Cable Companies: Google Threatens Net Neutrality, Not Us

The real threat to online freedom is from Internet giants like Google and Netflix, according to major cable companies. Those sites could block access to popular content and extort tolls out of Internet service providers, the cable companies warn.

The argument is the backward version of the usual fight over network neutrality. In a filing to the Federal Communications Commission, Time Warner Cable claimed that the controversy over Internet providers potentially charging websites for access to special "fast lanes" is a "red herring." The real danger, the cable company claimed, is that Google or Netflix could demand payments from Internet providers.

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association wrote that "a relatively concentrated group of large [Web companies] -- such as Google, Netflix, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook -- have enormous and growing power over consumers' ability to access the content of their choice on the Internet."

The NTCA argued that Google, which handles about 68 percent of all Internet searches, has far more control over access to other sites than any individual broadband provider does. "It makes no sense to focus exclusively on Internet access providers and ignore conduct by [websites] that threatens similar harms," the cable lobbying group wrote.