Google to BellSouth: We won't pay

Google has rebuffed to an outrageous demand by BellSouth, in which the phone company proposed to charge Google for access to its customers. Bill Smith of Bell South told reporters that he wanted "to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc."

Google has responded with an unequivocal no -- a flat refusal to pay blood-money to carriers to keep them from discriminating against its services. Honestly, what the hell is BellSouth thinking? The whole point of an ISP is that it delivers the same packets as every other ISP; anything else is substandard. There's only one Google, but T1s come and go.