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Google joins Facebook in support of Zero Rating in India

medianama.com

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Re: Google joins Facebook in support of Zero Rating in India

#41

Post by JoshTriplett »

nitrogen wrote: post #35
JoshTriplett wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With multiple service providers available, why would you bother paying one? If they decide to make your service slow, their customers will notice, and if they care about your service, they'll switch. An ISP can only pull that kind of extortion when they're the only game in town.

The point of net neutrality is that without it, your new service will never have a chance to make any inroads at all, so customers won't know they can't access it. A competitive non-neutral market won't fix that.

You're assuming a world in which ISPs have managed to make themselves the gatekeepers for sites, which assumes they have the power to do so. Given competition among ISPs, no one ISP would have the power to do so, and a group of them getting together to do so would quickly find itself facing antitrust charges.

Re: Google joins Facebook in support of Zero Rating in India

#42

Post by tired_man »

smhenderson wrote: post #40
avdempsey wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the music streaming companies paying T-Mobile to take part in the program? If not, is the barriers to entry objection sufficiently mollified? That is, the carrier is making an entire class of content zero-rated, not picking favorites.

That's a great question and since I brought up T-Mobile in the first place I went ahead and dug around a little via Google. It looks like no, they do not charge the providers so I guess this was a bad example on my part. They started the program with a few big names (Apple, Spotify, Pandora, more...) and then opened it up to others (Google Play, Rhapsody, more...). But it looks like the entry cost to providers is low…

In my heart of hearts, I want to think that TMO understands that the networked future everyone raves about won't happen because data transfer is too costly to make it practical.

Mobile devices are wonderful, but come on, the price of mobile data is assault with intent. I don't mind paying for my data. But I do object to being abused for wanting to use the network for non-trivial activities, such as twitter, farcebook, etc.

Re: Google joins Facebook in support of Zero Rating in India

#43

Post by Lawtonfogle »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #25
reagency wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying that he world's poor should become rich enough to pay for Internet, before they can get access to Internet? Or that some arbitrary third party should be forced to subsidize their Internet access? Why is the Indian government banning Google from providing free Internet, yet not providing such themselves?

It is like Nestle handing out free formula to new mothers. Nothing wrong with that, right...

Just so we are clear, everyone is aware of the case of Nestle freely giving enough of the formula to new mothers to use so that by the time they ran out their natural production of milk had declined to be insufficient to feed the baby. This combined with many mothers being too poor to either afford the formula or clean water to mix the formula with resulted in babies dying. A pretty clear example of when giving something out for free is a horrible thing.

http://www.businessinsider.com/nestles-infant-formula-scanda...

Re: Google joins Facebook in support of Zero Rating in India

#44

Post by nitrogen »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #41
nitrogen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of net neutrality is that without it, your new service will never have a chance to make any inroads at all, so customers won't know they can't access it. A competitive non-neutral market won't fix that.

You're assuming a world in which ISPs have managed to make themselves the gatekeepers for sites, which assumes they have the power to do so. Given competition among ISPs, no one ISP would have the power to do so, and a group of them getting together to do so would quickly find itself facing antitrust charges.

The ISPs don't have to be the first movers; enough megacorps paying enough ISPs to make a "free tier" would have the same effect, which is exactly what we seem to be discussing w.r.t. India.

This is already visible in the US with smaller sites; many video streaming sites, and subsections of even more video streaming sites, are exclusively available to customers of specific cable/sat network ISPs.

Re: Google joins Facebook in support of Zero Rating in India

#45

Post by hcccc »

It's important to remember that the target group is the poorest section of the population who have not previous had access to the internet. While it can sound noble and benevolent in theory it is a clear power move.

In essence what they are doing is aggressively trying to beat the concept and affordances of decentralised networks in penetrating the physical infrastructure, government policy, telecom bureaucracy, and public consciousness.

The third-world poor, as the most exploited class, is one of the last strongholds of meaningful resistance to capitalism. By actively subverting decentralised models and installing in their place, both conceptually and physically, a centralised and hierarchical vision of connectivity they secure the advancement of "surveillance capitalism" and further consolidate their power as transcending nation states.

The appropriation of the concept of internet as pushed by Google and Facebook has already penetrated very far.. according to a recent poll.. "65% of Nigerians, and 61% of Indonesians agree with the statement that "Facebook is the Internet" compared with only 5% in the US (http://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-ide...).

The speed at which this transformation is happening means the critical public discourse around these issues is dangerously underdeveloped.

Re: Google joins Facebook in support of Zero Rating in India

#46

Post by nileshtrivedi »

mratzloff wrote: post #19
nileshtrivedi wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if Orkut was zero-rated, back when Facebook started. Or if Yahoo was zero-rated when Google started. Internet giants are turning their back on users, now that they have money.

It's pretty standard practice for any company that becomes suffiently large to increase barriers to entry (after previously championing low barriers to entry when it suited them). Not saying it's good for users, but the incentives for corporations are clear.

"Don't mistake my outrage for surprise." :)
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