Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 109 posts

Re: Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey

#51

Post by rottencupcakes »

dmnd wrote: post #49
rottencupcakes wrote: post #40

When did our culture shift to this point that everyone puts their problems on the government? Everyone complains about Apple's closed iPhone ecosystem, then pesters the government to condone jailbreaking and unlocking, which go against the iPhone's terms of service. Comcast is caught throttling bittorent, and instead of switching providers to satellite or Verizon or anything, everything goes to the government and dem…

> If high speed internet is so important to you and Comcast is the only carrier in your area This is usually due to a local monopoly having been granted by local government. I think contracts between corporations and government that have the result of reducing competition in the marketplace should be legislated against. Take a look at the competition that exists between ISPs in places like Europe or Australia to see…

If your local government granted them a local monopoly without negotiating these terms, then that is a local issue.

Why this has to be addressed at a federal level is unbeknown to me.

Re: Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey

#52

Post by leviathant »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #40

When did our culture shift to this point that everyone puts their problems on the government? Everyone complains about Apple's closed iPhone ecosystem, then pesters the government to condone jailbreaking and unlocking, which go against the iPhone's terms of service. Comcast is caught throttling bittorent, and instead of switching providers to satellite or Verizon or anything, everything goes to the government and dem…

"Comcast is caught throttling bittorent, and instead of switching providers to satellite or Verizon or anything, everything goes to the government and demands regulation on net neutrality."

I live in Philadelphia, where the tallest building in the city is the Comcast Center. It's going to be years, if not a decade before I can get FiOS here. The reason Comcast is the only carrier in my area is a result of taking government out of the equation. The big telecom companies don't give back to the government that gives them the tax breaks and concessions that allowed them to become big companies in the first place. At every opportunity they get, they seek to undercut the very country that makes their existence possible.

Take Comcast for example. In Pennsylvania, we have special zoning for dilapidated parts of cities and towns that are designed to encourage renewal - Keystone Opportunity Zones. Google 'em for more detail, but essentially, businesses in a KOZ don't have to pay state or local taxes.

When Comcast announced it was building their HQ in center city Philly (which, despite the piss smell, is hardly dilapidated) they lobbied HARD to get the zoning changed on their plot of land to a KOZ so that they wouldn't have to pay state or local taxes. Sure, they're bringing in jobs, and those people are taking trains into the city and driving cars into the city, and roads and train tracks totally just maintain themselves.

I don't give 'government' a free pass, but I absolutely lean toward government - an entity that arose to further civilization, believe it or not - over corporation, which is entirely selfish. Both can do good and bad, both can be abused.

. . . . . . . My own experience and why I'm pro net-neutrality:

For the first few months that I lived in the city, Hulu was a stuttering mess. We have cable internet, which wasn't as fast as the FiOS we had in the suburbs (which was both faster and cheaper), but was by no means so slow that Hulu should have to buffer. YouTube worked fine. Downloads were fine, but Hulu? Couldn't get through a half hour show without three or four pauses to buffer.

It took a number of complaints to Comcast, and maybe it had something to do with me whinging on my twitter account with the 8000 followers, but after a number of phone calls, Hulu suddenly worked fine.

I can't stand watching cable television, our entertainment center is a Dell Zino HD hooked up to a wall mounted LCD, and we watch Hulu and Netflix almost exclusively. Do you think Comcast are sitting on their thumbs while Hulu eats their lunch? It's not like I can get anything else decent in the city.

If they can get away with crap like that, they will. That is why outside regulation needs to step in.

Re: Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey

#53

Post by paulbaumgart »

cma wrote: post #8
eschulte wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely changing your stated principles on the importance of net neutrality and openness in the wireless sphere, because it suites your financial situation, is not "compromise" it's hypocrisy.

In the U.S. companies can't have principles that don't suit their financial situation. If they try to, the board is exposed to shareholder class-action lawsuits.

See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1053179

Re: Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey

#54

Post by muhfuhkuh »

cma wrote: post #8
eschulte wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely changing your stated principles on the importance of net neutrality and openness in the wireless sphere, because it suites your financial situation, is not "compromise" it's hypocrisy.

In the U.S. companies can't have principles that don't suit their financial situation. If they try to, the board is exposed to shareholder class-action lawsuits.

That's not entirely true. Red Hat has stuck to the Open Source and Free Software movement since its founding, and I don't think it has strayed from that or compromised, even when Microsoft offered a "patent deal" then waged a proxy IP war via the SCO lawsuit.

They've been granted some defensive patents, but publicly pledged not to use them except to defend themselves and Open Source software.

They're on track to make their fist billion in revenue at the same point as Microsoft did in its existence.

Re: Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey

#55

Post by po »

etherael wrote: post #19

Google gave the market the option to go for a completely open environment with the Nexus One, and in the words of this wired article what did it get in return? "Not cool enough." The phone is brilliant, but the market went elsewhere with it's carrier locked subsidised junk models. That's just a market reality, like it or not. Google tried to "do the right thing" and the market went somewhere else. Making all these po…

The irony is that the Nexus One failed to gain support from the major carriers. The carriers instead released competing models using Android. Users don't really know the difference between a Droid and a Nexus One. They're both Google Android phones right?

When Google released the Nexus One, I remember thinking they're competing with the carriers whom they depend on adopting Android. No way will ATT/VZN let this in their stores.

Google tried to have it both ways.

Re: Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey

#56

Post by cma »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #54
cma wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the U.S. companies can't have principles that don't suit their financial situation. If they try to, the board is exposed to shareholder class-action lawsuits.

That's not entirely true. Red Hat has stuck to the Open Source and Free Software movement since its founding, and I don't think it has strayed from that or compromised, even when Microsoft offered a "patent deal" then waged a proxy IP war via the SCO lawsuit. They've been granted some defensive patents, but publicly pledged not to use them except to defend themselves and Open Source software. They're on track to make…

They did so knowingly at the expense of long-term profit?

Re: Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey

#57

Post by cma »

aikinai wrote: post #25
cma wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the U.S. companies can't have principles that don't suit their financial situation. If they try to, the board is exposed to shareholder class-action lawsuits.

I was under the impression that Google put a special clause in their charter(?) that gave them special permission to make decisions that appear to go against their bottom line.

I'm not aware of any such clause, are you thinking of "don't be evil"? What you may be thinking of is some of the weird voting rights arrangements:

"In an unusual provision for a technology company, Google will create two classes of shares with different voting rights, a move that aims to guarantee that founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page will maintain decision-making authority"

A clause like that doesn't affect the type of lawsuits I am talking about.

Re: Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey

#58

Post by orangecat »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #40

When did our culture shift to this point that everyone puts their problems on the government? Everyone complains about Apple's closed iPhone ecosystem, then pesters the government to condone jailbreaking and unlocking, which go against the iPhone's terms of service. Comcast is caught throttling bittorent, and instead of switching providers to satellite or Verizon or anything, everything goes to the government and dem…

then pesters the government to condone jailbreaking and unlocking

More specifically, "pestering" the government for an exemption to a horrible law that they created. I absolutely want less government involvement in matters like that; we can start by repealing the DMCA.

Re: Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey

#59

Post by btilly »

sprout wrote: post #35
moultano wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>in exchange for removing any possibility of net neutrality on the wireless internet (which Google claims is the future of internet). [citation needed] This is explicitly not true according to the text of the agreement. The agreement says that it is too early to determine whether net-neutrality provisions are necessary for wireless networks, because it's a newer market and there is much more competition.

That kind of "let's wait and see how it looks until it evolves before we regulate" attitude is precisely what caused the current stagnation in the wired market. The market fundamentally is under heavy regulation; wireless can't work without heavy-handed regulation of who can use what spectrum. We can't just stop at that kind of draconian regulation (which is necessary) and say that a little thing like non-discriminat…

However there are fundamental economic reasons why the wired market should lead to natural monopolies and the wireless market should lead to more competition. Therefore there is good reason to wait.

Furthermore bandwidth is limited. The proposal is not what Google wants, it is what they were able to get Verizon to agree to. I read that clause as very much of an, "We agree to disagree, and agree that our areas of agreement are worth pursuing anyways."

Re: Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey

#60

Post by muhfuhkuh »

cma wrote: post #56
muhfuhkuh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely true. Red Hat has stuck to the Open Source and Free Software movement since its founding, and I don't think it has strayed from that or compromised, even when Microsoft offered a "patent deal" then waged a proxy IP war via the SCO lawsuit. They've been granted some defensive patents, but publicly pledged not to use them except to defend themselves and Open Source software. They're on track to make…

They did so knowingly at the expense of long-term profit?

They could've gone into a similar (or probably more lucrative) deal as Novell did when Microsoft gave them $350 Million dollar "patent cooperation" and Suse license over a few years.

Red Hat turned it down outright. Think of how much that would've benefitted Red Hat. That was well more than half of their revenue at the time. They stuck to their principles at the expense of that type of massive profit. It paid off.

Post reply on HN