October 2014

Vanity Fair held its New Establishment Summit in San Francisco, where old-media titans like Bob Iger of Disney could schmooze with new techies like Evan Spiegel of Snapchat. The “up here”/“down there” divide was evident throughout the two-day conference. The problem was, these Down There executives weren’t sure if the tech moguls wanted to join forces, buy them or destroy them. (Maybe it’s all of the above, just not in that particular order.) It was like watching tourists go cage-diving with sharks, the scent of blood and chum in the water, and as the sharp teeth and fins become visible, wondering if the bars are strong enough to keep the predators at bay.

Joaquín Almunia -- who is preparing to step down as the European Union’s competition commissioner in a few weeks -- criticized what he called the “defensive” and “irrational” response by European politicians to his investigation of Google, and said separately that his department may launch more probes into alleged sweetheart tax deals for multinational companies. He said the political pressure that preceded his decision to reopen the four-year-old Google case for a fourth time was unprecedented. The commission has rejected three settlement offers by Google. He said the response partly reflect fears that Europe’s high-tech companies have fallen behind their US rivals.

[Commentary] Several years ago, someone came up with a potent worst-case scenario for an Internet without network neutrality: it would look like cable TV. With the option to slow down or block individual sites and programs, Internet service providers would give you the Internet equivalent of basic cable, then charge extra for "News" and "Hollywood" bundles with Digg and YouTube instead of CNN and Showtime.

So what happens when, after almost a year with no net neutrality rules, a company whose name is synonymous with premium cable jumps online? "I think cable operators are aware that more and more content is going to move online," says John Bergmayer of Public Knowledge. "Instead of trying to stop that trend, I think cable companies would just like to find ways to control it -- either by offering the online content themselves or coming up with ways to get online video services to pay them." The most extreme version of this would be throttling a particular Internet service: if you don’t pay a little extra, HBO Go slows to a crawl, and the cable-fication of the Internet begins.

Whether or not the Federal Communications Commission adopts meaningful network neutrality rules, as it’s promised to do this year, HBO is still a step towards a world where everything lives on the Internet by default. Even if it sides with ISPs instead of Netflix, it’s no longer literally tied to traditional television. Is the Internet heading the way of cable? "I don’t know. I think today it looks like cable," says Matt Wood of net neutrality advocacy group Free Press. "It sounds to me like this is probably an improvement."

When consumers search the web, it’s getting harder from them to tell the regular “organic” search results from the paid advertisements that appear nearby. Critics suggest people are being bamboozled, and that regulators should force Google and others to do more to identify what’s an ad and what’s a search result. Is that a fair conclusion? While no one likes deception, any move to regulate must also take account of the increasing sophistication of online consumers, and the changing nature of search results and the web itself. Meanwhile, it’s unclear how much power the Federal Trade Commission -- the agency in charge of stopping deceptive advertising -- has over search results in the first place. Here’s a look at the debate and what might happen next.