p2pnet - rss feed: Canadian ISP shanghaies Google search bar
p2pnet news | Product News:- A Google spokesperson says the company is “concerned” by the way Canada’s Rogers Communications has shanghaied the Google corporate name.
Or as Lauren Weinstein put it with respect to a Google search bar with a bunch of Rogers advertising copy above it, “What the blazes is all that ISP-related verbiage taking up the top third of the page? Why would Google ever give an ISP permission to muddy up Google’s public face that way?”
If a lesser person or organisation had done such a thing, there’d have been cries of outrage and accusations of copyright and/or trademark infringement flying in all directions.
SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada), for example, accused p2pnet of infringing its trademark when we lampooned it.
Rogers’ use of the Google name does far more than that.
The Rogers message above the Google search bar demands more money from customers allegedly transgressing account allowances.
“We are concerned about these reports,” someone at Google politely emailed the Toronto Star, going on:
“As a general principle, we believe that maintaining the Internet as a neutral platform means that carriers shouldn’t be able to interfere with Web content without users’ permission. We are in the process of contacting the relevant parties to bring this to a quick resolution.”
“Important information about your Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet Account,” says the message headline in big red letters.
It goes on:
Our records show that you’ve reached at least 75% of the 75 gigabytes (GB) per month limit provided with your Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Extreme service.
Additional usage above this limit is charged at $1.50 per GB, to a maximum of $50.00 per month.
Adds the Toronito Star:
“But Taanta Gupta, a Rogers spokesperson, said the company does not have email addresses for all of its subscribers. She compared the effort to messages sent to people’s cellphones when they are about to exceed their monthly airtime allowances. ‘We’ve done customer research on the technology and the feedback was good. So now we’re trialling it.’
“Rogers’ experiment is being touted by some as more evidence of the need for legislation that enshrines the so-called principle of ‘Net neutrality,’ which basically says that all Web content is created equal.”
Also See:
shanghaied - Canadian ISP hijacks Google, December 11, 2007
Lauren Weinstein - Google Hijacked - Major ISP to Intercept and Modify Web Pages, December 8, 2007
lampooned it - SOCAN threatens p2pnet. Again, August 2, 2007
Toronto Star - Rogers website messages irk Google, December 12, 2007
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December 12th, 2007 at 7:50 am
Taana Gupta had said “We have bandwidth limits on our Internet service and we’ve been looking for a way to communicate with customers in a proactive way when they reach 75% of their limit to give them a heads-up,” said Ms. Gupta. “This is not modifying a website or looking at what anybody is doing; this is an automated message that occurs when the customer is online.”
If you want to inform users about their bandwidth limitation then send an email. That excuse that you don’t know all of your users email is one of the most pathetic i have ever heard. I have never heard of an ISP providing service for is customers without providing them with an email address.
First the packet shaping now web page hijacking. What’s next Rogers? I’m soooo glad i’m not with them in any way, shape or form.
December 12th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Marvin,
I do NOT agree with what Rogers is doing. BUT I subscribe to shaw. They have no idea what my email address is, as I do not have an address setup with them. And say what you will email is NOT a secure way to send messages. but then again neither is this.
db
December 12th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
My power company, phone company, sattelite provider, Land-Lord, student loan holders, and insurance provider don’t have my email address, yet they still manage to communicate with me regarding my accounts some how. Wonder how they do it.
December 12th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
This is typical of rogers. Once when i moved they were unable to send the bill to my new house although they could send a tech there. It took a registered letter to Ted Rogers to get the issue solved after about 10 months. Rogers cant even locate its customers let alone communicate with them.
December 12th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
75 gb download limit? WTF? … staight from the website …. “Enjoy a fast service that’s great for email, sharing photos and files and extenstive Web surfing.” … ahem file sharing … in this day and age … 75 gb .. is that really enough? Rogers is pathetic.
December 12th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
75 GB in the age of multi-megabyte websites (Web 2.0, which is a bullshit movement in my not-so-humble personal opinion) is honestly a fairly low limit. “Extensive surfing” would easily put a browser of media-intensive websites over a 75GB per month cap. Downloading 1GB per day on multi-megabit high-speed connections is trivial. How ’bout that Netflix movie download service where you “watch instantly on your PC?” What are the chances that a movie buff subscriber will overrun their cap using something like Netflix’s instant viewing service?
When I pay for a connection, I pay for a certain connection speed up and down, and if the ISP can’t give me that speed on a constant basis all day, every day, then they SHOULDN’T OFFER THAT DAMN SPEED IN THE FIRST PLACE!
December 13th, 2007 at 2:21 am
I am so relieved I do not work for that company anymore.
December 14th, 2007 at 12:03 pm