By Rodney Brown

The joke around the Mountain Dew cooler (nerds don’t drink water) for years has been that Google Inc. is eventually going to take over the world. While that may have elicited the kind of uncomfortable chuckles one makes when faced with a funny but inconvenient truth, some people took it seriously, such as Microsoft Corp., with the launch of its new search engine Bing.

Now it seems the next stage of Google’s world domination has been revealed. Along with Verizon Communications Inc., Google announced that it had this amazing new proposal to “ensure” Net Neutrality – you know, that idea that no corporation can stop you from accessing any part or function of the Internet, even if that corporation is your ISP, like, say Comcast Corp., and you were accessing Bit Torrent downloads and they decided to shut off your connection because most Bit Torrent downloads are of illegal content, such as movies or songs.

But while the Googizon proposal – available for fun reading here – does on the surface seem to promote Net Neutrality, in fact it removes all wireless access to the Internet from the proposal because the technology is “different.” And the two titanic corporations propose a new, higher-speed Internet that would, in fact, be completely controlled by corporations such as Google, Verizon or Comcast, who would be able to charge more for high-bandwidth applications, like streaming HD movies.

Does that sound familiar? Anybody remember the crazy hype over Google’s decision to create and deploy a Gigabit Internet to select communities around the country?

At the time I (and many, many others) speculated on why Google would want to do such a thing. Its constant marketing drumbeat of “Do no evil” equating to doing good things just to be good had already been tarnished when it rolled out its own cellphone, the Nexus One, with no extra discounts beyond what any carrier like AT&T offers and one of the worst return fee structures on the market.

Now we know. The Google Gigabit fiber plan would allow them to test a tightly controlled, completely locked down, absolutely un-Neutral Internet. The possible goal? You want regular definition YouTube videos, use the “regular” Internet. You want the buffer-less, lossless HD stream of the latest action hit in 3-D? Sure thing, just pay an extra bazillion a month for this here newfangled Super-Internet! Kiss goodbye to any research and development on the regular Internet if that happens, folks.

Do no evil? How about the evil of creating a caste system of Internet access? How do you think that idea plays in urban communities like Dorchester or rural Berkshire communities like Chester that are just now able to look with some real hope at the idea of getting something better than dial up because of the broadband access policies that have ridden in on the stimulus funds from the Obama administration?

And under this Machiavellian scheme you could also kiss goodbye to ever even coming close to the kind of high speed at low cost Internet access other countries in the developed world have. High speed at high cost – sure, we’ll have that!

Google, I feel dirty for ever having bought your hype. You are no different than Enron or AIG – sacrifice the customer for the sake of return to shareholders, all the while trying to get those customers to smile because of all your happy, earnest double-talk, while the knife slips in.