Erstellt am: 12. 8. 2010 - 12:30 Uhr
Today's Webtip: The beginning of the end?
“Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey" is one hell of a way to start an article. That was Wireds headline on their analysis of the recently announced agreement between Google and Verizon. As you might be able to guess, Wired isn't too crazy about the whole thing.
If that last paragraph meant nothing to you, this would probably be the time to try to understand it. Not for the articles sake, but because issues involved are starting to move from the purely theoretical, to the potentially practical. The way the web works might be about to change.
The debate around net neutrality has been going on for quite some time. Not just in the States. Users of Austrian providers have also noticed strange behavior with certain protocols, though as far as I know, no provider has openly admitted to any particular measures, and Chello has stated that they do no shaping in their Austrian network.
That particular announcement was made after Google released tools to determine if your provider was messing around with your bandwidth.
measurementlab.net
Something first noticed by users of file sharing services, most notably Bittorrent. It also made it sound like just another round of pirates against the system.
The discussion has taken on a new aspect though, as more and more providers begin to offer their own internet services, rather than remaining just a collection of dumb pipes. Prepackaged VOIP services and ISP specific video offerings are becoming more common, putting them in direct competition with the standalone services they also allow access to.
Some providers would like to be as high up in the value chain as they can get. And that could make sense. For content producers, working closely with providers could provide the base for a working payment system that could finally solve some of the stickier business questions surrounding digital distribution.
Or not.
It's an amazingly messy issue that could have massive ramifications for personal privacy, online innovation, and both regional and international politics.
It's also an issue that is only going to become more important as the EU and Austrian agencies take it up this fall.
So you might want to spend some time (well, more time if you have actually followed any of my links above) to sit down and wade through the whole Google-Verizon thing.
Stacey Higgenbotham at gigaom.com has been following the subject in the States for a while, and she put together a post summing up and linking to some of the more interesting articles about it. It's a quick overview of the current opinions, and a convenient way to start wrapping you brain around the fun that still awaits us.