Up until now, Google has been able to avoid being hoisted by its own Net Neutrality due to the fact that the firm has not been directly involved as an ISP, but rather has been a partner of ISPs such as T-Mobile. We can point out all we want how they have more money and more market power than any ISP, but until they started providing the services that ISPs provide, we could only get so far.
But now, the day comes that Google gets further into the ISP business. Google is launching its own public DNS server. Ignore the misleading Register header, but read the content. The Google Public DNS is a direct launch of a service that ISPs provide, and that puts Google even further into the role of a gatekeeper. They can already make a site disappear from the Internet from the perspective of their searchers, with no transparency in the process whatsoever. Now they can make a site entirely inaccessible to its users because without a DNS lookup, your webpage, your email, your everything will create error messages instead of connectivity.
So here’s the question: Will Google obey its own Google/Obama/Genachowski Net Neutrality principles, or will Google Public DNS be as non-neutral and non-transparent as every single other service Google provides? Will Google deny DNS forwarding for any domain they deem a ‘spammer’ and deny ‘Pagerank’ to?
The world awaits an answer.