Remember a long, long time ago when no major network streamed programs over the net? That was last year.

Now they all do, which is why the Wall Street Journal story that CBS is about to announce a flurry of deals to put shows online seems almost anticlimactic. If you can’t get enough of CSI or Katie, then rejoice. But the fact that once-blockbuster deals like this are now commonplace shows how dramatically networks have migrated to the web since only last year.

But it’s also a timely reminder of how these deals are placing unprecedented strain on the web’s capacity. Internet traffic growth surged past capacity growth last year. Average traffic was up 75 percent while capacity grew only 47 percent, according to the folks at TeleGeography.

Any way you look at it, the web’s capacity has to ramp up and that’s expensive. Now you know why Google and eBay are trying to so hard to avoid paying their share of these costs by lobbying for neutrality regulations. And it’s worth repeating: If they don’t, guess who will?

Does Google’s right hand know what its left hand is doing? That’s the obvious question given this article from Reuters:

New Internet TV services such as Joost and YouTube may bring the global network to its knees, Internet companies said on Wednesday, adding they are already investing heavily just to keep data flowing.

Google, which acquired online video sharing site YouTube last year, said the Internet was not designed for TV.

It even issued a warning to companies that think they can start distributing mainstream TV shows and movies on a global scale at broadcast quality over the public Internet.

“The Web infrastructure, and even Google’s (infrastructure) doesn’t scale. It’s not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect,” Vincent Dureau, Google’s head of TV technology, said at the Cable Europe Congress.

The phoniness is so obvious, it’s eye-rolling! Google paid the princely sum of $1.65 billion to acquire YouTube precisely to increase video traffic online. Now the company is objecting to Internet-based television because it… well, increases video traffic online.

Everyone knows that consumers’ TV habits are changing. In January 2006, not a single major network streamed its programming. Today, they all do. Add in YouTube and iPod downloads and you see why commentators have been using the phrases “TV viewers” and “paradigm shift” in the same sentence a lot.

Google’s obviously staking its claim to consumers’ eyeballs by planting scary stories designed more for public consumption than serious analysis. Honestly, you can’t get more transparently self-serving than this.