So, I'm admittedly a pretty big Google fanboy, so take the following with a grain of salt.<p><i>Playing the white knight (or social underdog), Google has tended to act in the interest of data portability, but Google’s policy of “we’ll let you import our contacts if you let us import your contacts,” reeks of data protectionism, and should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism, given Google’s own checkered past.</i><p>It seems to me that, because it makes its money from search, Google has a special symbiotic relationship with the web. (more on that here: <a href="http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/7590977101/googles-existential-crisis" rel="nofollow">http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/7590977101/googles-existentia...</a>) Google benefits from an open web. And I think they demonstrated those incentives (or at least attempted to) with Buzz and Wave.<p>Google's policy of reciprocation struck me more as a way to open up the existing silos than as a data protectionism measure.<p>While I'm slightly concerned with how closed Google+ appears to be, I have hope that that's a temporary situation that will change as soon as they think they can execute well on the promise of open, interoperable social networks.
Quoting the quote: "At the heart of common carriage is the idea that certain businesses are either so intimately connected, even essential, to the public good, or so inherently powerful—imagine the water or electric utilities—that they must be compelled to conduct their affairs in a nondiscriminatory way."
Since the author apparently supports the above view, the proper questions are: what is the public good, and does it justify the use of force ("must be compelled") against any individual or business who produces something deemed to be of public importance. A person who "compels" non-criminals to do anything they do not choose to do cannot claim to be an honest protector of the public good.