Net Neutrality is Largely about Picking Winners and Losers

By Gary Kim, Contributing Editor

CEO Eric Schmidt (News - Alert) has said regulation is needed to prevent abuses of the availability of Internet content by Internet Service Providers and "to combat incentives for carriers to pick winners and losers online." But Google (News - Alert) itself favors its own content and affilated sites over those of rivals, says Odysseas Papadimitriou, Evolution Finance CEO, as reported by thestreet.com.

The dividing line between innovation and predatory behavior sometimes is blurry, and so is the difference between simple competition, which always involves an attempt to gain distinctiveness, and exercise of monopoly power for business advantage.

But Google, Microsoft (News - Alert) and Yahoo search engines give priority to some search results over others, often with clear preference for each firm's proprietary results.

That's not surprising. Big search engines promote content that benefits them. That is what a "sponsored" result is. Nor are search engines impartial when showing results for music or mapping or other sites affiliated with the search engine, either.

In fact, some might quip, "unfair advantage" is the goal of all business strategy, at some level.

"Google has the tendency not only to run first-place ads, but also to promote products of any of its companies by giving them top-return status," says Papadimitriou.

The point is that attempts to gain business advantage are at the heart of business strategy, and Google looks for market advantage as much as Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, AT&T, Sprint (News - Alert), Comcast and Verizon do.

There's nothing wrong with that. But neither is the "network neutrality" debate actually so much about content freedom as it is business advantage. "Blocking" of legal content and applications become unfashionable and a source of business dis-advantage years ago.

No, much of "network neutrality" is about the distribution of cost, revenue and business advantage within the Internet ecosystem, nothing so high-minded as "freedom of speech."

There's nothing wrong with that, either. Google would like nothing better than to shift its business costs to other ecosystem providers, while the other partners would like nothing better than to take some of Google's revenue for themselves. That is what "channel conflict" is all about.

That is not to deny the potential areas where "unfair" efforts to gain advantage turn into "illegal" or otherwise undesirable behavior. But those sorts of issues tend to be matters best sorted out on a case-by-case basis, as they occur, rather than by trying to pick winners and losers by regulatory fiat.

(source: http://4g-wirelessevolution.tmcnet.com/broadband-stimulus/topics/broadband-stimulus/articles/82373-net-neutrality-largely-picking-winners-losers.htm)