BellSouth–among many other providers of broadband pipe–wants to be allowed to charge for discrimination. That’s not how they’re selling it, of course; they make reasonable-sounding analogies like “If I go to the airport” and “I can get two-day air [shipping] or six-day ground.” It almost works.

But bandwidth isn’t a service–it’s a resource, closer in application to electricity or water. Can you charge more money for people who use more of those? Sure. Can you charge more to guarantee that when other people lose access to electricity or water, you’ll still have it? Nope. Telcos build over and under public and private land to run their wires, which means they’re doing it under public license. That in turn means they must provide equal priority to all uses, public and private alike.

Google is on the right side of this fight, predictably, as are Amazon, eBay, et cetera. Seeing Google’s name attached to this discussion makes me think, though: how long until search is a resource rather than a service? Until they stop being good at it, is my guess, or until it stops being a top-layer application (ie shipping uses roads; roads are a bottom-layer resource, shipping is a top-layer service; roads are regulated and shipping isn’t).

I’ve said before that I think Google will end up under government control, but their diversification over the last couple of years (and their reputation, at least, for business ethics) might forestall that. Then again, Microsoft almost got split into Ops and Apps. I wonder if Google will end up facing a choice between Search and Labs.