Online freedom advocates feared on Thursday that Google is changing allegiance in the battle to stop Internet service providers from giving preferential treatment to those that pay.
The concerns surfaced amid reports by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal that Google and Verizon are crafting a deal in which online traffic such as data-rich video from YouTube would move faster, for a fee.
Such an arrangement would be a major blow to the campaign for “net neutrality” in which no content is given priority treatment online.