Thursday, August 12, 2010

Facebook Breaks With Google on Net Neutrality - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

While the Facebook/Google rivalry is great headline fodder, it’s not clear that Facebook officially disagrees with the Google/Verizon proposal; see, e.g., the Facebook qualification in this CNet article (which has a similar title but notes “Noyes clarified to CNET via e-mail that it's reasserting Facebook's existing stance on Net neutrality and that the statement should not be considered specific to the Google-Verizon framework”).  What is clear from the NYT article: a former Facebook employee who is now a venture capitalist takes issue with the proposal, as does Amazon, and eBay doesn’t have an official position yet.

On Monday, I spoke with Matt Cohler, one of Facebook’s earliest employees and now a venture investor at Benchmark Capital. His concerns were broader than just wireless networks, which he said should be protected, too. Mr. Cohler said he was disturbed by the division that Google and Verizon seemed to have drawn between the public Internet, which would be subject to net neutrality principles, and new “enhanced services,” which would be free of such rules. “It is certainly concerning to me that there is language being used about the ‘public Internet,’” Mr. Cohler said. “That begs the question about what is not the public Internet.”

Facebook Breaks With Google on Net Neutrality - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

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