Google’s recent move to forsake Net Neutrality—the premise that all content on the Web should be distributed even-handedly—threatens to have serious consequences for imaging and mobile retail websites, especially if other Internet titans follow suit.
Slower-loading websites and bidding wars for preferential treatment from Internet service providers (ISP) could all become a sobering, new reality for those in the imaging and mobile retail industry, as the Internet’s current democratization gives way to enhanced service for those with the deepest pockets.
”This is completely unfair and would hurt smaller content providers (like imaging and mobile retail sites) who didn’t have the resources to pay the fees,” says John M. Simpson, director, Inside Google Project, Consumer Watchdog (http://www.consumerwatchdog.com): “Content would be dominated by large mega corporations, much like cable television is today.”
Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, sees the threat similarly, explaining, “Verizon could say to Google: regardless of what you pay your own ISP to get your bits launched on the Internet, pay us more, and we’ll make sure your YouTube videos get to our subscribers all the more quickly as they come in for a landing.
“Google might well be able to pay,” Zittrain adds. “And then leave poorer content providers behind…” including the legions of imaging and mobile retail websites that play many leagues below Google in terms of working capital.
Not surprisingly, these first murmurings of Google’s abandonment of Net Neutrality already has some insiders talking mass protest. “Many of the giant global communication networks tend to facilitate reactionary political agendas,” says Julian Jackson (http://www.julianjackson.co.uk), a digital imaging/Internet marketing consultant. “This would be one of the reasons why many individuals and organizations all over the world will fight very strongly, and probably campaign together, to overturn any attempt to monopolize the communications channels.”
Google-Verizon Deal
Google has countered that its move to abandon Net Neutrality is a necessary “compromise” it needed to make with its ISP partner, Verizon, which has long loathed Net Neutrality and which also promotes the Google Android operating system on its Verizon phones.
Essentially, ISPs like Verizon have long complained that a concept like Net Neutrality makes it impossible for them to charge higher rates for people and companies that consume more bandwidth than others.
Someone’s grandmother for example, who sends just a few e-mails to her grandkids every week, shouldn’t have to pay the same rate as a movie fanatic next door, who is downloading bandwidth-hogging films to a hard drive the size of a treasure-chest.
Some Web designers, like Michael Hays, owner of TruckingWebDesign.com (http://www.truckingwebdesign.com), agree. “Google and Verizon are both for-profit companies, and have invested in research and development in order to have a competitive edge,” Hays says. “If this results in a tiered payment structure for how fast the information is being downloaded, at least the end user is left with a choice. If the FCC steps in to regulate wireless Internet speed, availability and offerings, there probably will be few choices if any, and, therefore, less competition, less business, less jobs.”
Adam Sternberg (http://www.shotbyadam.com), a photographer/Internet marketing consultant takes a pragmatic view: “I may not think it’s fair. I may not like it. But it’s going to be a reality,” Sternberg says. “The train’s leaving the station. If you want to play, you have to pay.”
But critics of the new Google/Verizon alliance say the companies’ joint proposal goes well beyond evening the score in terms of charging for bandwidth use. Instead, over time, the move will essentially transform a few, giant companies into landlords of the Internet.
“The Google-Verizon deal contains no protections for wireless access, which accounts for nearly one-third of all Internet connections, giving Verizon and other ISPs the green light to block or degrade content on their wireless networks,” says S. Derek Turner, a research director at Free Press (http://www.freepress.com). “In addition, it would allow Internet service providers to discriminate online by offering ‘private’ Internet services alongside those on the ‘public’ Internet.”
How Net Neutrality Could Affect You
The threat is especially urgent, Google critics add, since there is currently no government body that has the authority to prevent what Google/Verizon have called a ‘proposal’ for a new web from morphing into an ‘everyday business practice.’
The reason? While the Federal Communications Commission seems the logical choice to regulate the web, when it comes to Net Neutrality, a District of Columbia U.S. Court of Appeals decided in April that the agency has no legal authority to impose Net Neutrality regulations.
There are currently all sorts of people with all sorts of opinions about Net Neutrality, but in terms of regulations right now, no one’s really driving the car.
Near future, fierce public backlash against a web devoid of Net Neutrality—which would divide itself into a collection of upscale, gated virtual communities, alongside blighted digital ghettos—appears to be keeping the wolf at bay, Google critics say. But long term, critics fear that without government intervention, your imaging and mobile retail site could be negatively impacted in the following ways:
• Slower Videos: Some content-providers, such as video-sharing sites, would be able to pay an added fee to ensure their videos are downloaded faster on the wireless Internet than other videos. In practice, this could mean that videos from YouTube (a Google-owned company), for example, would download quicker than say the promotional videos on your imaging and mobile retail site.
“This would clearly be possible on the wireless Internet under the Google-Verizon proposal,” says Consumer Watchdog’s Simpson. “I think, indeed, that the deal would allow for some paid premium services on the wired Internet as well.”
• Higher Internet Fees: Some businesses might have the opportunity to pay a premium fee on the wireless Internet to ensure their websites download faster than the websites of other, non-fee-paying businesses.
”This is unfair and would limit competition and consumer choice,” Simpson says.
“Consider the implications of Google being able to pay for its search service to download faster than Bing’s search service.”
“This is surely anti-competitive and would be against the law here in Europe,” added Jackson.
• Bidding Wars for Download Speeds: Competitors in the same industry, including imaging and mobile retail, could ultimately be forced into a bidding war for the fastest website download times on the wireless Internet. This bidding war would mirror the war that currently rages every day among businesses that bid on Google keywords that lead searchers to their sponsored links.
“This is unfair in that it would give preference to a few of the wealthiest, largest companies,” Simpson says. “The Internet was supposed to provide open access to all comers, treating all data the same.”
• New Fees for New Services: Some retail businesses could be forced to pay an added fee on the wireless Internet if they wanted to add yet-to-be-innovated new services. Fifteen years ago, for example, adding easily downloadable video on a Web site was virtually unimaginable. Now, a 10-year-old kid with a cellphone can do it in between lollipop licks. If the Google/Verizon proposal was in effect 15 years ago, we could all be paying extra for the privilege of offering video on our websites today.
”This is one of the most damaging aspects of the Google-Verizon deal,” Simpson says. “New charges could be added for heretofore unimagined services. Clearly this unfairly thwarts innovation, or at the least limits ‘innovation’ only to those who can afford to pay. This is tremendously damaging to new start-up enterprises, the real incubators of true innovation.”
• Fewer Hits on Your Site: Some retail sites on the wireless Internet could begin to see fewer hits, as ever-rising Internet connection fees for consumers and businesses—like the ever-rising fees we now all pay for cable—could begin limiting the number of people freely surfing the Web.
Even so, given all Simpson’s warnings, TruckingWebDesign’s Hays is unmoved. “The instant gratification/instant information age is here, and the bottom line is: which camel is going to come into my tent—big government or big business?” he says. “With big business, comes choices. With regulation, I may get choices, but the choices will probably read like Medicare Parts A, B, C and D, and some pages will be blacked out altogether.”
Joe Dysart (www.joedysart.com) is an Internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan.
