Google says its deal with service providers would be non-exclusive, so others could also pay to speed up their content. (Mark Lennihan/Associated Press)

Google Inc., one of the staunchest supporters of net neutrality, is under fire after a report in the Wall Street Journal suggested the search company was backing out of supporting an open and equal internet.

Citing internal Google documents, the newspaper on Sunday said the search engine company was quietly negotiating with large phone and cable companies to speed up the services it delivers. The arrangement, internally called OpenEdge, would see Google place its servers directly within the networks of internet service providers, which would let end users load YouTube videos and other content from the company faster.

The deal would establish a two-tiered system that would give Google's traffic preferential treatment over other internet content, the newspaper said.

One major cable company involved in the talks said it had been reluctant to strike a deal with Google because a two-tiered system would violate U.S. net neutrality principles that discourage internet service providers from interfering with traffic.

"If we did this, Washington would be on fire," an unnamed company executive told the newspaper.

In a Monday blog post, Google's Washington telecom and media counsel Richard Whitt admitted the company was negotiating with internet service providers to speed up its content, but disputed the "hyperbolic tone and confused claims" of the Wall Street Journal story.

"I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the internet free and open," he said.

Whitt said Google's deal would be non-exclusive, which means that any other internet content provider — Yahoo or Microsoft, for example — could make the same arrangement.

"Google has offered to 'co-locate' caching servers within broadband providers' own facilities; this reduces the provider's bandwidth costs since the same video wouldn't have to be transmitted multiple times," Whitt said. "We've always said that broadband providers can engage in activities like co-location and caching, so long as they do so on a non-discriminatory basis."

The newspaper also said some net neutrality supporters, including president-elect Barack Obama, have been changing or softening their views. Obama's net neutrality plans are "much less specific than they were before," the Journal quoted Whitt as saying.

Whitt, however, said he was misquoted.

"I don't recall making such a comment, and it seems especially odd given that president-elect Obama's supportive stance on network neutrality hasn't changed at all," he wrote on his blog.

Lawrence Lessig, an internet law professor at Stanford University, net neutrality advocate and Obama adviser, also criticized the newspaper in a blog post on Monday. Lessig, who was described as softening his stance on in the article, said his views have not changed and that the newspaper was creating a "made-up drama."

"What the Journal has done here is really extraordinary," he said, adding that he has always been in favour of allowing internet providers to charge differently for access at different speeds, as long as they did so in a non-discriminatory manner.

"Now, no doubt, my position might be wrong. Some friends in the network neutrality movement as well as some scholars believe it is wrong — that it doesn't go far enough. But the suggestion that the position is 'recent' is baseless. If I'm wrong, I've always been wrong."

Consumer advocates also came to Google's defence on Monday. The Free Press, a Washington-based advocacy group, said the Wall Street Journal was trying to create the impression that support for net neutrality regulation — which is widely expected to be implemented once Obama takes office — is waning.

"We are skeptical that Google is truly engaged in a nefarious plot to undermine the open internet," said Josh Silver, executive director of the Free Press, in a statement. "If Google or any other company is planning to secretly violate net neutrality, they will find themselves facing the same vigorous opposition from the internet community against those, like [U.S. service providers] Comcast and AT&T, that have threatened the open internet."

Some prominent technology bloggers, however, were less supportive. Om Malik, who runs the popular GigaOm blog, said Google's plan does violate net neutrality because it is a big wealthy company that can afford preferential speeds for its content.

"It proves for once and for all that Google’s talk about ‘do no evil’ is nothing more than hot air, a fancy phrase designed to get more publicity than anything else," he wrote. "Google, at the very core, is no different than any other monopoly before it."