Some critics of telcos and cable companies, Facebook, Google and many other large companies might attribute to those actors an unusual amount of nefarious intent, beyond the “normal” profit-maximizing behavior any economic actor (worker or employer) is expected to exhibit.
Over the past couple of decades, some, for example, have criticized internet service providers for customer-injurious practices such as data caps. One reason some of us do not tend to worry much about such possible abuses is that, given reasonable competition levels, actors are not able to extract unusual profits from their customers.
So it is that Phil Harrison, Google VP, does not believe data caps will prove harmful to Stadia, Google’s new video game streaming service.
"The ISPs have a strong history of staying ahead of consumer trend and if you look at the history of data caps in those small number of markets--and it’s actually a relatively small number of markets that have [data caps]--the trend over time, when music streaming and download became popular, especially in the early days when it was not necessarily legitimate, data caps moved up,” says Harrison. “Then with the evolution of TV and film streaming, data caps moved up, and we expect that will continue to be the case."
Eventually, we also will undoubtedly see that network neutrality rules were, in fact, not necessary or helpful.
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