Any outcome, any deal that doesn't preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet for consumers and entrepreneurs will be unacceptable," Chairman Julius Genachowski said at a news conference after an FCC meeting Thursday.
Google and Verizon have denied the rumors."
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fcc-broadband-20100806,0,298861.story
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
you hater bitches.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We're officially fresh out of credible news sources (excluding Slashdot of course).
You have to be smarter than the machine you're working with.
The whole "paid vs neutral" network access is more suitable for politicians and lawyers than to true networking folks. We (networking folks) know anyway that most (if not all) networks have at least 2 traffic classes and some have as much as 8! This is normal and ensures the reliable operation of the networks in normal conditions. Most of the people on the planet, (including lawyers, politicians and businessmen) do not know about this fact, I think. Because if they did - why would they argue about network neutrality? Many websites deliver enhanced user experiences for the paid subscriptions today. But without the network, this paid services might not be delivered as advertised. Oh well, even in RL, you can pay extra and travel in First Class/ Business Class if not prepared to suffer from the Economy. So, what is wrong with prioritization of the premium content for the fee while making sure that it is delivered as advertised to those who paid for it? What would be wrong with having rotten spamers and denial of service attack operators squeezed from the net by pure economics alone? What would be wrong with having the 'normal' internet subscriptions equaled to the flights in 'economy' in terms of user experience? Nobody is planning to take over the world secretly, we (networking folks) just want to make the internet a better place, kind of a nice neighborhood instead of what it is now, which resembles 'wild wild west of 18th century'. IMHO - someone is benefiting from inflating these debates and filling the lawyers pockets with a lot of money in the process, none of which go to improve the user experience on the net, BTW. FYI - I am not employed by Google and not planning to work for them in any capacity any time soon, so my opinion is 'network neutral' :-)