NetworkWorld’s Johna Till Johnson is definitely not being evil with this cool blog on Google:

“Google wants net neutrality? Great! Virtue begins at home. Let the company first propose federal regulation of all search engines to ensure ‘neutral’ rankings of search results, and to guarantee that information isn’t getting concealed (or revealed) for political purposes. Let’s see Google regulate itself — then we’ll consider regulating its competition.”

The interesting thing about Johnson’s Google critique is that when it comes to data management on the network, she gets it. Only a few weeks ago, she posted a column on the problem of applying yesterday’s “dumb-pipe” approach to todays’ Internet, writing:

“The lesson of the Internet (and of free-market democracy, at least so far) is that more freedom is generally preferable, even at the cost of limited performance guarantees. But ‘generally preferable’ doesn’t mean ‘true at all costs’….

In network terms, the network should be dumb enough to permit freedom, but smart enough to stay functional under stress. In other words, add just enough intelligence to keep the ‘net functional, but not so much that it breaks.”

That’s a pretty good summary of what the net neutrality fight is all about. The “bandwidth glut” from earlier this decade has disappeared faster than the latest Lindsay Lohan movie. With network operators reporting 60 percent annual data growth, there isn’t any choice but to add a limited amount of network intelligence to keep the web functioning properly.

Sure Google objects, but as Johnson notes about Google’s commitment to neutrality:

“Try Googling Google, and you may notice something surprising: very few negative comments on the company pop up. Odd, no?”