Google and Verizon recently did what all crafty drug dealers do. After enough people are hooked on the free taste of the drug they're peddling -- in this case a slavish dependence on online and mobile communications -- they decide it's time to charge for it.
The plan, like that of any drug dealer, is devilishly simple:
1. Befriend the customer.
2. Put on your best Dr. Jekyll act, as in: "The Internet needs to always be a free and neutral place!"
3. Give away a lot of free product.
4. Declare war on competitors, forcing them off the majority of street corners so that you are the only -- or the only viable - connection.
5. Make sure the customer is hooked.
6. Demand payment because the idea of the Internet being free and neutral -- or the intent to keep giving away precious, addictive junk -- was never really in your plans.
7. When customers complain, make sure they know it's their fault for being so gullible and believing the words of a common dealer.
With this news, the only people who are probably happy today are the big bankers who may be pushed from the front pages as the faces of overreaching corporate greed.
Google and Verizon have picked up that mantle and carry it forward into the post-economic meltdown era. Congratulations!
As I look at my once-prized Verizon Android phone with disgust, and contemplate how quickly I can switch my handset and service to AT&T or Sprint, I also think of the larger implications for the marketing world.
I do believe that this power grab has profound implications here. In fact, it may greatly impede the forward progress of digital and online marketing. Moving forward, brands will have to take this potential new reality into account and, if it comes to pass, they will have to figure out everything from a new Internet landscape to how new financial equations will factor into the efficiency of their online investments.
Not to mention, the new costs to consumers will surely alter -- and likely diminish -- digital usage.
Most of all it's unseemly. At best, it smacks of a bunch of guys in ivory towers with tin ears.
But there is hope, and it may come in the form of Google's and Verizon's own brazen pronouncements.
As a California resident, it reminds me of the single most important event in the passage of healthcare reform -- the decision by Anthem Blue Cross of California to raise premiums 35 percent in one fell swoop only two weeks before a then tightly contested congressional vote.
Perhaps this crass and arrogant position by Google and Verizon will give the Federal Communications Commission and Congress the kick in the pants they need to finally start doing their jobs on this issue.
We can only hope.
Keith Goldberg is svp, client strategy at EWI Worldwide. He can be reached at kgoldberg@ewiworldwide.com.
