Google to World: Let’s Do Evil (but pretend we’re not)
A colleague asked if I had been following the most recent volley in the net neutrality issue involving that schizophrenic good/evil corporation Google and their partner Verizon. Other than a few articles and an interesting episode of Democracy Now, I have been too busy with other projects to really delve into it. But this morning I took some time to read up on the issue, including a Google Blog entry describing their joint proposal with Verizon. In the entry, the “compromise” between Google and Verizon, and the resulting policy paper, is discussed and summarized. It is quite interesting, in the sense that it is a prime example of public-relations double-speak (where I think they are trying to carefully camouflage their intentions and make it seem that they support the principle of net neutrality while actually going against it or around it).
In the blog post, they summarize their joint policy proposal with seven key points, which I will ‘translate’ from the obfuscating language of the corporate-lawyer-public-relations-guru to the language of an ordinary netizen (again, you can access the original here):
1. Google-Verizon state they believe in net neutrality. Well, not exactly. What they specifically state is that they “have long been proponents of the FCC’s current wireline broadband openness principles.” Sort of wishy-washy. The phrase, “have long been proponents,” is not a strong statement and leaves the future tense wide open. Plus, they are not ‘for’ the principle of net neutrality but the Federal Communications Commission‘s “current wireline broadband openness principles.” Keep the term “wireline broadband” in mind as this is a crucial point. (They also reference a past court ruling in the U.S. which decided that technically/legislatively, the FCC does not have the power to enforce net neutrality principles. The suit was brought by the cable giant Comcast (another less than savory media player) against the FCC.)
2. They (Google-Verizon) reiterate that “wireline broadband” should abide by net neutrality principles.
3. They (Google-Verizon) believe that broadband providers, both ‘wireline’ and ‘wireless,’ should act in a transparent manner toward customers, application- and content-providers so that they know how various services are structured. This is a slippery paragraph where Google-Verizon put forth language with positive connotations (“transparency”) but also introduce the conceptual division they are making between ‘wireline’ and ‘wireless’ services.
4. Raising the FCC-Comcast court case again, and the fact that under U.S. law, Congress has not specifically given the FCC jurisdiction over net neutrality, they (Google-Verizon) put forth their own policy framework where the FCC is given such powers and where enforcement takes place on a “case-by-case” basis and in a “complaint-driven process.” Which means that the FCC could only react to complaints about abuses to net neutrality by being informed by third-parties. Under such a process, the FCC would not have paid, trained investigators who actively look out for such abuses but would rely on third-party individuals to bring complaints to the commission. (Would your average user or small business have the necessary knowledge, information and expertise to make such complaints?)
5. Here we find Google-Verizon offering some more glittering generalities such as “innovation” (who can argue with that?) and “safeguards” (those are always good). They (Google-Verizon) state that they “want the broadband infrastructure to be a platform for innovation.” OK, that sounds good. But then they go on: “Therefore our proposal would allow broadband providers to offer additional, differentiated online services….” OK, so here innovation is defined as allowing corporations to offer “differentiated online services.” What these are they don’t quite say (“It is too soon to predict how these new services will develop….”) but in doing so they have just semantically “differentiated” between ‘old’ kinds of broadband and new services that will be somehow different.
6. This is the meat of the issue so it’s best to let Google-Verizon (or simply GooglErizon?*) to speak for themselves: “Sixth, we both recognize that wireless broadband is different from the traditional wireline world, in part because the mobile marketplace is more competitive and changing rapidly. In recognition of the still-nascent nature of the wireless broadband marketplace, under this proposal we would not now apply most of the wireline principles to wireless, except for the transparency requirement.” So, in English: GooglErizon thinks that wireless broadband is different from wired (or ‘wireline’… wow, that’s so ‘old’ sounding) because it is more competitive and, THEREFORE, GOOGLERIZON BELIEVES THAT NET NEUTRALITY PRINCIPLES DO NOT APPLY TO ‘NEW’ KINDS OF BROADBAND SERVICES THAT HAVE YET TO BE DEFINED AND WILL BE DEFINED BY GOOGLERIZON AND OTHER SIMILAR CORPORATE ENTITIES. They then go on to throw a bone to the GAO (U.S. Government Accountability Office… which if recent history is any indication, is a rather toothless organization when it comes to accountability) by giving them some sort of authority to study stuff.
7. Finally, they (GooglErizon) believe that broadband is in “the national interest” and that the FCC should continue using the Federal Universal Service Fund to fund broadband services into areas where there is currently no service.
So, there we have it. It is interesting how GooglErizon has come out in support of net neutrality principles by saying that those principles are fine as long as they are not applied to the ‘new’ services that they (GooglErizon) will offer in the future. The fact that they are not ‘wired’ is the only distinction, even though how one can distinguish between the multitude of wires, cables, radio, and satellite infrastructure–especially when a single piece of communication might travel along all of them in getting to its destination–is still an interesting question.
They (GooglErizon) seem to think that if there is a service (say, smartphones running Google’s Android operating system and carried by Verizon’s phone network) that lies on top of the existing internet or broadband infrastructure, then it should not be ruled by net neutrality regulations because this is not the ‘wireline‘ part of that collection of technologies that we collectively call the internet. I have been amused at how RIM, Nokia, Motorola, Apple, et all insist on calling their products by anything other than ‘computer’ (which is what they are) and instead use ‘smartphone’ or some other term. They do this because it makes it seem like what the user is using is not a small handheld, internet-enabled computer tied to proprietary services, but little magical Star Trek Tricorders that are somehow separate from all that other communications infrastructure. Now I see this at work in the GooglErizon policy proposal. We’ll all just pretend that these ‘new services’ don’t access the wireline Internet and all the public and private technological infrastructure that supports it. As long as their is some proprietary ‘smart’ device acting as an intermediary between ‘the line’ and the user, then net neutrality (and other regulations) will not apply.
But perhaps that is GooglErizon for you… they can do evil and slowly take over the world (as long as no one can really see that they are doing so).
*GooglErizon (Goo’ gler i zon): One of many corporate entities that are vying for control over communications and the public sphere.
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