Vint Cerf speaks out on net neutrality

Posted by Alan Davidson, Washington Policy Counsel, DC office

Congress is holding a hearing tomorrow, Wednesday, November 8th, on "network neutrality" and a big new telecommunications bill affecting the Internet. Vint Cerf, our net neutrality guru, was unable to testify because of a little awards ceremony at the White House (congratulations, Vint!), but here is his letter to the Hill outlining our concerns. Microsoft will be testifying for our side, demonstrating that inside the Beltway, we agree on a lot.

You can follow the proceedings here -- and we hope you do. This bill could fundamentally alter the fabulously successful end-to-end Internet.


November 8, 2005

The Honorable Joe Barton
Chairman
Committee on Energy and Commerce
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

The Honorable John D. Dingell
Ranking Member
Committee on Energy and Commerce
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Chairman Barton and Ranking Member Dingell,

I appreciate the inquiries by your staff about my availability to appear before the Committee and to share Google’s views about draft telecommunications legislation and the issues related to "network neutrality." These are matters of great importance to the Internet and Google welcomes the Committee’s hard work and attention. The hearing unfortunately conflicts with another obligation, and I am sorry I will not be able to attend. (Along with my colleague Robert Kahn, I am honored to be receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Wednesday at the White House for our work in creating the Internet protocol TCP/IP.)

Despite my inability to participate in the planned hearing in person, I hope that you will accept some brief observations about this legislation.

The remarkable social impact and economic success of the Internet is in many ways directly attributable to the architectural characteristics that were part of its design. The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services. The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control. By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation. This has led to an explosion of offerings – from VOIP to 802.11x wi-fi to blogging – that might never have evolved had central control of the network been required by design.

My fear is that, as written, this bill would do great damage to the Internet as we know it. Enshrining a rule that broadly permits network operators to discriminate in favor of certain kinds of services and to potentially interfere with others would place broadband operators in control of online activity. Allowing broadband providers to segment their IP offerings and reserve huge amounts of bandwidth for their own services will not give consumers the broadband Internet our country and economy need. Many people will have little or no choice among broadband operators for the foreseeable future, implying that such operators will have the power to exercise a great deal of control over any applications placed on the network.

As we move to a broadband environment and eliminate century-old non-discrimination requirements, a lightweight but enforceable neutrality rule is needed to ensure that the Internet continues to thrive. Telephone companies cannot tell consumers who they can call; network operators should not dictate what people can do online.

I am confident that we can build a broadband system that allows users to decide what websites they want to see and what applications they want to use – and that also guarantees high quality service and network security. That network model has and can continue to provide economic benefits to innovators and consumers -- and to the broadband operators who will reap the rewards for providing access to such a valued network.

We appreciate the efforts in your current draft to create at least a starting point for net neutrality principles. Google looks forward to working with you and your staff to draft a bill that will maintain the revolutionary potential of the broadband Internet.

Thank you for your attention and for your efforts on these important issues.

Sincerely,

Vinton Cerf
Chief Internet Evangelist
Google Inc.

Search and replace

Posted by David Bercovich, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise Team

We’re hearing a fair number of stories from customers using our enterprise search products about how pleased their users are when they replace another search engine with a Google Search Appliance or a Google Mini. Customers like National Semiconductor, which saw search volume increase by 8-10x, and the National Park Service, where website complaints declined by a factor of 20.

These good results have inspired us to launch a search replacement program: any company that replaces their legacy search engine with a Google Search Appliance will receive a free Google Mini. Read more at www.google.com/switch.

Get lost and found on your phone

Posted by Matt Waddell, Google Mobile Team

You know that saying, "Wherever you go, there you are"? Now it makes sense to me, thanks to the new Google Local for mobile. In fact, it inspired me to write this song. Enjoy, and happy trails. (You'll need Macromedia's Flash Player to hear it.)



You can also save the music file to your computer. (Right-click in Windows, or control-click on a Mac, and save.)

Get lost and found on your phone.

Walkin' 'round a new town,
looking for a way around.
Askin' locals for their thoughts
'bout nearby Chinese restaurants...
they tell you to get lost --
get lost and found on your phone.

Take Google Local on the go,
get listings, maps and aerial views.
Call directly from your search results
and even keep search history too.
Download from Google today.

Wrestlin' with a paper map,
tryin' to figure out just where you're at,
how to get from point A to point B,
better leave the directions to J2ME.
So you can get lost --
get lost and found on your phone.

Zoom in, zoom out,
drag maps up down left right and you'll see...
where you want to go on your mobile phone,
in lucid satellite imagery.
Download from Google today.

Place Google Local in your hand --
first, you need a data plan.
Your phone must handle Java too.
It helps if it is somewhat new.
To download, here is what you do:

Browse Google dot com slash g-l-m on your desktop.
Tell us 'bout your phone,
and we'll show you a link to the file in a blink
and you're ready to start...

Gettin' lost on your phone.
Get lost and found on your phone.
Download from Google today.
Get lost and found on your phone...

Exquisite Beauty Josie Maran

This chestnut haired exquisite beauty is best known for her work in the Summer '98 and Fall '98 Guess? advertising campaigns. Josie Maran was born and raised just outside San Francisco in Menlo Park, and graduated from an all-girls private school. Although she now resides in Manhattan, California will always be considered home. Following the path of many other models, Maran did not initially aspire to be a model.

She was hanging out with her friends at a BBQ in her hometown three years ago when a woman asked her to be in a fashion show. This request was the beginning of her modeling career, since a modeling agent at the show spotted Maran and encouraged her to start modeling.

Presently managed by the Elite Model Management, Maran has graced such magazine covers as Fitness, Glamour and Teen, as well as Shape, Seventeen, Stuff, and Sport. Apart from her work in the Guess? advertising campaign, she also appeared in ads for Maybelline and American Eagle Outfitters. People may recognize her as the main female character in the Backstreet Boys video, "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)".

Although Maran has already had an impressive modeling career at the tender age of 20, she is still down to earth. Not only does she "look at life as an adventure", but she also enjoys learning about different people, cultures and countries. When not working, Maran makes time for her favorite pastimes: reading, hiking, traveling, and spending time with her family and friends.

With such a large number of young girls being approached by modeling scouts, she advises young aspiring models to finish high school, since there is always time for modeling after graduation. She also suggests to keep an open mind, not to take life so seriously and be deceived -- modeling is not as glamorous as it seems! It may not be glamorous, but with Maran's natural beauty, she makes modeling seem like second nature, despite the fact that she is only 5'7" tall(below the standard for female models).

Maran hopes to continue modeling for a few more years and eventually try her hand at acting.

Standing on the shoulders of this giant

Posted by Alan Eustace, VP of Engineering

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award given in the United States, and our own Vint Cerf has been recognized with this honor. He and Robert Kahn will be recognized in a White House ceremony next Wednesday.

Together, Vint and Bob designed the architecture and protocols 30+ years ago that are used today to implement and operate the Internet. The White House statement puts it succinctly: "Dr. Cerf and Dr. Kahn have been at the forefront of a digital revolution that has transformed global commerce, communication, and entertainment."

Vint and Bob join an impressive list of winners, including Alan Greenspan, Muhammad Ali, Aretha Franklin, Frank Robinson and Paul Rusesabagina. The official release is here.

We couldn't be more pleased for this recognition Vint is receiving on behalf of the vast Internet community that has realized the aspirations that he and Bob had so long ago.

Desktop grows up

Posted by Satish Sampath, Google Desktop Team

We always get a bit misty-eyed when a youngster graduates, so today we're dabbing back a few tears for Google Desktop, which leaves beta status behind with several powerful new features under its belt.

Fans of Google Maps will want to check out Sidebar's new maps panel, which lets you do all the usual cool maps stuff -- local business info, directions, sightseeing -- plus a new one: finding new locations relevant to the web pages and emails you're reading and showing them in your maps panel.

Like this:
Geeks, meanwhile, are invited to pore over our script support for writing plug-ins, which makes it far easier to create home-brewed Sidebar panels. And Sidebar has a bunch of new third- party panels, most notably GDTunes, which cycles through your iTunes collection (and even shows album covers).

Finally, let me invite developers and anyone else who's interested to check out our new Google Desktop blog for the latest news and info.

We've worked hard raising Desktop over the past two years. It's great to see it growing up so nicely.

Preserving public domain books

Posted by Adam Mathes, Associate Product Manager

The world's libraries are a tremendous source of knowledge, much of which has never been available online. One of our goals for Google Print is to change that, and today we've taken an exciting step toward meeting it: making available a number of public domain books that were never subject to copyright or whose copyright has expired. We can show every page because these books are in the public domain. (For books not in the public domain we only show small snippets of the work unless the publisher or copyright holder has given us permission to show more.)



Our partner libraries –- the University of Michigan, Stanford, Harvard, the New York Public Library, and Oxford –- have preserved and nurtured these books through decades of wear and tear, and we're excited to play a part in ensuring that they, and the knowledge they contain, will be more accessible than ever for decades to come.

Every page of these books is fully available online, so you can study, for instance, an illustrated version of Henry James' Daisy Miller (the opening illustration on page one is pictured here) from Harvard's Henry James collection, or read how Private Joseph Taylor got his medal of honor in style, in The Seventh Regiment Rhode Island Volunteers in the Civil War, 1862-1865, from the University of Michigan.

And since every word is searchable, as you are browsing The Wealth and Biography of the Wealthy Citizens of the City of New York -- from the New York Public Library's collection -- you can find that there were more grocers than bankers listed in 1855.

From Stanford's collection, there are government documents detailing what the Fiftieth U.S. Congress spent money on in 1888, or the results of investigations into the fur-seal and other fisheries in Alaska.

See for yourself what some of these libraries have -- using the date operator, and searching for the phrase [steam engine], you'll find different results in books no longer under copyright in the U.S. and books in the public domain internationally. And all that you can find today is still just a small taste -- call it part 1 -- of what you'll be able to find tomorrow, as Google Print helps users discover, search and access the world's rich literary history in ways that were previously impossible.

p.s. If you're interested in other projects that make public domain books available, check out the Million Book Project's The Universal Library in the U.S. and in China, and their Digital Library of India as well as Project Gutenberg's public domain catalog of books.

Updated with p.s.