Is the google honeymoon over? Privacy and net neutrality sacrificed for profit

UPDATE: Latest announcements from Google/Verizon posted here: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/joint-policy-proposal-for-open-internet.html

I’m still not terribly impressed personally, it reads to me like verizon won’t tamper with land-line traffic (Which is a moot point because they can’t anyway) but in the wireless spectrum all bets are off. So in other words, a bunch of furniture got moved around and it’s business as usual and with a bunch of smoke and mirrors google and verizon look like heros. The truth of the matter, is that wireless “is” the internet moving forward as far as consumers are concerned. Verizon is just another greedy telecom company just like AT&T and Sprint, and as long as those three companies are permitted to collude (if you don’t think they aren’t you are blind), tiered access is inevitable. My opinion stands.

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Anyone who has followed my articles knows that I have historically been a huge google fan and have generally supported most of their decisions and technology roadmaps. They’ve given us some great tools such as google maps, gtalk, google voice, chrome just to name a few. I’ve kept pretty quiet while they amassed biblical proportions of data with the promises of organizing it in a way that makes it more accessible to the masses. My motto is more information is good since my biggest peeve about the world are certain peoples’ efforts to suppress others with the weapon of ignorance. I stand by that but I am standing up now to hold Google’s feet to the coals in order to remind them they promised us they would not be evil. I followed them obsessively enough to have a general sense of there internal culture and philosophies to not really second guess that mantra to do no harm and make the best tools available. Have I been playing the fool all along? Has all that cash finally corrupted our open source champion? Is this the path that Microsoft once walked; once passionate about making the best software possible and then making it available to everyone only to go imperial under the tremendous weight of all that revenue? I am saddened and disappointed by the path that google is now walking as I fear that I cannot follow.

Google’s talks with verizon over tiered pricing of moving content flies in the face of their historical position of supporting net neutrality. Last I heard this was the exact kind of situation we (the rational world) were trying to avoid. Here is an article of Eric Schmidt essentially bullshitting his way through reconciling the companies previous stance with the current one. Here’s google’s own public policy over time regarding this topic. Anyone else smell something funky? Has google’s desire to stop getting picked on by the telecom companies moved it to capitulate and compromise on one of it’s core values?

Now couple this with the recent rumors of google’s experimentation with drone technology.  Seriously wtf? Was the fiasco in germany regarding illegally sniffing wifi networks not too soon before innovating other ways to spy on people? Google was not supposed to be evil and if it decides to change that mantra, the results will be disastrous for us all.  I am officially giving google a chance to make good on it’s promises. It’s my opinion that a company’s culture makes or breaks it and that when a company sacrifices it’s identity for profit, it is nothing more than walking shell (ie, zombie), and it’s a matter of time before it’s supporters will revolt.

Back off google, go back to what you are good at. Don’t be another Microsoft.