the execs at the telcos (perhaps the same people whose secretaries print their emails — who knows) have this great idea to make money off the internet: meter everything.
their argument is that google is getting a “free ride” on their network. well, no, they aren’t. they are paying for bandwidth at their end, and you, the end user, are paying on your end as well.
that’s like at&t saying they should get 5% of the profits of every telemarketing call. sigh.
for a great overview of this, listen to Burnie Burns’s SXSW keynote and read Brad Templeton’s essay. (Scot Hacker has notes from Burnie’s talk.)