You don’t have to believe in karma to find the irony in the fact that the Web giant Google is finding itself in the cross hairs of the same pressure groups that it funded back when it was pushing heavily for “network neutrality.”
The latest cause célèbre among this crowd is “search neutrality,” the idea that somehow the government needs to get into the business of Internet search engines.
After spending millions funding network-neutrality advocates when it was trying to pass along its bandwidth costs to consumers and companies such as Verizon and Comcast, Google is finding itself being opposed by its former allies, who are bent on finding another sector of the Internet to take over.
Beyond the Orwellian name similarity, search neutrality is the same concept as network neutrality except that instead of controlling cable Internet bills, the government would be controlling what you do or do not see when you pull up Bing or Google.
That may not seem like such a big deal at first because most of us couldn’t remember the top hits for any of the search queries we use, but imagine if the concept were extended to other media: Instead of turning on the television and seeing the news your favorite TV or radio host has selected, you would see what the government told him he could say was the most important.
