kevin martin

Amid a fierce clash over the Net's next era, tech titans Google and Verizon crafted their own broadband policy plan and shined a light on what might be Washington's most ineffectual regulator -- the FCC. Unknown to many, Google and Verizon worked on that plan since fall of 2008.

While often well-intentioned, the agency has watched its own "open Internet policy" slowly, but systematically, crumble over the last five years. Now under Julius Genachowski, the FCC faces an almost no-win situation regarding net neutrality.

There's been a lot of talk recently about the Federal Communications Commission's newly proposed broadband rules. But one little matter seems to have been lost in the hubbub: the pending litigation between Comcast (CMCSA), the nation's largest cable company, and the FCC over the commission's...