Google, Verizon, and Web Pay Tiers

Google and Verizon have been receiving harsh criticisms over the last week regarding their potential plans to end network neutrality and force companies to pay a fee in order to maintain the speed of their web sites.

The internet has always been a level playing field, inspiring the term “Network Neutrality.”  What that means is, whether you are looking at YouTube or a random website your cousin designed, the content is equal and moves at an equal pace online. (This has nothing to do with the speed of your personal internet connection)

If Google and Verizon create web pay tiers, however, a website like YouTube (owned by Google) will be able to pay a fee in order to maintain the speed of their site and content. If your cousin can’t afford to pay that fee, their website and content will move slower for everyone who visits it.

Google and Verizon denied the rumors, then released a seven point policy proposal supposedly focused on maintaining the “open internet.”

It starts: “Posted by Alan Davidson, Google director of public policy and Tom Tauke, Verizon executive vice president of public affairs, policy, and communications

The original architects of the Internet got the big things right. By making the network open, they enabled the greatest exchange of ideas in history. By making the Internet scalable, they enabled explosive innovation in the infrastructure.

It is imperative that we find ways to protect the future openness of the Internet and encourage the rapid deployment of broadband. Verizon and Google are pleased to discuss the principled compromise our companies have developed over the last year concerning the thorny issue of “network neutrality.”

Read the rest here: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/joint-policy-proposal-for-open-internet.html

The beginning of web pay tiers will be the end of the open internet, so we can only hope that the future of the internet does not rest in the hands of just two corporations