I don't know why people think Google will be any better.
Sure, now they're all about unicorns and rainbows, and talking the good game to get into what is a very capital heavy market. I can easily see Google switching to this exact same model to inject Adwords and extract even more money from subscribers once they're hooked. The difference is Google won't let you opt out.
I'm not even clear on whether ATT lets subscribers opt out. Does the offer say you can opt out of the wiretapping or that you can opt out of only the targeted ads? If you care about privacy, the DPI is the enemy, and the ad-targeting is irrelevant (you already have the ability to not retrieve ads, just blacklist the ad servers). But if what ATT offers for the higher price is only to not target ads, they'll trick most people into thinking they still have privacy, while the DPI is applied to everyone.
It's the difference between tracking only by server/client tricks (IP, cookies, hit logs etc.) vs. tracking by the ISP. The former can be avoided by client config, the latter only with a VPN.
Even if they let you supposedly opt out of the DPI, who trusts a corporation like this? And as adestefan notes, where do people get the assumption that Google is not doing the same?
It says that if you don't opt out they collect " webpages you visit, the time you spend on each, the links or ads you see and follow, and the search terms you enter" - but there is no statement that they're not collecting that info if you opt out. All they promise for opting out is not targeting ads with that data.
Yeah, but you'd pay about the same price for gigabit ethernet from a company that isn't trying to kill net neutrality. I'd much rather google spy on my web browsing (they probably do with chrome anyway), than Comcast.
Unless you're part of the minority that doesn't use Google for search, you're pretty much saturated with AdWords. I mean, maybe they'll add more ads on search result pages, knowing you can't switch away?
Google dominance in the ISP market will probably have its own share of problems for consumers, but I hazard that they will be different and less infuriating problems than what we get with the current status quo.
Sure, now they're all about unicorns and rainbows, and talking the good game to get into what is a very capital heavy market. I can easily see Google switching to this exact same model to inject Adwords and extract even more money from subscribers once they're hooked. The difference is Google won't let you opt out.