Google’s long-time standing as outspoken vanguards of an ‘open’ Internet is now being called into question, after details have surfaced regarding its shady forthcoming partnership with Verizon.
Under the proposed partnership, the search giant could pay Verizon a fee for the privilege of getting their content to users faster than content originating from competing providers. This is the very scenario warned about for years by proponents of Net Neutrality, which is the idea that network providers should treat all data that flows on their networks equally.
The two companies are close to announcing the details of their partnership, which may include a provision that Google pay Verizon for top-tier user access over their network. Experts claim such an arrangement could essentially rewrite the industry template for how future partnerships between content and service providers are handled. The two companies have previously partnered on Google’s line of Android phones.
Currently, there are no laws prohibiting telecom companies like Verizon from slowing down – or even eliminating completely – user access to certain Web content. Without legal binding that prohibits network providers from choosing or discriminating against what data flows over their networks, Net Neutrality supporters claim telecom companies like Verizon are essentially offered the roles of Internet “gatekeepers,” favoring content which they have political or monetary affiliation, or slowing and even blocking user access to Web sites which they don’t. The result makes deep-pocket providers like Google the lone wolf in manufacturing the Web’s conversation, while the rest sit in cyberspace’s equivalent of a slow lane.
Google previously had been a long-time advocate of Net Neutrality legislation, going as far as to join causes like “Save the Internet,” a pro-Neutrality coalition launched by the Free Press that petitioned federal regulators to ensure telecoms enforce equal treatment policies. A series of legislative attempts to introduce Net Neutrality into law have appeared in the House as far back as 2006, though each has failed.
News of the Google / Verizon partnership comes amid a series of closed-door negotiations that have occurred between the Federal Communications Commission and several of the largest Web content and network service providers. In April, a federal appeals court ruled the Federal Communications Commission does not currently have the authority to regulate Internet communications to the same degree that it regulates service like telephone, radio and television. A Bush-administration-era restructuring of the commission had reclassified Internet services as different than telephone. As such, of the FCC cannot legally intervene in the partnership.
However, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a long-time supporter of Net Neutrality legislation, was quoted Friday by the New York Post as calling any such proposed plan “unacceptable.”
