Is Google Poised to Abandon Principles, Strike Deadly Blow Against the Next Google?

Google. Please. Don't. Do. This.

In a piece that is being disputed by Google, the New York Times broke the news last night that Google and Verizon are poised to announce a deal and a proposal that would effectively allow service providers such a Verizon to create online pay tiers, in which certain content providers who were willing to pay more would receive prioritization and faster speeds.

Since a court decision in April that said that the Federal Communications Commission did not have the authority to determine whether broadband providers could speed up or slow down different types of content for different types of users, consumer advocates have been scrambling to figure out ways to preserve the open, free internet, while telecom lobbyists have been pushing aggressively to undermine net neutrality and create pay tiers that allow content providers who pay more to have an easier time getting their content in front of users.

What this would mean is that incubants in any space such as online video could pay to put any new competitors at a disadvantage in terms of the actual speed and convenience with which someone else could access their content. Practically speaking, it means that a company like Youtube would have a major advantage over any new company like Vimeo, not because their product or user experience was better, but simply because they had paid to be in the fast lane.

This is completely different than the entirely open infrastructure that has characterized the growth of the web thus far. The internet's disruptive power has largely been in the fact that the barriers to entry looked nothing like the old world of television media. On television, there were clear gatekeepers and no one could just produce a show and get it seen by millions of people. On the internet, anyone can create the next big thing because the gatekeepers have fallen by the way side and meritocracy rules. If you have the funniest show, the most interesting blog, eventually people discover it.

It's more than entertainment, however. The lack of global gatekeepers on the internet means that there is more space for opinions and perspectives outside of the mainstream to actually become part of the cultural conversation. Creating a tiered internet in which certain content providers could pay to move their content more quickly dramatically upsets that dynamic.

It also flies in the face of just about everything Google has ever said about Net Neutrality. While the company has previously been a leading voice to preserve an internet in which all players are equal, the logical reason they would have a shift in perspective would be the growing importance to Google's bottom line of its Android platform. For its massive size, Google has failed to diversify its revenue stream far away from search advertising, and as advertising changes ever more quickly, that foundation becomes less and less solid. Any interest in striking a deal with Verizon that makes the wireless provider happy could be driven in large part by their desire for preferential treatment from the company. To learn more about this, read: Google and Verizon Near Deal on Pay Tiers for Web Did Net Neutrality Just Get Knifed in The Back? Google, Doing No Evil, Close To Deal With Verizon That Would Kill Net Neutrality Forever Google-Verizon Deal: The End of The Internet as We Know It UPDATE: While writing this post, Google posted a tweet disputing the entire premise of the piece, saying that there was no deal with Verizon, that they remained committed to an open internet, and that the New York Times was flat out wrong. I desperately hope that's true. Regardless, this situation is a reminder of how fragile and perilous the ecosystem of equality and innovation on the internet really is. The great irony if Google does cut a deal is that they would have come full circle, from a scrappy startup that defied the worlds biggest players to make information more free all the way to the company that made the biggest move in the unravelling of the infrastructure that made that initial success possible. The future of the internet can't be left to just a few companies, no matter who they are. Let's hope that the New York Times is dead wrong about all this.

Photo credit: Mykl Roventine