Anyway, it’s very depressing and bewildering to me. Obviously I understand what Verizon gets out the deal. Under this proposal there will be no network protections for wireless access of any kind, which unless you think the future of the internet is shoving the same amount of bits over telephone and cable lines, is probably the most important thing to give protection. As if that isn’t a big enough loophole, there will also be no protections for anything referred to as “additional services”, which is vague. The examples given have been, so far, a lot of bullshit. FiOS TV, healthcare monitoring, 3D (seriously!) have been thrown around. Guess what? Those all work with TCP/IP. What this amounts to is anything new won’t have protections. Anything you can think of that isn’t being done on the web now could be called an “additional service”, why not! Twitter is new right? or does it have to be something that is not in a browser to fool the misinformed that there is some magic happening there? Maybe Apple’s app store, or Amazon’s video rental system, or Roku boxes. Are those “new”? I mean they run over the “public internet” and TCP/IP just fine now, but imagine a fun new world where Verizon could argue these are new functionality and should be excluded from protections.

Google is fundamentally misleading people with this. TCP/IP is a dumb, generative network. They know this of course, the person that helped create it, Vint Cerf works there now. As Doc Searls and David Weinberger said in their essay, “Adding value to the Internet lowers its value”. The value of the internet is that it is a dumb network with all the value at the ends. You can, now, create an app store, or Twitter, or FiOS TV, or healthcare monitoring, without changing the network or involving the carriers. This allows for rapid innovation. Can you imagine if Twitter had to meet with every ISP in the world before rolling out? It might be similar to how it was for them to get SMS support, which is still spotty by country, and occupies a huge amount of time and effort.

There is no reason to pretend that we need to draw some imaginary line in the sand and say that everything over this line is some “new service” which net neutrality would inhibit. Quite the opposite, net neutrality allows rapid innovation. Changing how the internet works and having everyone get into business arrangements with ISPs will slow innovation. Of course, the idea that Verizon cares about innovation is also a ridiculous lie.

What I really don’t get though, is what is in this for Google? People say, Verizon is a huge carrier for Android, but Google doesn’t really make money on Android, and even if they did, why make such huge concessions in the wireless space? It’s not like Verizon has any serious leverage, are they going to stop selling Android phones, and watch everyone switch to AT&T? Google’s whole plan for Android isn’t to make money by most analysts estimation, it’s to commoditize the smart phone OS. That goal is achieved no matter what Verizon does. Android offers the only practical response to the iPhone that Verizon can also fuck up and brand however they want, I really don’t see them abandoning that. Apple will simply not allow any proprietary rebranding or labeling, and will likely just sit it out in US markets until Verizon concedes (and maybe also moves on to LTE while they wait). The only other option is Windows Phone 7, which Microsoft seems to be working with AT&T for, but even so that is a gamble, and Verizon just got burned pretty badly with the Kin. So, seriously, what is Google getting out of this?

First impressions though. The processor/software is very fast, makes edge seem ok in my opinion. The thing gets some fingerprints! The keyboard is really more a matter of accepting your mistakes I think. The error correction is very very good, which basically makes up for the fact that about 1/3 of your keystrokes are errors. You can 2-thumb it as fast as index finger in my opinion, but it requires looking. I’ll probably get better at it, but it’s not terrible. I really need better gmail support. I want threading etc, I only want to see what’s in my gmail inbox, not 1000 mailing list emails that gmail filters out in the normal interface, and in the java phone app… I’m also very sad to see that the calendar app doesn’t look at ical feeds online, but relies on a sync to your computer. For now I’ll have to use gmail’s crappy mobile page. I honestly blame google for this more than apple. Gmail needs IMAP support, so I can see the tags as IMAP folders.

I never really considered this a selling point, but I am actually kinda happy that it can play music. I used to work on a microscope all day and was a heavy ipod user, like about 6 hours a day. The mentality of heavy usage is still with me, and for a long time I thought there was no point in a little ipod phone, because I needed a lot from an ipod. Now though, I am lucky if I can listen for any time at all, so I end up not taking my ipod with me very much, which in turn means I can never listen… So being able to listen to something occasionally will be nice. Not to mention the fact that while I love my Nokia E61, I really do miss having a camera.

Better integration of google search, maps, directions, chat, and email would add up to a useful little gadget. They already run all of those services, and many of them are even mobile already. They also acquired Dodgeball a long time ago and not much has come of that. Anyway, I’ll expect my google phone around Jan 2007 :)

This is what I ate for thanksgiving lunch. I had better food later
though.