How does Google view Net neutrality now?

At the recent Atmosphere event in Mountain View, Calif., Google’s chief Internet evangelist Vint Cerf reportedly made the following statement: “Prioritizing the flow of information for legitimate network management means is fine.” When I read this a little alarm bell went off in the back of my head.

Fortunately, we live in an age where we can resolve such dissonances in a fraction of a second. Sure enough, a quick search on Bing (a Google search would have been more poetic, but I like Bing’s daily pictures) turned up the following statement by the same chief Internet evangelist testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 14, 2006: “Favoring some disfavors others.” By this we can surmise that he meant prioritizing some traffic implicitly de-prioritizes other traffic because he further stated, “Prioritization inevitably becomes a zero-sum game.” The point here is not to highlight an inconsistency from one of the leading (chief, actually) Internet visionaries, but rather to ask whether his (and, indeed, Google’s) thinking on Net neutrality has shifted.

Cerf’s statement seems to indicate Google’s stance on Net neutrality has, at a minimum, become more nuanced. Another indication is that while Cerf was reportedly a founding member of savetheinternet.com, a coalition promoting Internet regulation, he is now absent from its member page (as are early Net neutrality proponents Amazon, Yahoo! eBay, Microsoft and Google itself). If this is the case, credit Google for not being overly dogmatic.

There are probably two factors at work altering Google’s thinking concerning Internet regulation. First, as has been well documented, the Internet and broadband networks are increasingly being tasked to carry video alongside garden-variety Web pages, e-mail and chat. Much of that video is itself transitioning from short-form, low-resolution clips viewed on PCs to long-form, high-resolution television episodes and movies viewed on HDTVs. In addition to Cerf, there are clearly lots of smart people at Google who understand the complexity of employing a single network infrastructure to deliver widely varying traffic types while still meeting consumer quality expectations. Doing so without robust traffic management capabilities may not be technically possible. Yet the most strident of Net neutrality proponents insist networks should be stupid (examples here, here, here, and here). With announced plans to develop set-top boxes, Google may have concluded that Net neutrality purists could hinder its plans to own the television.

Second, Google is preparing to roll out fiber-to-the-premises broadband access networks to as many as 500,000 homes. While Google undoubtedly has considerable experience building and operating high-capacity fiber backbone networks for its own use (interconnecting its data centers), building and operating broadband access networks for consumer use is an entirely different matter. In fact, at the Atmosphere conference Google implied that the project was, among other things, a learning experience — an opportunity to collect data on the realities of running high-capacity broadband networks. It would not be a stretch to conclude that, in doing its homework, Google encountered many of the same traffic management challenges often cited by telcos and cablecos as reasons to think more deeply about the need for Internet regulation. Certainly deeper thought than slogans like “Just deliver the bits, stupid!” imply.

Do these data points portend a sea change in the forces wrestling over Net neutrality? Perhaps. It could also be that the recent Comcast decision, coupled with less-than-damning data in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan (e.g., 95% of Americans have access to broadband and 85% of those can choose from multiple suppliers), makes the whole Net neutrality campaign a questionable endeavor.