Google-Verizon Talks
A lot of people are having a conniption about a supposed deal between Google and Verizon that will start us down the slippery slope of tiered service and end ‘Net neutrality. The reporting on this is in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, former home of Judith Miller.
OK, now who would benefit from this report?
On the one hand you have Google, which is rolling cash, but is willing to lose money if they get jerked around [Google.cn], and on the other you have a highly leveraged telco looking to maximize profits so it can service its debt and pay its executive obscene amounts of money. Who feels the pressure on the publication of this story? Who would leak it to the WSJ and the NYT?
Why would Google go alone with a tiered system, having put so much time and effort backing neutrality?
Google developed the Android operating system that is used on Motorola cell phones on the Verizon network, so there are existing channels open between the two companies, and they may well discuss ‘Net neutrality, but an agreement on a tiered system only benefits Verizon. Unless Verizon is ready to dump the Android phones, I see no way they can dump Google.
If I were suspicious by nature, I would start looking at Verizon stock prices.
4 comments
…I heard this story a little while ago and witnessed the hand-wringing over the supposed threat to net neutrality and thought to myself “lesseeherenow, I don’t have a Verizon phone or high-speed intertube contract and don’t own a smart phone in any case, so why do I care if they want to offer tiered service?”
I have lots of things to lose sleep over these days; this doesn’t make the Top 25 list…
Looks like an effort to boost stock price to me, but I’m just a guy with a web site.
It’s looking busy up in Central Oregon, under control, but busy.
…quite smokey around here, too, what with the general wind direction pushing the smoke into Bend and Central Orygun. One gets to feeling a bit sorry for that Ranger District, because they’ve had a series of fires – including a few huge ones – over the last several years.
When the patterns shift and forests dry out, you know it is going to happen. We have had far fewer than normal fires in the pulp pine forests down here, because the shift has been bringing us all kinds of extra rain, even without tropical storms.
The whole Pacific Northwest is getting hit with drought and fires. Like California, the only saving grace is that the earlier fires are denying fuel to the later ones.