The New Third Rail

Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal today wrote a much-discussed article theorizing that Google has changed their position on net neutrality and is now approaching cable and Internet providers to get their content a faster lane on the Internet. They also quote a bunch of technology leaders in the article who they claim are edging away from the principles of a free and open Internet.

Most of the stakeholders are calling the article a load of crap. Lawrence Lessig says he was misquoted and that the WSJ mistakes "delivery" for "access." There is a lot of confusion there. Right now consumers can pay more for a faster connection to the Internet. That's not the issue. The issue is if content providers are made to pay to serve their content quicker. That's what would set up a two-tiered Internet and ghetto-ize any company who would be unwilling or unable to pay. I generally believe everyone should have quality and affordable access, but delivery is clearly more important for a network-neutral Internet.

Google's Public Policy blog says that what it's doing is "edge caching," basically setting up their content physically closer to end users so that less bandwidth is needed to access them, optimizing the experience for the user. Frequently the same content has to be loaded and reloaded several times to get from the provider to the user. Reducing that duplication is beneficial to virtually everyone. Atrios rightly brings up the concern that these arrangements, if done exclusively with particular content providers, would have the effect of privileging one set of content over another, but Google claims that the arrangement is non-exclusive:

All of Google's colocation agreements with ISPs -- which we've done through projects called OpenEdge and Google Global Cache -- are non-exclusive, meaning any other entity could employ similar arrangements. Also, none of them require (or encourage) that Google traffic be treated with higher priority than other traffic. In contrast, if broadband providers were to leverage their unilateral control over consumers' connections and offer colocation or caching services in an anti-competitive fashion, that would threaten the open Internet and the innovation it enables.

Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday's Journal story, I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open.

The consensus seems to be that the WSJ story is bogus. David Isenberg, Tim Karr and Reuters are worth reading on this. Matt Stoller is still being somewhat cautious and trying to gather all the data. I think what's most notable is how everyone exploded at the very suggestion of whether or not the principle of net neutrality was being eroded. The differences on what regulation is needed among allies in the movement for a free and open Internet may indeed by real, but nobody wants to be on the side of restricting access or innovation. So that fear, the new third rail of American politics, if you will, is going to be something powerful to harness by advocates to make sure that the core principles are maintained.