More Reaction to Google-Verizon and Net Neutrality

Fortune Magazine explains why wireless should be exempt from net neutrality rules.  The Register, normally a snarky publication, produces two in depth articles explaining how the Internet infrastructure changes over the last 3 years motivates Google's policy changes,see How neutrality locks in the web's 'Hyper Giants', and why it makes sense for Google to abandon utopian principles when it comes to regulating the web, and why we should have seen it coming.  See Google 'sold out the net neutrality hippies' in 2008.  AT&T has made a public statement on the Google-Verizon proposal, calling it "positive."  More details on that are in the Wall Street Journal.

For the "Google betrayed us" crowd, there are plenty of feel-good articles.  Try A paper trail of betrayal: Google's net neutrality collapse, from Ars Technica.  Then there's PC World's Tom Bradley, arguing that the agreement will cause a backlash requiring Congress and the FCC to do the right thing.  See Google-Verizon Pact Proves Need for Real Net Neutrality.  Then there is ABC News quoting any number of people who suggest that a tiered web would have horrible consequences.  See What Would a 'Private' Internet Look Like?

Funny story.  I was in a library science class at the University of Texas in early 1994 and we were required by the instructor to bring in examples of sites (including gopher!) on the then nascent public Internet.  I suppose it was an exercise to show the wonder of it all.  Mosaic was barely out of the gate at that ancient time.  One student showed the FTD flower site and was pelted with criticism because it was a web site that dared to sell something.  The nerve!  I chuckled to myself over that incident.  The public web was shepherded by the Department of Commerce, not the Department of Education.  What did they expect?  And the rest is (commercial) history.  [MG]