Verizon Executive Calls for End to Google’s ‘Free Lunch’. There is so much wrong with this argument that taking about it makes me want to hit someone. A few bullet points instead:

• Hearing a corporation begrudge another for earning money is so hypocritical and anti-capitalist that it makes me ill
• There’s nothing “free” about the infrastructure. Google pays some backbone for connectivity to the Internet. Verizon’s customers pay Verizon for connectivity from their homes to that backbone.
• Verizon and Google, near as I can tell, have no legal relationship, no contract, and even from a strictly technical perspective are hardly related.
• Google is just one website. When is Verizon going to send a bill to Lianza.org? (insert sarcastic remark here)
• If Verizon built a billion dollar infrastructure with no plans on how to profit from it, aside from crying to congress, then they’re idiots.
• It’s nonsense like this that’s probably causing Google to look into, effectively building their own internet. In general, I hate when companies go to congress. It usually means something bad. In this case, I hope it’s the first step in Verizon’s road to irrelevancy.