Forum Moderators: martinibuster
"The only way you can have a fast lane that is useful, that people will pay for, is if there are slow lanes,"
Sergey then added,
Google's searches are valuable only if consumers can also quickly access the sites listed in its results.
While larger companies like Google will be able to pay a fast lane tax, is there a possibility, as Sergey suggests, of a slow lane for smaller publishers who cannot afford to pay?
And what of medium sized publishers with high traffic sites?
There are already documented cases of service providers at various levels blocking those whom they oppose in business or politics.
Therein lies the rub.
Oh, and that slow lane thing sucks, too.
A proprietary, closed Net is coming
...we are already seeing a combination of... interactions that will eventually turn the Net into a restricted and somewhat proprietary network with much of its content restricted or blocked...Filtering and blacklists now common
Most U.S. government agencies now use filtering mechanisms to keep their own computers from accessing blacklisted Web sites. Third parties maintain these blacklists, and they put whatever they want on the lists. For example, my blog was blacklisted for a while, with no explanation.This sort of intervention becomes ever easier with the consolidation of the Internet...
It's not just Google that is causing users to use a lot of bandwidth. YouTube and others of it's kind are at it, too. Long range, that kind of bandwidth usage is going to become more intense. ISPs in some parts are already throttling how much bandwidth individual users use, so a metered internet is not so far fetched.
Will future usage become so heavy that it eats into corporate profits?
If it eats into profits, will the ISPs charge the users or meter their usage?
Is it fair for a business to pay for the banwidth going upstream, then pay another fee for the downstream bandwidth?
Or is all of this a money grab on the part of the ISPs?
And will this ultimately be another pressure on the AdSense publisher as they grapple with a new tax, a non-governmental bandwidth tax imposed by ISPs?
But, from the end users perspective, why does s/he have to foot the whole bill, always? Wouldn't it be better if some of the content providers could pay a little as well?
I'm sure the ISPs would rather bill the content providers than they would send higher bills to their customers. (*)
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As for a neutral one-size-fits-all internet, that's a pipe dream. It has never existed, and why should it? We are a diverse bunch with diverse needs anyway. There are several "internets" today, just as there has always been. In the shape of closed/priviledged sections, parallel networks, or networks on other protocols than http. And so on.
Googles own network is one such example, and although it's pretty dang big it seems that there are posters here that don't even know about it.