[bstrong]

I'm not sure how the fact that it's a server-side change makes it ok. I think that everyone would agree that turning off congestion control entirely on the server side would be bad and would negatively impact other flows.

The question, then, is whether this change is significant enough to increase internet congestion (and therefore packet loss for others). This is a subject of heated debate at the moment.

[dedward]

It doesn't make it okay, it just makes it not a "net neutrality" issue. It's more of a "good neighbour" issue.

[cperciva]

Network neutrality says "you shouldn't be able to buy better network performance than your competition". What google is doing is violating standards in order to give themselves better network performance than their competition.

It's not exactly the network neutrality issue, no; but it's related, and where it differs, I'd say that what Google is doing is worse -- at least having companies pay for packet prioritization won't cause internet congestion collapse.

[bstrong]

Fair point. In retrospect, invoking net neutrality wasn't really called for.

[spudlyo]

Are neutrality and hostility mutually exclusive?

[pyre]

Being a bad neighbor doesn't imply hostility.