John McKinnon

When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com Inc more than two decades ago, he sought to keep the online bookstore away from the government’s reach. He has said he looked into placing its headquarters on an Indian reservation as a tax-saving strategy. That was then. Today, Amazon, whose revenues in 2017 topped $177 billion, has become deeply entwined with the federal government. Bezos has built one of the largest lobbying operations in Washington, bigger than those of powerhouses such as Exxon Mobile and Walmart.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), the global body that oversees internet domain names, is preparing a significant tightening of its privacy standards in response to new European Union policies. The US government and some major American tech businesses warn the move, which is expected to be adopted within the next couple of months, will threaten their ability to track down bad actors on the internet. Investigators have long used the online tracking information to determine where malevolent activity on the internet originates.

Some White House officials view next-generation 5G wireless service as a “key area of competition,” and they say that the threat from China, in particular, justifies a “moonshot” government effort like the construction of the interstate highway system. A National Security Council memo urges the Trump administration to consider extraordinary efforts to clear the way for the new technology or even to help build it in order to counter the growing economic and political threat from China’s aggressive efforts to develop 5G. 

With the rules governing internet services set to be rolled back this week, service providers and their detractors are envisioning new models that could translate into a wider range of fees—both lower and higher. The current rules, expected to be all but eliminated by the Federal Communications Commission, require that internet service providers treat all traffic on their networks equally, a concept known as net neutrality.

Over just two days this week, the Trump administration has both sued AT&T to block its planned takeover of Time Warner and proposed allowing internet-service providers—like AT&T—to form closer alliances with content companies, like Time Warner. The two government moves seem to go in opposite directions, on the one hand restricting a major telecommunications merger and on the other giving internet providers broad new powers to shape their customers’ online experiences.

Federal regulators are expected to unveil their plans for reversing Obama-era rules that require internet service providers to treat all web traffic equally, a move that could fundamentally reshape the internet economy and consumers’ online experience. The changes, expected to be adopted at the Federal Communications Commission meeting in mid-December, would open the door to a wide range of new opportunities for internet providers, such as forming alliances with content firms to serve up their webpages or video at higher speeds and quality than those without such deals.  Such “paid prioriti

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, made a big bet on Hillary Clinton winning the 2016 presidential election. Employees donated $1.6 million to her campaign, about 80% more than the amount given by workers at any other corporation, and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt helped set up companies to analyze political data for the campaign. Schmidt even wore a badge labeled “STAFF” at Mrs. Clinton’s election-night bash. His support of the losing side didn’t go unnoticed among the victors.

CenturyLink and Level 3 Communications' proposed merger cleared its last government hurdle nearly a year after the two telecommunications companies announced their combination. The Federal Communications Commission approved the deal after similar nods by state regulators and the Department of Justice earlier in 2017. Worth $25 billion when it was announced in 2016, the deal’s close was delayed for weeks as regulators took their time to review its competitive effects.

The Federal Communications Commission is set to move forward with a plan that would blow up the rules that have governed the internet in recent years and essentially start anew, opening the door to fundamental shifts in consumers’ online experiences.

The final regulation is expected to take some time to develop. The FCC’s planned action begins a rule-making process that will likely take months, meaning the broadband internet business won’t change overnight. But eventually the new rules, depending on how the commission fills in the details, have the potential to allow new alliances between broadband providers and major entertainment, shopping, search and social media platforms. Those deals could allow cable and wireless broadband providers to lure consumers with higher speeds and better quality video for favored services, even as their choices are potentially narrowed. Critics note that the providers’ profits would probably grow in the meantime. Even supporters of the changes acknowledge the new rules could give internet providers broad latitude to offer new services that arguably are inconsistent with recent ideas about net neutrality. The biggest potential change would allow providers to offer paid prioritization, a practice that would allow some internet traffic to move more quickly or more reliably in exchange for payment to the carrier. The current rules bar paid prioritization.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai faces a tough challenge in coming days: rolling back network neutrality rules that he regards as an overreach, without reaching too far himself.

In the highly charged legal and political debate over how the Trump administration and Republican Congress would reverse the Obama-era rules, almost any misstep could be fatal to the effort. Chairman Pai could announce his game plan as soon as this month to start acting at the commission’s May meeting, according to some people familiar with the matter. His timing will be crucial. If Chairman Pai moves too fast to kill the existing rules, he risks provoking a court fight he could lose, according to some experts. But if he goes too slowly—potentially, by starting over with the government’s full rule-making process—he and his GOP allies might suffer politically, as online activists’ protests multiply.