Much excitement has been caused recently over the agreement recently recently by Google and Verizon. While it was not a formal business deal, the substance of the talks were which types of internet content to prioritize (bandwidth-wise) over others on wireless networks, and how best to go about it. the following describes the general public reaction to the results.
To say the internets has lost its shit over this would be a pretty extreme understatement. The concern is Net Neutrality; the movement to keep internet providers from restricting access to items that don’t agree with their corporate or political philosophies. The agreement looks like it’s saying that Net Neutrality only applies to wired networks, and that wireless networks can chuck the whole concept and only allow their users to see the things they want them too.
As usual, the truth is something entirely different. The “content” that the agreement cites is not liberal vs. conservative, godly vs. wicked, or even porn vs. politics. It is voice traffic vs. video streaming, vs. browsing vs. torrent feeds. The basic idea is that voice traffic suffers the most from signal degradation, more quickly becoming useless (unintelligible). So anytime there’s a bottleneck in the signal, voice traffic gets moved to the front of the line. Video streaming is next, since the user’s experience suffers slightly less than voice, and more than browsing or torrents. You get the idea from here. What the agreement does not do is even discuss what the subject of that content might be. They don’t really care. Neutrality trolls can retreat to their caves for now.
Every large scale internet provider already does this to some extent. It’s called traffic shaping, and it’s always been a precursor to an improvement in bandwidth in the past. The idea behind Google and Verizon’s discussions were to make an across the board standard for how everyone handled it. My personal guess is that the end goal is to make your smartphone experience the same no matter what provider you pick, thereby allowing all phones to compete on an even field. Google picked Verizon because of its FiOS tech which is dramatically increasing internet speeds everywhere. Verizon Wireless, which handles the Google Android phones, is actually an entirely separate company.
While I am more than happy to stand on the street corner and scream conspiracy, this one just doesn’t pass muster.
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Yeah, but no matter how many facts you may have in hand you just can’t stop people from making assumptions based on what their cousin or some shit said and trolling it up on the interwebs.
That’s the fact, jack.
LOLORZ Google Death Drones dropping teh internets on us:} Plus they’ve been wardriving. Iran has the Diplomat of Death… The Terror Mosque is being built by the Kingdom prince who co-owns Fox News… I love this week. It’s funny.
That video is from the Chinese Government isn’t it? Guess it’s retaliation for Google deciding it’s not going to keep having TWO search engines…one for most of the world and one for China on which, when you search for Tienamen Square, no mention of certain, shall we say, major events from several years ago come up….
It is only partial that there is a requirement of government filtering, the other half of it is that the chinese government wanted to control Google to the point that Google would no longer have any control, and would be another chinese government puppet. This practice did not entice Google and so they said f off.
The mosque is the subject of next week’s blog…
The video is from a Taiwanese news organization. (Using the word “news” in the loosest fashion possible.)
That would be the Murdoch definition of “news”, right?
Well it ain’t mine!
Hey, if a poorly made computer animation of government propoganda isn’t the truth, what is?
almost every business politician journalist etc etc what have you seem to have a secret agenda
can you blame people for thinking so?
I’m not saying that they don’t. But if they do, it isn’t the one everyone thinks it is.
Thanks for the perspective. I had heard about this but was not clear what the issues are.
I was in the same position, Andrew. It was some big, weird thing I had heard of and only had a partial understanding of, so I decided to do some research and let everyone know what I found out.
Conspiracy! Kevin’s been bought and paid for by Google and Verizon!
Google would do no such thing! It is America’s most loved corporation after all!
Verizon on the other hand… ya evil.
Orald, did you try the driver process I gave you the other day? From your description it sounds like a bad driver install. That or your computer is unstable.
He does keep it on a stack of cardboard boxes…
Lies! All lies!
I couldn’t afford a cardboard box, only a rolled-up newspaper in a septic tank, next to my cold-gravel dinner. But I’m happy
althoughbecause I’m poor!It sounded like lots of work. I did d/l the program but haven’t installed it yet. I’ll probably get to it soon though.
I’m supposed to uninstall the “Nvidia drivers” entry in my control panel->programs first? Is that all the drivers?
Well, I’ll install that soon enough and see if it gives some help.
Speaking of evil…
LMFAO!
Right now I’m amused by the link orald, though I CAN see it happen, look at how people act, and remember the retarded riots over those silly drawings a year or two back. (in Denmark i think? Don’t qoute me on that.) Honestly 15-20 years of prison minimum to all those crazy bastards
(This is also why I am not in politics I wouldn’t live a long and healthy life, people in holland are retarded if it comes to protecting the poor little muslim’s and thier views, even if they are horribly wrong. But I’l stop now enough ranting on a comic site 
Oh, I’m partially looking forward to that day, that bright, glowing day…But maybe that’s just crazy ol’ me.
Do you think we’ll have that cool power-armor ready by then, like in Fallout?
And yea, the fun Muhammad mayhem was in Denmark.
BTW, the people who made this song produced quite a few others(there’s a show of sorts on their site). Just search Youtube for “Latma”- maybe half their stuff has English subtitles I think, maybe more.
Wait a minute, the stats say we haven’t met quota for bullshit on a Thursday here.
That just isn’t right, let me fix that: http://www.anwr.org/
Sorted.