My guess is that Google has given up on the timid Obama administration, and Obama’s timid FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, who falls over when the incumbent players say “boo”, so Google is throwing in the towel, and is negotiating with Verizon to pay extortion money to insure that it doesn’t get shut out of the telcos last mile:

Google and Verizon, two leading players in Internet service and content, are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.

The charges could be paid by companies, like YouTube, owned by Google, for example, to Verizon, one of the nation’s leading Internet service providers, to ensure that its content received priority as it made its way to consumers. The agreement could eventually lead to higher charges for Internet users.

Why is Google throwing in the towel?

Well part of it may be because Verizon is a major player in mobile phones, and they don’t want to be locked out:

People close to the negotiations who were not authorized to speak publicly about them said an agreement could be reached as soon as next week. If completed, Google, whose Android operating system powers many Verizon wireless phones, would agree not to challenge Verizon’s ability to manage its broadband Internet network as it pleased.

Or maybe it’s because all this hopey changey crap is nopey change crap:

Since the court decision, involving Comcast, in April, the F.C.C. has been trying to find a way to regulate broadband delivery, and that effort has been the subject of a series of private meetings at the agency’s headquarters in recent weeks. At the meetings, officials from the nation’s biggest Internet service and content providers, including Google and Verizon, have tried to reach a consensus on how broadband Internet service should be regulated in light of the decision. Those meetings continued this week, apart from the talks between Google and Verizon.

Yes, you have a group of people doing bad things, and destroying a public resource, and even though you have the authority to regulate, all you have to do is redefine broadband, and you are good to go, you are working to, “reach a consensus on how broadband Internet service should be regulated.”

That’s like banks trying to reach a consensus with bank robbers.

The incumbents are not valued members of the community, they are parasites who use an accident of history to attempt to act as highwaymen.

It’s not tough to reregulate this sh%$. You can’t now because a few years back, your Bushco predecessor made it so:

The F.C.C., meanwhile, favors a level playing field, but it cannot impose one as long as its authority over broadband is in legal doubt. It has proposed a solution that would reclassify broadband Internet service under the Communications Act from its current designation as an “information service,” a lightly regulated designation, to a “telecommunications service,” a category that, like telephone service, is subject to stricter regulation.

It’s very simple. Make a new finding. The old one was a payoff to the telcos for campaign bucks, warrantless wiretapping, and a failed free market ideology.

Make that ruling, and then, when you have a big stick, you can get to the rule making.

First, get a firm grip on their balls, and then negotiate.

Remember, we are dealing with The Phone Company here, and to quote Lily Tomlin, “We don’t care, we don’t have to…we’re the phone company.”

They may be essential, but they aren’t allies.

Then again, I’m being an optimist. If you look at the Obama administration’s actions, whether they be healthcare, financial reform, the Employee Free Choice Act, etc., it’s clear that their MO is to talk about reform, and then to give the malefactors what they want, so this could be by design, rather than by incompetence or cowardice.

In either case, treating the Obama Administration, and their FCC Chairman as the enemy and a bad faith player still gives activists the best policy, so I would suggest that this is what net neutrality activists do.

Avoid the veal pen conference calls, and light fires under them.