Inside Google

“Ultimately, consumers would pay the costs for the premium delivery, or worse, would never see the content of smaller companies,” says John Simpson, director of advocacy group Consumer Watchdog. “Google claims it won’t use premium channels for delivery, but not long ago they professed to defend true net neutrality.”

A big New York foundation once told me years ago that privacy is the last thing people in the developing world have to worry about. It was a nice way of saying no to funding for my consumer group’s privacy project, but the line rang out to me again this week as new reporting at the Wall Street Journal brings into focus the great privacy betrayals of America’s giant tech companies and Third World America, Arianna Huffington’s new book, makes its debut.

The Google-Verizon statement on regulating the Internet isn’t business deal, the two companies say. Its a “legislative framework proposal” and a “a path to the open internet.” Web watchers aren’t buying it. It’s an alliance of two companies looking to lock in market advantages with political action.

Two giant corporations – Google and Verizon — have just announced a joint plan that would kill the open Internet as we know it. They want to allow Internet Service Providers to charge a premium do deliver some data services faster than other content. They would place no restraint on data discrimination on the wireless Internet.

We can’t let two companies decide the rules for the Internet. The Federal Communications Commission must act to ensure that “Net Neutrality” is guaranteed for both the wireline and wireless Internet. Please sign our petition.

SANTA MONICA, CA — Google and Verizon’s new joint broadband proposal pays lip service to the idea of “net neutrality,” but actually would completely undermine the open and free Internet we enjoy, Consumer Watchdog said today.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The FBI and DEA are now making extensive use of Google Earth, according to federal spending records. Consumer Watchdog is filing Freedom of Information Act requests with the agencies today to determine how the Internet giant’s digital mapping technology is being used for domestic surveillance, including whether it is used for racial profiling or other abuses of civil liberties.

Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog, however, said that while the new broadband proposal “pays lip service to the idea of net neutrality,” it would actually “completely undermine the open and free Internet we enjoy.” John M. Simpson, consumer advocate with the nonpartisan, nonprofit public interest group, said there are two main problems with the proposal.

Several progress groups like MoveOn.org and Color of Change have launched online petition campaigns aimed at persuading Google to stick with its earlier espoused principles on “net neutrality” and not cut a a deal with telecommunications giant Verizon that would undermine an open Internet.

Google has admitted to “accidentally” retrieving and storing masses of personal information, including snippets of emails, while trawling for public WiFi spots. The accidents occurred over a period of four years in 30 countries. Interpreting this bombshell charitably, we might say it was a major and avoidable blunder that cost the company a lot of good will and trust. But groups like Consumer Watchdog suggest that Google was just seeing what it could get away with, and that we wouldn’t know about it at all if they hadn’t got busted: “Its computer engineers run amok, push the envelope and gather whatever data they can until their fingers are caught in the cookie jar.”

Digital rights advocacy groups took a cautious view of the deal. John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog said: “Apparently Google redefines principles to suit the business need of the moment… What Google and Verizon are trying to do is carve up the Internet behind closed doors for their own benefit.” The deal comes after the Federal Communications Commission disbanded talks on net neutrality, saying that it had failed to create an agreement on a ‘robust framework to preserve the openness and freedom of the internet’.