I hope you're right. Net neutrality is a stupid issue and always has been. It's not so much an issue as a grab-bag of grievances against the capitalist system conducted by puppet masters of various stripes. It hasn't been limited to commercial interests, as the "public interest" lobby was on it before Google was. One strong element is disenfranchised POTS regulators trying to preserve their relevance, for example. This is very evident in DC.

The auction-pricing/exclusive-deals issue, whatever one wants to call it, is quite real and important - but it's an economics matter, not a civil-liberties topic. Conflating various issues is a common rhetorical technique - but the various concerns should be treated on their own merits. And pretending everyone has the same interests eventually leads to unhappy outcomes when it becomes obvious that's untrue.

It will be interesting to see what type of deals they make - as these types of things are never cost free. And I don't mean price.

I have utilities (natural gas wholesale supply and transport) background - and these types of deals are never cost free.

Google/facebook/twitter/bandwidth hogs are going to have to make some tough calls if they play this game.

First up - advertising - flash ads may make better sales pitches to punters (except those with flashblock/adblock) but are bandwidth hogs. Has google etc done the math on revenue (hog sized ads vs text ads) and the cost of bandwidth they are going to have pay for?

If it has to do with ads, I'm *sure* Google has run various revenue/cost numbers! That's their business, after all (search is what they do to get audience, but the money comes from advertisers).

I haven't finished thinking this through but what type of deal are they going to do?

If they (google, whoever) pay for priority for each visitor, then essentially they are selling off part of their revenue stream to the bandwidth providers. Do they really want this? The bandwidth providers do.

If they pay for fixed capacity - what happens when something big happens (war, pop craze) - and they hit the purchased capacity limit.

"If it has to do with ads, I'm *sure* Google"
I wouldn't be - would not be the first time I have seen management, finance & the regulatory team run ahead of operations.

They would be better off not playing this game, but it appears they have crossed that bridge.