Just above we have a posting from an ISP who says he’ll gladly host a Google cache for free. In fact, I’ll bet that Google will be able to place an edge cache at the site of any ISP it wants. Probably for free, because Google is big. Google, YouTube, and its related services consume SO much bandwidth that no ISP would say no. The ISP would easily save big on its backbone connection. Terabytes per month on YouTube alone.

But would the ISP afford to allow just anyone to get free hosting by putting a cache at their sites? Doubtful. Caches take up space and power and require access for maintenance. If a small startup were to call your local cable company and ask for “co-location space,” the person there would probably say, “That’s not a product we sell to the public.” That is, if the person who answered the phone even knew what it was.

And of course, would-be competitors won’t be able to buy space on Google’s private edge caches.

So, in what way is this neutral? Google can get its servers into places where CoolNewInternetGarageStartup.com can’t.

So, Google is still getting preferential access to infrastructure It’s just co-location space instead of pipes. And this is even a more difficult thing to buy than bandwidth. Any Internet carrier will sell you a pipe. But co-location space at ISPs, which is more cost-effective than buying pipes, isn’t necessarily even for sale to you unless you’re Google. So this is really, really non-neutral and anticompetitive.