Claims that Google has abandoned its stance on network neutrality have been thoroughly debunked, as Cord and Adam note below. Over at Broadband Reports, Karl Bode explains that Google is seeking edge-caching agreements, not preferential treatment. Edge-caching involves Google housing its content on servers located inside consumer ISP networks, cutting bandwidth costs by allowing users to access Google content located just a few hops away.
Even though edge-caching doesn’t violate network neutrality as defined by Google, it’s still one of the many advantages that big players have over new entrants. Edge-caching isn’t a “fast track,” as the WSJ imprecisely terms it, but rather a short track—functionally, there’s a lot of similarity between the two. As Richard Bennett has explained time and time again, being close to end users is quite advantageous even without preferential treatment, as it eliminates the need to push vast amounts of data across the congestion-prone core of the public Internet.
We’ve heard about how edge-caching enables content providers and ISPs to cut their bandwidth bills and make more efficient use of finite network resources. Both of these are true, but there’s more—edge caching makes it much less likely that users will experience long load times or buffering hiccups while watching streaming video online. That high-def YouTube clip might take a few extra seconds to buffer if it has to make its way through congested central network exchanges—not so, however, if that video is housed just a few hops away, within your ISP’s network.
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