http://bit.ly/7XwAG
At the heart of the Google Verizon net neutrality deal is the monetization model trying to create segmentation among net users on the basis of speed. A strategy that may in all possibility backfire on the internet giant and reduce its monopoly grip on the internet it has today. Paying a lip service to the concept of net-neutrality for all users, the internet and telephony giants stated in a joint statement “a presumption against prioritization of Internet traffic -- including paid prioritization,” issued by Google public-policy director Alan Davidson and Verizon’s top spokesman former Republican Congressman Tom Tauke.
The real purpose of the deal is to pressurise the Congressmen and the FCC to pass a bill regularising multi-tiered paid broadband services, in which the basic services would be free while the high speed services would be paid. In the words analysts of NYT the two parties were asking the regulators to keep the broadband infrastructure a “platform for innovation,” so that the service providers could create “additional, differentiated online services” beyond the Internet we know today. Mobile broadband, whose use is growing at almost over 100% annually could be a completely paid service under this agreement.
Google's surrender of its free internet policy to Verizon is possibly to protect its market share in the rapidly growing mobile market. The internet giant is aware that within the next three years, the mobile market would be perhaps 3 to 5 times bigger than the PC based internet users and the android smartphones will have only a tiny segmental presence in the multi-billion strong mobile markets. With mobile phone service providers not ready to blink especially in the US, Google quickly changed tune and hung up its principle of free internet service for all, to protect its own market and profitability.
What Google perhaps forgets is that the market outside the US is too large too ignore today and it is content not speed that makes internet what it is today. Besides with the Grid being developed in Europe, throwing up a option a hundred times faster than the web in a couple of years Google will be hurt the most if the invention is priced and sold as a software to people charging value added web services to the world at large. Also there is no guarantee that one company will be able to control the market for all the speed zones which could mean the competiotion to google may grow during the oncoming years due to such market segmentation
No comments:
Post a Comment