This article was written by Aida Edemariam, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 30th August 2010 19.00 UTC

Sad news for those of us with fond memories of long minutes lost in the more arcane histories of English words: the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which a team of 80 lexicographers has been working on since 1989, will probably never be printed. “The print dictionary market is just disappearing,” Oxford University Press CEO Nigel Portwood told a Sunday newspaper. It will still be available online – in fact, in December, the web version is being relaunched, including for the first time the historical thesaurus of the OED, which contains almost every word in English from Old English to the present. The problem is that it is a tad pricey: £7 plus VAT for a week’s access; £205 plus VAT for a year. Luckily, there are alternatives:

Collins

This paper’s preferred arbiter, in its print version, the pocket version is available free online – though, it must be said, boasting some rather confusing orthography. The second entry for the word “help”, for example, reads “2. to contribute to, to help Latin America’s economies” – some italics, or brackets, or bold letters would help. You can buy a 1,888-page hard copy for £70, or download it for a mere £9.99.

Chambers

The Chambers 21st Century Dictionary, with its 75,000 words and phrases and 110,000 definitions, is free online. This is much more presentable, with quite satisfying lists of definitions, and examples of the word in context. A little bit of etymology, too. Chambers is not, however, accepting new subscribers to the full shebang – 170,000 words and phrases and 270,000 definitions. The 1,871-page print version sells for £40.

Macmillan

The definitions are short and to the point, with no information about sources or background (though there are sample phrases, and a direct link to a thesaurus). It also lets you submit words of your own, and gives you the option of British or American English. Macmillan’s particular wheeze, useful to learners of English, is to highlight the 7,500 core, high-frequency words in the English language: three-star words are the most frequent; one-star words less so. It’s free online, but you’ll pay £24 for a hard copy.

OneLook

A real discovery, this online site trawls 18,967,499 words in 1,060 different dictionaries – all the major English ones, but also dictionaries for specific subjects (business, art, medicine) or languages. You can customise your search – only in slang, for example; compare entries in different dictionaries; do a wildcard search (asterisks, hashtags or @ symbols account for the characters you can’t remember), or a reverse search (type in “being tried twice for the same crime”, for “double jeopardy”, for example). It doesn’t, however, link to a Scrabble dictionary, which some might feel is an important omission.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Groups who work with the victims of cyber-stalking say efforts to tackle the problem are being delayed because Internet Service Providers will not take action.

View post:
‘A relentless barrage of abuse’

This article was written by Anne Wollenberg, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 26th August 2010 10.05 UTC

Churnalism travels fast, especially in silly season. Stories about a supposed new tax on bloggers in Philadelphia have bounced round the US media, with buzzphrase “Philly blog tax” appearing everywhere from CNN to New York Magazine. “Philly wants to tax bloggers”, said Gawker. “How does a financially strapped city [...] make a little cash? Tax the bloggers,” said the New York Daily News. “Freedom of speech under attack as Philadelphia becomes First City To Impose A Tax On blogging” reads one local blog headline.

But there is no blog tax. Philadelphia levies a licence fee on small businesses, which is no more a tax on bloggers than the UK’s VAT is a tax on chocolate buttons.

The rumour started when the Philadelphia City Paper ran an article last week headlined “Pay up”, which detailed how blogger Marilyn Bess received a letter demanding 0 for a “business privilege licence”. “I’ve been very interested to see how many writers addressed this topic and used my name without talking to me,” Bess told MediaGuardian. “One of my favourite articles in this mess said: ‘She probably assumed she was getting a summons or jury duty’. I thought no such thing.”

The City Paper story appears to accuse the city of singling out bloggers – if you only read the strapline, that is. “Got a blog that makes no money? The city wants 0, thank you very much.” The body copy explains the rather more mundane truth, but why let the facts get in the way of a good sell? The US media certainly hasn’t.

Staff at Philadelphia’s department of revenue seemed surprised when MediaGuardian got in touch to ask if it had decided any such thing (it hasn’t). “There has been quite a bit of sensationalism and misunderstanding,” a spokesperson said. “Philadelphia does not have a licence or tax just for bloggers [but] does require anyone doing business and generating revenue for profit to register and get a business licence with the City of Philadelphia.” This costs a year, or a lifetime fee of 0, and is only for those making money. “A blog or website that doesn’t generate revenue would not be considered a business.”

The problem is “people not taking five seconds to realise it’s not a blog tax, it’s a tax on all the commerce in the city,” says Sean Blanda, co-founder of tech news site Technically Philly and an ex-employee of the City Paper. “But people thought it was an affront to free speech. It says nothing about free speech.” As Blanda wrote on his blog : “There is no ‘blog tax’ in Philadelphia. None.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

A Tel Aviv hotel putting Israeli art front and center by Brad Grossman While plenty of hotel concepts promote art as a selling point, few manage to make the experience meaningful beyond a picturesque marketing device. Not so with Tel Aviv’s Art+ Hotel which fluidly blends boutique hotel with an art program focused on local artists—providing an equally relaxing stay for art enthusiasts as for anyone just seeking a little respite from the bustling city surrounding it. Each floor of the five-story building is dedicated to one Israeli artist, and with new works rotating in every few months—as well as the Gordon Street galleries and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art just blocks away—the hotel makes a great jumping-off point for getting to know the city’s art scene. Or, just hang out on the modern lobby’s couches and browse their library full of art and design-focused books and magazines. If you prefer to just lounge in your room, a set of minimalist furniture provides the necessary serene background for the artistic amenities, as well as features like a flat-screen TV and full bathroom. “Looking Good,” charmingly etched into each mirror is an Art+ Hotel signature, and free Internet access makes the venue all the more attractive for business and recreational travelers alike. While there’s no room service, one of the hotel’s shining features is a daily breakfast spread of pastries, fruits, vegetables and homemade cheeses. Guests can also mingle and discover Israeli wine at a happy hour offered most nights. Other great features include the Art+ Hotel’s own taxi service for transport to and from the airport, as well as free bikes to ride around town or to visit the beach (which is just a few blocks down the street). Rates vary depending on dates of travel, but typically start at around $180 per night. To book, visit the Art+ Hotel website.

Read the original:
Art+ Hotel

Microsoft is investigating how an eagerly anticipated Xbox game appeared on the internet three weeks ahead of its official release.

Go here to read the rest:
Microsoft probes Halo game breach

This article was written by Martin Wainwright, for guardian.co.uk on Sunday 22nd August 2010 11.26 UTC

In the beginning was the word. And then came 140 words. And at the rate that Twitter versions of the Bible are developing, there could be more than 140,000 words in the next few months.

Rivalling the speed of Creation, as described in the first two chapters of the book of Genesis, tweeting the holy book has spread rapidly across the internet since the Guardian highlighted a Durham evangelist’s daily version last week.

News of Chris Juby’s almighty precis of scripture’s 800,000-odd words to 1,190 daily tweets (@biblesummary) has prompted other versions from eastern Europe to the US, as well as a wider airing for similar projects already under way.

Among these is the “Twible”, tweeted daily by American author and academic Jana Riess, who shared Juby’s feeling that the good book needed better reading, but with added jokes.

While Juby’s Twitter Bible plays things straight, the Twible adapts the Old Testament to the light-hearted quipping familiar in everyday Tweets. The story of Moses in Exodus, chapter two, for instance, is reduced to: “Baby Moses: I’m cool with floating down the Nile in a basket, but who is this Egyptian chick I’m supposed to call Mom?”

Riess, who converted to Mormonism as an adult, started condensing after hearing an Easter Sunday sermon that included a tweet of the Bible’s opening words in Genesis, chapter one. Unlike 32-year-old Juby’s staid version, which tops off the actual text’s “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth” with 17 equally straightforward words, Riess’s effort is played for laughs.

Using the online abbreviations BRB (be right back) and LOL (laugh out loud), it read: “Day 1: Lighting system installed. BRB. Days 2-6: Some assembly required: sky, plants, cows, people. Left humans in charge, LOL. Day 7: Siesta.”

Riess tracked it to another Twitter Bible project called What Would God Tweet (@WWGT), by an anonymous prophet called The Holy Ghostwriter.

“I wanted to find humour in the good book too,” says Riess. “The project started with the one key hermeneutical (interpretative) question I felt no one was asking about the Bible: what would the Onion say?”

She escapes to the American equivalent of Private Eye in times of stress, such as her current tweeting episodes. “Lord help me, I am now dissecting the dynasties in the First Book of Kings.”

The Twible’s way of coping with all the begetting and lists of names will be based on its super-subbed paraphrase of the whole of the Book of Leviticus: “Don’t eat this. Don’t screw that. Don’t touch this. Don’t DO that. Thus saith the Lord.”

Other variants include TheFakeBible (@FakeBible), which, typically, is going through the huge operation not by chapter but verse by verse. There are also slightly longer summaries, including a “100-minute” edition and a version in text message speak.

And, of course, there is the original biblical text itself. No tweeter has yet matched the economy of words in the gospel according to St John, chapter 11, verse 35. It reads simply: “Jesus wept.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Pharmacies in Utah and Illinois are at the heart of an illicit nationwide network providing prescription drugs over the internet, federal agents state in court papers filed in two cities.

Read the original:
Feds crack down on online pharmacies

How the internet is changing the language we use

More:
Do you speak lulz?

This article was written by Josh Halliday, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 10th August 2010 09.50 UTC

Google and Verizon have put forward a joint policy framework aimed at allaying fears the two companies could bring an end to the internet principle of net neutrality.

In a joint op-ed in the Washington Post today, the Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, and his Verizon counterpart, Ivan Seidenberg, outlined their “commitment to an open internet”, saying “blocking and degrading internet traffic is antithetical to the principles of openness and consumers’ expectations”.

Long-running talks between the US media and telecoms regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a host of big internet companies – including Google and US telecoms operator Verizon – broke down last week amid reports of the two companies trying to forge a deal in private, something they both denied.

But the two companies have been discussing the concept of net neutrality – an internet tenet stating that all content should be delivered at the same speed on a level playing field – for some time.

In a post on the Google Public Policy blog late yesterday, Alan Davidson, the search giant’s director of public policy, and Tom Tauke, Verizon’s executive vice president of public affairs, outline the future for net neutrality in the US.

Here’s some initial reaction from around the web:

Richard Adams, the Guardian

“One cynical way of reading this is to think of Google and Verizon as two syndicates carving out a piece of the action: Google gets a commitment to net neutrality over the standard, wired internet that people access via computers at home or at work, while Verizon gets far weaker regulation on wireless networks accessed via smartphones.

“Why does Google feel it needs to work with Verizon on this? Verizon in the US is in a uniquely powerful position of straddling both wired and wireless access, since it operates one of the two major wireless networks (AT&T running the other), while also being a major wired ISP competing with the likes of cable provider Comcast.

“[...] Needless to say, the lack of regulation applying to wireless access and the possibility of future ‘designated services’ doesn’t please anyone outside the telecoms industry, or indeed at the FCC.”

Dan Gillmor, Salon.com

“But here’s the rub: You should not trust Verizon or other carriers, or Google for that matter, to follow through in ways that are truly in the interest of the kind of open networks the nation needs. Throughout the conference call, we kept hearing references to the ‘public internet’ – an expression that leads inescapably to something else.

“If Schmidt was telling the truth when he said Google’s overwhelming focus will remain on the public internet, such as his promise that YouTube will remain there, that’s great. I have no reason to disbelieve him, and Google’s track record to date is strong on this issue. But plans change, managements change, and corporate goals change.”

Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic

“If open networks are good, why should wireless be different? They don’t make the case in these documents for why the ‘unique technical and operational characteristics’ should change the fundamental underlying principle of the network. That’s not to say there isn’t a good argument, but it’s certainly not in either the blog post or the policy document.

“More troubling is that the language of the wireline net neutrality is squirrely. The companies suggest that they would be maintaining ‘net neutrality’ on wireline services, but they’d allow ‘additional or differentiated services’ over their networks.

“[...] Again, this is just a policy paper, but this seems like a slippery definition of what is and is not internet traffic. Why not carry these ‘additional services’ over the internet, where they would be subject to the net neutrality rules that these companies claim to think is a good idea?”

Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOm

“The good news is nothing about this compromise has any teeth without the FCC deciding to made it part of its official rules on network neutrality. However, given the FCC’s precarious position as a broadband regulator and a lack of support from Congress on this issue the temptation to accept this compromise as good for everyone may force a version of network neutrality that leaves mobile, one of the fastest areas of innovation on the web, out of the new rules. It also enables an alternative version of the public internet that could lead to the creation of a first-class and a second-class system of packet delivery.”

Siva Vaidhyanathan, law and media studies professor, quoted by NPR

“I’m concerned [that] if the FCC uses this as a template, we will create a backwater on the traditional internet and allow for a lot of top-down control in the very areas where use seems to be moving.”

John Bergmayer, Public Knowledge

“Overall, there’s a lot that’s bad about this proposal, and it shouldn’t form the basis of legislation in Congress or of rules by the FCC.

“The biggest problem with the framework is that, while purporting to support ‘the open internet’, it draws illogical distinctions on the basis of what technology you use to access the internet, and between ‘the public internet’ (Verizon’s mantra on the press call) and ‘additional online services’.

“If the Verizon/Google proposal is adopted, the window of openness that allowed companies like [Schmidt's] to thrive and grow will be closed. The internet could be frozen in 2010, with companies like his on top.”

Karl Bode, Broadband DSLReports

“The idea that Google and Verizon think nobody will notice they’ve proposed a network neutrality solution that excludes wireless while nuzzling their multi-billion-dollar Android partnership seems almost obnoxiously cocky. Arrogance is par for the course for Verizon, but assuming your audience is comprised of complete morons seems like new territory for Google.

“It seems like common sense that telecom regulators, not the sector’s wealthiest players, should be dictating the beat of this particular policy drum. The fact that this isn’t the case speaks to the FCC’s murky leadership over the past year. The framework used to create any internet policy rules shouldn’t be a game of policy make believe focused on protecting the revenues of the wealthiest constituents – it should be the brain trust of a broad collective, including consumers, smaller carriers, and truly independent experts.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article was written by Josh Halliday, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 5th August 2010 14.11 UTC

Amazon today launched its UK Kindle Store, with more than 400,000 ebooks now available to download. The price and scope of the digitised books marks a significant point in Amazon’s move towards domination in the ebooks market.

Up against increasing competition in the market, Amazon last week unveiled two more advanced versions of its Kindle e-reader.

The company is looking to pick up consumers who cannot afford Apple’s iPad. In the US, Amazon has slashed the price of its Kindle device to compete with the iPad, which uses the iBook store to sell ebooks.

More than 80 of the 100 Nielsen UK bestsellers are available to download from the new UK store, retailing at relatively low prices. One of the new bookstore’s featured authors, the late Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson, last week became the first author to sell more than 1m ebooks through Amazon.

Larsson’s novel The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is currently second in the Kindle store’s bestsellers list and available for £2.70 to UK buyers.

“The Kindle Store offers the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read at low prices,” said Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle content at Amazon.

In the US, digital books account for 6% of consumer sales. Many publishers now realise the need to follow the direction of the market.

Amazon’s new Kindle devices are lighter, faster and smaller than the previous generation. The Wi-Fi model costs £109 in the UK, while the model supporting both Wi-Fi and 3G will retail at £149 – both around £25 more than the US retail price.

Previously, UK Kindle owners had to get their device shipped from the US, with subsequent book purchases retailed in dollars.

Greg Greeley, vice president of European retail at Amazon, said: “The opening of the UK Kindle Store allows customers to buy content in pounds sterling and offers a great shopping experience including UK customer reviews, recommendations, bestseller lists and customer service.”

Though Amazon rarely releases definitive figures on Kindle sales, the company says the original device has sold “millions” – it has been the bestselling item on Amazon.com for two years running.

Last month, the company revealed that it sold 143 Kindle ebooks for every 100 hardbacks sold in the previous three months in the US, although no figures were released about the relative proportion of paperbacks sold in this time.

Amazon and Apple face investigations into their ebook retailing. The office of Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut attorney general, says that the companies could be “potentially depriving consumers of competitive prices” and that the burgeoning nature of the market “warranting [a] prompt review of the potential anti-consumer impacts.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Image via Wikipedia

This article was written by Ed Pilkington in New York, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 13th August 2010 17.10 UTC

Rupert Murdoch is planning to test his belief in the transformative power of the iPad to bring news to the younger generation by launching a new digital newspaper for America.

The new operation, disclosed by the Los Angeles Times, will be geared specifically to younger readers and to digital outlets such as the iPad and mobile phones. It will pool the huge editorial muscle of Murdoch’s combined holdings within News Corporation, which include the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the financial wire service Dow Jones, as well as his newspapers in the UK and Australia.

But according to the LA Times, it will publish customised content that will be tailored both to the digital medium and the tastes of the target readership. Stories will be short and snappy, the Times’s source said.

As a generalist news outlet, the operation, which has yet to find a name, would take on such rivals as USA Today, the newspaper circulated in hotels and airports across the US, and Murdoch’s favourite enemy, the New York Times.

The creation of a custom-built digital product helps make sense of Murdoch’s strategy as he struggles to drag his enormous newspaper empire into the digital world. It will sit alongside his radical attempt to build a paywall around his newspapers including the Times and Sunday Times in the UK.

Murdoch sees the iPad as a potential lifesaver in terms of its reach among the young and its ability to attract subscriptions. The Wall Street Journal already charges a week for delivery through the iPad.

Earlier this month, Murdoch said of the iPad: “It’s a real game-changer in the presentation of news,” adding “We’ll have young people reading newspapers.”

Eric Alterman, the Nation magazine’s media columnist, said the idea of pooling resources across News Corporation and recalibrating them for the iPad was for Murdoch a “no-brainer”. “This makes perfect sense. He’s got all this content that’s of interest to people from different localities across America. It will be like a global New York Post without any of the legacy costs.”

But Murdoch biographer and co-founder of the website Newser, Michael Wolff, was less confident that the new venture would work. “Murdoch is a man who has tried over and over again over almost 40 years to create a successful, financially viable newspaper in the US, and he’s failed every time,” he said.

The LA Times source said that the new operation would be based within the New York Post, though it would have its own newsroom and own staff of reporters and editors. It would fall under the control of the Post managing editor, Jesse Angelo.

No launch date has been set, though it is understood Murdoch is keen to have the project up and running by the end of this year.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article was written by John Keenan, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 11th August 2010 10.59 UTC

According to Alfred Harmsworth, founder of both the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail, news is “what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; the rest is advertising”. By this yardstick, Harmsworth would have agreed that the WikiLeaks Afghan war diary is a remarkable news event. But he would have had no truck with the argument mounted by WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange that the move represents a triumph of transparency over interpretation. “Hard news catches readers,” Harmworth believed. “Features hold them.”

He knew what he was talking about. Without the analyses, comment and explanation provided by experienced journalists, the documents would have sat on the WikiLeaks website attracting the interest only of those with a fervid interest in the conflict. The White House and the Pentagon would have barely stirred.

On an infinitesimally smaller scale, I have my own example of the limits of data journalism. I’m taking part in a project called Help Me Investigate, a collaborative venture that aims to pursue matters of public interest, and I recently visited the town hall in Brighton to inspect the spending records of parliamentary candidates in the Brighton Pavilion constituency during the general election. The council staff were perfectly accommodating and pleasant. In other areas of the country, it has been reported, there is some confusion over what we are allowed to see and to record. I think this stems from the fact that, up to now, very little interest has been paid to this frankly less than incendiary topic.

A desk was found for me in a quiet corner, I was handed a ringbinder bulging with paperwork and I was left to get on with it. Did I uncover evidence of cupidity among our would-be legislators? Sadly, no. It will come as no surprise to learn that the main candidates spent their largest sums on flyers, leaflets, posters and other bumf destined for the landfill. Unless you are the type to be shocked by the fact that Green candidate (and election winner) Caroline Lucas received a non-cash donation from the Political Animal Lobby or that Tory candidate Charlotte Vere forked out £41 for Google Ads, there is nothing in these documents to stir the blood.

That’s neither here nor there, say the proponents of data journalism. The fact that the expenses forms start life as Excel documents means it shouldn’t be beyond the wit of our electoral services offices to store the results electronically and upload them onto a site where anybody with sufficient curiosity can inspect them. Well, yes. But don’t imagine that this exercise in itself will be sufficient to hold our lawmakers to account. The Apathetic Tendency is probably the largest single political group in the country and its members have every right to expect the more engaged among us to do their donkey work for them.

To take an example from the world of finance and business: for a small fee you can sign up to Companies House Direct and fill your days inspecting the accounts of businesses registered in the United Kingdom. Will you do this? Of course not – you have a life. Quite sensibly, you will leave it to financial journalists to sift a company’s data, compare results and call up the financial director to ask impertinent questions.

Data sites are proliferating and many of them are excellent – UN Data, data.gov, and the Guardian’s own Datablog among them. But consider this: Julian Assange did not upload the classified documents and wait for the world to beat a path to his door. He entered into a partnership with media outlets he knew would give prominence to the material. Like Alfred Harmsworth before him, Assange understands that without the oxygen of publicity, data dies unread.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Image via CrunchBase

This article was written by Josh Halliday, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 10th August 2010 13.41 UTC

Police in South Korea have raided Google’s Seoul headquarters as part of an investigation into data collected by the company’s Street View cars.

Police official Ahn Chang-soo said computers and hard drives had been seized in the raid by 19 Korean National Police Agency (KNPA) officers on the Google premises in the South Korean capital.

“[The police] have been investigating Google Korea on suspicion of unauthorised collection and storage of data on unspecified internet users from Wi-Fi networks,” a statement released by the KNPA added.

A Google spokeswoman said: “We can confirm that the police have visited Google Korea in conjunction with their investigation around data collection by Street View cars. We will cooperate with the investigation and answer any questions they have.”

South Korea is one of many countries – including the UK – investigating the data collected by Google’s Street View cars. The search giant has admitted to accidentally intercepting fragments – amounting to 600MB – of personal data through Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries as it sought to map towns and cities.

In May this year, Alan Eustace, a senior vice president in engineering and research at Google, wrote on the company’s blog: “It is now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open Wi-Fi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products.”

In June, the company said it had deleted private wireless data collected in Austria, Denmark and Ireland.

A string of code in the production systems of Street View cars allowed Google to retrieve and store information about the networks’ location, names and Media Access Control (MAC) addresses on wireless networks that were not password protected.

Last month the UK information commissioner ruled that Google is unlikely to have collected “significant amounts of personal data” with its Street View mapping cars, saying there is “no evidence as yet that the data captured by Google has caused or could cause any individual detriment”.

Figures collated and published earlier this year by analysts Aqute Intelligence showed that nearly half of the 60 worldwide legal or criminal investigations being faced by Google relate to the company’s Street View service.

Street View cars have been collecting Wi-Fi data in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the US.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This photo is bouncing around the internet right now:

This article was written by Josh Halliday, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 5th August 2010 16.31 UTC

Google has dismissed reports that the company is in talks with US telecoms operator Verizon that could bring an end to net neutrality.

In an article published yesterday, the New York Times said the two companies “are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege”.

Today the search giant has said it remains as committed as ever to an internet where content exists on a level playing field.

A Google spokeswoman told the Guardian: “The New York Times is quite simply wrong. We have not had any conversations with Verizon about paying for carriage of Google traffic. We remain as committed as we always have been to an open internet.”

Verizon has also moved to dismiss the story.”The NYT article regarding conversations between Google and Verizon is mistaken,” the company said. “It fundamentally misunderstands our purpose. As we said in our earlier FCC filing, our goal is an internet policy framework that ensures openness and accountability, and incorporates specific FCC authority, while maintaining investment and innovation. To suggest this is a business arrangement between our companies is entirely incorrect.”

Many news outlets reported Google and Verizon as edging towards a deal that could see content creators paying for internet service providers to fast-track content to consumers.

Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive of Google, said earlier this week that the two internet giants had been talking for “a long time about trying to get an agreement on what the definition of net neutrality is”.

Such a deal could have seen providers of high-bandwidth content or applications – Google’s YouTube and BBC’s iPlayer, for example – having to pay the internet service provider (ISP) for its content being delivered to consumers. Google has previously said it wouldn’t pay for such a service.

Google and Verizon are just two of the parties involved in a long-running hearing held by the US Federal Communications Commission with the aim of coming to an agreement on the future delivery of online content and services.

Julius Genachowski, the FCC chair, is seeking to adopt guidelines that would ensure telecoms companies provide equal treatment of traffic travelling over the networks. The current hearing comes from a Federal Courts Appeal ruling in April this year which said that the FCC has no authority to apply net neutrality policies to ISPs in the country. ISPs are legally entitled manage the traffic on their network as they see fit.

The FCC has said that it does not wish to impose strict terms and conditions on internet rates – seeking to appease concerns the agency could become more of a regulatory body – but says a consistent metric for equal access must be reached. Advocates of net neutrality argue that any impositions on content delivery would stifle innovation and the business models of many new internet companies.

Gigi Sohn, president of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, told the New York Times: “The point of a network neutrality rule is to prevent big companies from dividing the Internet between them. The fate of the Internet is too large a matter to be decided by negotiations involving two companies, even companies as big as Verizon and Google.”

The reported deal that both companies were said to be nearing took many by surprise, not least because Google’s submission to the FCC calls for “a nondiscrimination principle that bans prioritising internet traffic based on the ownership (the who), the source (the what) of the content or application”.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010