21–30 of 35 posts
People celebrating things like this is how net neutrality will die.
1. The offering is carrier specific and the language suggests that even if this were expanded to other countries, you can only use it from home. 2. Two-factor authentication isn't supported, which most of us are probably using. 3. You may be getting charged for data by services running in the background.
And, of course, the expanding concept of free access to certain sites only serves to help make people think that sort of thing should be ok.
It's only offered in Philippines...
It sucks that this is just offered in the Philippines. I hope it catches on in other parts of the world.
People celebrating things like this is how net neutrality will die.
Exactly. Many people and companies (including Google) have fought tooth-and-nail to stop scenarios similar to this on the wired space when the telco's wanted to make websites pay for premium access from their users. And now Google is offering to foot the bill for Free Zone users?
It seems like the mobile carriers are footing the bill for this one. Or, for now, one mobile carrier in the Philippines. It looked like it still costs money for 99.5% of all mobile internet users.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Many people and companies (including Google) have fought tooth-and-nail to stop scenarios similar to this on the wired space when the telco's wanted to make websites pay for premium access from their users. And now Google is offering to foot the bill for Free Zone users?
Is Google really offering to foot the bill here? I don't see anywhere that says this is sponsored/paid for by Google, although maybe I missed it. It seems like the mobile carriers are footing the bill for this one. Or, for now, one mobile carrier in the Philippines. It looked like it still costs money for 99.5% of all mobile internet users.
I think this bodes very badly for the internet. We need to maintain a model where:
1) I pay for access 2) I access whatever sites I want
If anyone but me pays for my access, they're going to want to make back room deals, make favored sites faster, make sites they don't like inaccessible, and generally destroy the level playing field of the internet.
This is a first step. "Let's search for that on DuckDuckGo." "No, that costs money. Google is free." Boom, innovation stamped out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is Google really offering to foot the bill here? I don't see anywhere that says this is sponsored/paid for by Google, although maybe I missed it. It seems like the mobile carriers are footing the bill for this one. Or, for now, one mobile carrier in the Philippines. It looked like it still costs money for 99.5% of all mobile internet users.
What would motivate the carrier to foot the bill for access to a single domain if not some kind of sweetheart deal? I think this bodes very badly for the internet. We need to maintain a model where: 1) I pay for access 2) I access whatever sites I want If anyone but me pays for my access, they're going to want to make back room deals, make favored sites faster, make sites they don't like inaccessible, and generally d…
1. Free Zone users can access their favorite Google communication tool (G+ / Gmail) and search. 2. Google gets to serve its ads on all these properties, apart from valuable usage data and improving its products (the more people search on Google, the better its results, etc). 3. Carriers have two obvious benefits – acquisition and/or retention of price sensitive users seeking free access to G+/Gmail/Google Search and acquiring users for data plans. Another benefit could be revenue sharing for lead generation via Google’s ads. The wild card with the carriers is to launch sponsored browsing as a product – where anyone could sponsor access to one/more web services. 4. Advertisers have a compelling incentive to allocate budgets for Google’s Ad Words product. 5. SEO wars will be taken to a new level. 6. The days of feature phones with no internet access could be numbered. In the optimistic (for Google) scenario, Free Zone will increase demand for low end internet enabled phones. And OEM’s will gleefully comply.
Note - Extracted from my blog: http://u2697.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/sponsored-browsing-and...