Google, Verizon Said to Have Reached Deal on Web Traffic Rules
Verizon Communications Inc. has reached a deal with Google Inc. on how to handle Internet traffic, striking their own accord on policy being weighed by U.S. officials, two people briefed by the companies said today.
Context & Ripple Effects
This story has been building for years on both sides of the table. Back in February 2006, Business Week was already asking whether Verizon was a network hog — the opening round of the traffic-management fight — and in October 2007 Reuters reported Google quietly in talks with Verizon Wireless. By mid-2010, with U.S. officials actively weighing Internet traffic policy, the two adversaries-turned-partners have reportedly settled their own accord instead of waiting for Washington's.
The significance is procedural as much as substantive: the deal is sourced to 'two people briefed by the companies' rather than either company itself, so its terms remain unconfirmed. But the framing traveled fast — GigaOM's same-day pickup ran under the headline 'Did Net Neutrality Just Get Knifed in The Back?', capturing how open-internet advocates read a private Google–Verizon pact as an end-run around the rulemaking process.
First-order effects
- If confirmed, Google and Verizon immediately gain a jointly defined position on traffic handling that they can present as a model to officials still drafting the federal rules, converting them from subjects of regulation into co-authors of it.
Second-order effects
- Other large carriers and content platforms — AT&T, Comcast, the rest of Silicon Valley — now face pressure to cut their own bilateral accords before rules harden around whatever these two agreed, fragmenting the policy debate into competing private deals.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward traffic governance by carrier-platform contract rather than by regulator-set common carriage: whoever is big enough to negotiate directly gets guaranteed terms, while smaller sites inherit whatever defaults fall out of those bargains.
The trend: Internet traffic policy is drifting from regulator-drafted common rules toward private bilateral agreements between dominant carriers and dominant content platforms, with each major pact constraining what regulators feel able to impose.