With a clever twist Eric Scmidt, Google CEO, has managed to turn the meaning of net neutrality on it’s head so that Google can both gain an advantage for it’s services while still managing to claim that Google supports net neutrality. Here’s how it works.
Net neutrality means that ISPs don’t discriminate between packets of data by giving an advantage to some over others so that for example data coming from Apple’s web site doesn’t get priority over your email packets just because Apple might be willing to pay an extra fee for preferential treatment.
What Google’s Eric Schmidt is proposing is that within any one category of data, say video, that it’s ok for a company, say Google, to pay a fee to an ISP, say Verizon, to get preferential treatment compared over another video streaming site, such as Vimeo or TED as long as video itself doesn’t get preferential treatment. In this scenario videos from Google will stream faster and more reliably then those of it’s competition when passing through that ISP. And the fact the ISP in question also happens to be the biggest marketer of Android phones is not coincidental. Cash may change hands or there may be some other quid pro quo that gives both of these companies a financial advantage at a cost to Google’s competitors.
So the net effect (double entendre intended) will be the same. Companies which can afford an extra fee will get preferential treatment. This will give a competitive advantage to wealthy and more established firms and penalise startups and small companies and competitors. That seems to be fine with Google which of course is neither a startup or small and has many important competitors in the video field ranging from HULU to NetFlix etc.. It also sends us all down the slippery slope of preferential data pricing for those that can afford to pay more.
This goes totally against the Internet as a level playing field and makes Google’s “do no harm” mantra into a glib PR quip with no meaning.
