Here at Hands Off the Internet, we’ve tried to avoid focusing too much on any one specific advocate of net neutrality. But let’s turn from the political activists toward the leading corporate net neutrality backer, Google. As Bennett points out, in late November 2006 Google quietly applied for a QoS patent, which reads in part:

The present invention provides efficient and effective quality of service for information that is time sensitive (e.g., real time data)…In one embodiment of the present invention time sensitive information is cut through routed on a virtual channel and pre-empts non time sensitive information. In one embodiment a communication path probe is cut through routed via intermediate network devices to establish a communication path before other information is communicated from a originating source to a final destination…

Wait. Just. A second. Google wants to do QoS now? This patent sounds like the work of a Hands Off the Internet blogger, not the chief antagonist to the development of the next generation Internet. But maybe this comes as no surprise. While the activists are invested in the matter for political reasons, Google knows where their bread is buttered. And QoS just makes sense. Matt Sherman elaborates:

Google has no interest in neutrality of any sort, be it on the content level or the physical network. By cynically backing net neutrality regulation, they hope to subdue potential competitors through force of government. At the same time, they work to build advantages that are theirs alone.

As Sherman says, they have every right to pursue their economic benefit. But they should not expect to get away with telling the public (and their political supporters) one thing while they busily go about doing the opposite.