^{Democracy & Technology Blog} Google and Net Neutrality (continued)

Like my colleague, Hance Haney, I find Google’s support of “net neutrality” regulation surprising. Or if not surprising, at least disappointing. Google is not a search engine company or a dot-com. Google is an Internet infrastructure company. A networked computer company. It is a general purpose platform of processors, bandwidth, and software. It does search, yes, but every few months now Google introduces another array of new Net products and services: GoogleVideo, GoogleBase, GoogleMaps, GoogleDesktop to organize my PC. Read this column by Robert Cringely, who explains Google’s infrastructure buildout and says Google is about to monopolize the Net, leaving no room for competitors or even mid-sized companies, only small guys and entrepreneurs.
I don’t believe Google will monopolize the Net, but I do believe Google is building the ultimate storewidth system — a generic network computer that will challenge not only Microsoft but also NBC, CBS, Fox, and Hollywood. Google will challenge Microsoft directly by putting your stuff — your info, your e-mail, your documents, your photos, your apps — out on the Net and making them accessible anywhere, anytime, from any device, without the headaches of a Windows PC. And because it is a general purpose content storage and delivery system, it will empower individual producers and consumers of content, and it will disrupt the existing content aggregators and distributors, namely Big TV and Hollywood. Google’s strength is its physical infrastructure — hundreds of thousands of computers at dozens of major network nodes, all linked with big bandwidth and super-nerd software to make all the disparate resources run in parallel. The geographically diverse data centers reduce latency and boost performance by getting close to users. This is the vision of storewidth — the combination of storage and bandwidth — that George Gilder outlined five years ago in the Gilder Technology Report and at our Storewidth conferences, the first several of which were attended by the then-less-famous Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Google’s co-founder and CEO, respectively. Which came first, I don’t know, but Page and Schmidt have implemented all the best ideas that we batted around at those conferences — including co-opting Yale computer scientist David Gelernter’s “life streams” software — and they are finally making good on Sun Microsystems’ long-held notion that “the network is the computer.”
So now we come to net neutrality, the regulatory concept that an operator at one layer of the network should not discriminate against a company or serivce operating at another layer of the network. Net neutrality advocates are worried the Comcasts, Coxes, Verizons, and SBCs (sorry, AT&Ts) of the world will leverage their last-mile pipes into homes and businesses to deny voice-over-IP companies (Vonage, Skype (now eBay)), content providers (Yahoo, Movielink), or applications and service providers (MSN, Google) from reaching the end user, or at least from reaching them on their own terms. We’ve argued strenuously that it is in the best interest of the bandwidth providers (Comcast, Verizon) to offer unfettered access to the cornucopia of content and services that only the Internet can provide. But it is a matter to be decided by business strategy. Most walled gardens wither and die. But clearly the last mile communications companies are going to leverage their hundred-billion dollar assets to their own advantage where it makes sense and profits.
Google, likewise, has unique assets of computers, wires, and software, distributed around the world, at very strategic locations. If Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast dominate the physical layer of the Internet, Google will soon dominate the logical layer of the Net. But if the physical layer of the Net should be “neutral” and subject to “open access” regulation, as Google and other Silicon Valley companies say it must be, then why not the logical layer? A layer that, if we are to believe many technology pundits like Robert Cringely, will be even more dominated by Google than the physical one is by the Bellcos and Cablecos. Does Google really want the FCC forcing and micromanaging “open access” to its data centers, processors, and software, to its advertizing and content delivery platforms? The Internet is comprised of numerous and diverse networks. The current net neutrality push targets one narrow set of companies for regulation, but if it were ever applied, well, neutrally, net neutrality law would cover the whole Net and impose never-ending micromanagement and litigation on the most dynamic and important engine of the world economy.
-Bret Swanson