Before I begin writing out my opinions and thoughts on one of the ridiculous decisions made on December 14th, 2017, I want you to know that if your law firm website is in the hands of a competent digital marketing agency, you will be fine.
So the FCC votes to repeal Net Neutrality and the internet world is now in a panic. No matter your political beliefs, this is not a good direction for anyone. This is one of many reasons to avoid a political conversation and instead focus on logic. The question is do you want the Government and large ISP owners to have control over speed lanes in the ISP world?
An ISP is something we use daily or also known as an Internet Service Provider. You probably use one over your mobile phone network through Verizon or AT&T. The companies that provide “high-speed internet” and internet access, in general, are your ISP’s.
We all love Google but their search engine is not an ISP. Google does own “Google Fiber” and services areas with internet but it has nothing to do with the Google search platform itself. In fact, with this repeal, Google would be paying more for their ISP access.
A great example has been used in the last couple of weeks and I will do my best to explain it here. Are you familiar with Netflix? How about Comcast? Now imagine you’re watching your favorite series on Netflix and you noticed a decrease in quality. You restart your Netflix app and try again but the problem persists. Now you’re frustrated and you’ve tried for multiple days but the quality has just not come back. As a user, you’re forced to look into other options. I mean, you LOVE your show but you can’t continue dealing with the lack of quality after a full day of work. You do some searches and find that the Hulu app happens to be an App provider as well so you start your free trial and it works GREAT!
What you did not know during this process is that Hulu is owned by Comcast and Comcast is an ISP or internet service provider. With this repeal, Comcast will have the power to slow down anyone trying to access an APP like Netflix on their ISP and force users to use services they themselves offer. So the only guys that REALLY benefit from this are the ISP owners.
The purpose of this repeal is to allow the major and multi-billion dollar ISP companies to make more billions.
As of right now, law firm websites are not affected by this repeal and your most average website will probably never be affected. Google’s platform and search engine are its own entity and even the ISP’s cannot affect their platform. Yes, Google might have to pay hefty lease fines for ISP access which will most likely result in higher PPC costs and other products Google has to offer. Remember, your firm search results are controlled by Google’s algorithm, not by the ISP.
The Senate has 60 days to reverse the repeal and for the sake of the digital marketing industry, we all hope it is reversed. Have questions? Call us! WebsLaw Team.
