paulbalcerak + tumblr

Just when it looked like the Facebook Burson-Marsteller black-ops anti-Google smear scandal couldn’t possible get any more bizarre, because, after all, the principals are PR professionals, new details emerged about the botched campaign Friday as the debacle reverberated from New York to Silicon Valley.

On Friday, both companies remained in respective crisis-mode bunkers. Burson in particular seemed to be scrambling to contain the growing scandal, but its attempt to censor negative posts on its own Facebook page only fueled the spectacle into its third day.

Though the plan includes much of what net neutrality advocates have pleaded for, there are two glaring omissions to the proposed rules:

1. “We would not now apply most of the wireline principles to wireless,” says the proposal, “except for the transparency requirement.” Meaning that wireless carriers — including Verizon’s No. 1 ranked mobile subsidary — would be at liberty to provide preferential access to certain services, block others, and charge customers extra if they saw fit.

2. “Our proposal would allow broadband providers to offer additional, differentiated online services” that they could in fact charge extra for, and offer with limited access or with the requirement of specified equipment. The examples provided are vast: “Health care monitoring, the smart grid, advanced educational services, or new entertainment and gaming options.”

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt addressed the American Society of News Editors yesterday in D.C. As part of an apparent strategy of mollifying the media, he insulted the integrity and professionalism of bloggers and the quality of blogs. You know. Like this one.

“There is an art to what you do,” he said to the real journalists. “And if you’re ever confused as to the value of newspaper editors, look at the blog world. That’s all you need to see. So we understand how fundamental tradition and the things you care about are.”

…the Nexus One was arguably the least significant thing that Google announced today. The real news at Google’s event this morning—news that could shake up the mobile industry just as thoroughly as the original iPhone announcement—wasn’t a phone at all, but a URL: http://google.com/phone. An online storefront that, if successful, could knock one of the major pillars out the current, much-reviled US carrier model and result in faster, cheaper, more flexible service for mobile users. […]

In short, what Google announced today wasn’t just the Nexus One, but America’s first carrier-independent smartphone store; the Google store is now the only smartphone store in the US where, for every phone on offer, you first pick which phone you want, and then you pick a network and a plan on that network, choosing from among every network on the platform. So you can comparison shop among networks based purely on plan price and network quality, because you already have your phone picked out.