If this is indeed the case of gaining comparative advantage in delivering its content faster to the end users through a biz dev deal, then more power to you, Google.
Imagine the internet bandwidth as a congested highway. I think people generally agree that having a carpool lane is a good idea to relieve congestion and reward those that aren't contributing as much to the problem. Equality doesn't always lead to efficiency, and a tier system can promote the most utility as long as the incentives are properly structured. Although we don't know all the details of what have been discussed b/w Google and Verizon, at least from what we know, it doesn't seem like a good deal for us little people. First, it incentivizes the publishers instead of the end users. Instead of charging a premium on the end users that want to acquire information faster (this isn't new -- cable/DSL is more expensive than dial-up), it proposes charging the web publishers to have their content delivered quicker to the end users. This will be equivalent to selling a carpool pass for cost that will allow you to always access the carpool lane regardless of whether you have passengers or not. Second, there is no mention of how much of the bandwidth will be for sale -- what will it be like if we were to have 3-4 car pool lanes on a 5-lane highway?
Deciding to put Brand/Copyright keywords for sale on AdWords seems, at best, a questionable move to me as well. Google's explanation is “[Google Search] users will benefit from seeing more relevant ads following a search on Google,” and okay, I will even buy that and concede the end users will marginally benefit. However, from the perspective of advertisers that own the rights to these words, I can't see how this change won't come across as a f-you move by Google. You can usually ride out the changes that affect your long-tail keywords, but these are high-traffic/high-conversion top keywords on which they didn't have to spend their marketing budget before. With the change, they'll now have to spend a significant chunk of their keyword marketing budget, as the few top keywords take up the majority of that, just to hold pace. The clear winner here is Google -- not only will these keywords bring in more AdWords revenue, it also cuts costs on having to maintain the AdWords/Legal teams that used to monitor these.
It will be interesting to see how these two developments unfold. While it will be too big of a leap to say Google has turned to the Dark Side, it definitely no longer is the darling with a quirky name that epitomized start-up success. It's a profit-churning machine that needs to keep its shareholders happy.
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