Google works with anti-net neutrality cable companies

[NetCompetition1]

Hello, DUers, I know this is not the friendliest site for those of us who take an unorthodox view of net neutrality. Like others who have commented here before, I do consulting work for Hands off the Internet. But I am writing today not to argue, but to ask a question. First, let me excerpt from a Reuters story out this week:

New Internet TV services such as Joost and YouTube may bring the global network to its knees, Internet companies said on Wednesday, adding they are already investing heavily just to keep data flowing.
Google, which acquired online video sharing site YouTube last year, said the Internet was not designed for TV.
It even issued a warning to companies that think they can start distributing mainstream TV shows and movies on a global scale at broadcast quality over the public Internet.
"The Web infrastructure, and even Google's (infrastructure) doesn't scale. It's not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect," Vincent Dureau, Google's head of TV technology, said at the Cable Europe Congress.
Google instead offered to work together with cable operators to combine its technology for searching for video and TV footage and its tailored advertising with the cable networks' high-quality delivery of shows.
One cable chief executive, Duco Sickinghe from Belgian operator Telenet, said it was "the best news of the day" to hear that Google could not scale for video.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=internetnews&storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20070207:MTFH04941_2007-02-07_17-42-40_L0767087&WTmodLoc=SciNewsHome_R1_internetnews-1

Now, if you've been keeping tabs on this over the past year, this should raise your eyebrows just a bit. Consider that cablecos have fought neutrality regs as strenuously as the telcos. So now Google, champion of Save the Internet, is in bed with the cablecos.

What does this mean for the net neutrality cause?

I've been racking my brains since I read this, but I figured I should ask someone here for their take. Does this put Google on the other side from you? Are you concerned they will find it in their financial benefit to abandon their previous neutrality stance? Or am I missing something important?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Hey look...

I have long had my reservations about turning the Internet into a cable TV company. The fact is that the infrastructure and technical exigencies of packet-switched networks might not, and probably do not, lend themselves to pumping great gouts of video, while taking care of the other data delivery.

Frankly, I have thought that it was a cockamamie idea, cooked up by the telco incumbents as a way to get some more money and considerations out of government, while staving off new regulations.

But we know, they are honorable ment, and would never do something like that.

[kaygore]

3. Well said!

[kaygore]

2. Follow the money, not the technology

We have terrible Internet service and options here in the US. We are practically a third world country when it comes to the Internet. There is technology available that would provide MUCH greater speed and bandwidth but which is not deployed here to help make the argument that we need to hand the Internet over to the large corporations' control in oder to get the Internet that the rest of the industrial world already has.

Google sold its soul sometime ago when it made some hires of people with neocon ties and then set up a PAC to fund Republican candidates.

Without Net Neutrality, the Internet will become another MSM outlet. If there had been no Net Neutrality over these past years, there would be no Google, No You tube, etc. Google has got its ... and doesn't care about anyone else. In fact, the less competition the better Google feels their position will be.