Net Neutrality has been making headlines all over the Internet. But what does this mean for the future of the Internet? I like to consider myself to be a well-informed individual who cares about the Internet, and yet, I find all this Net Neutrality a bit confusing. Here is what I know:

• Net neutrality means that all Internet traffic is created equal. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) wouldn’t have the right to slow down particular kinds of traffic, e.g., Comcast purposefully slowing down Hulu or Netflix, not only for their status as a competitor, but because of the huge amounts of broadband these services consume.
• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates communication – specifically wire, satellite and cable.
• A few months ago, the FCC brokered talks between huge phone/cable/internet companies in an attempt to figure out the net neutrality issue as a whole, but these talks have since broke down.
• Recently, the US Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC didn’t have the authority to enforce net neutrality, siding with Comcast. In 2007, Comcast slowed down bit torrents and a variety of other traffic.
• Verizon and Google – “Googlezon” have come up with a net neutrality framework that at first glance seems okay, but is actually pretty scary.

So what’s going on with the Google/Verizon framework? The two companies have come up with a strange ‘tiered’ solution to all this. They focus primarily on ‘wireless’ Internet – which, strangely enough, the FCC can’t regulate yet (remember, they only can regulate wired communication). That being the case, the Googlezon arrangement largely leaves wired Internet, or “Public Internet” as they call it, alone. Let’s be honest though – the future is in wireless and mobile Internet.

Annalee Newitz over at io9.com summarizes the Googlezon wireless framework as such:

“Googlezon is redefining the internet as a tiered service, like cable. And this new thing called the public Internet is the lowest tier. Kind of like network television is the lowest tier in your television service options. From here on out, you will start to see the internet equivalent of cable service online: For an extra ten dollars, you can get the “movie lovers” package, where your ISP privileges Netflix and Hulu traffic, giving them to you super-fast. For another ten dollars, you can get the “concerned parent” package, which blocks peer-to-peer traffic as well as websites that they consider to be pornographic. And so on.” (Source: http://io9.com/5610328/how-the-googleverizon-proposal-could-kill-the-internet-in-5-years)

This kind of posturing, however, with Google and Verizon at the top of the internet heap directing traffic, means inevitably, these two companies would be able to dictate what kind of businesses would be able to succeed in this bizarre version of the Internet. New start ups or new competitors to Google/Verizon could have their traffic slowed down – or even stopped, effectively killing their business. Why do this? For Google, this is an unexpected turn – especially for a company whose unofficial motto is “Don’t Be Evil.” At the end of the day, however, both Google and Verizon are companies, and their chief objectives lie within how much revenue they can generate.