Spare me
It's Google's network, so they can do whatever they want. There's no reason they can't provide a "fast lane" for those who pay, isn't there? And why should they have to put up with unions? Unions are the source of all evil by allowing collective bargaining!
Oh wait...
So, how can you have it both ways, hmm? Be anti network neutrality (the network belongs to the ISPs, they can do whatever they want!) but all heap big angry at Google, who is doing nothing different?
How can you be anti-union, but pro indie cartel? It's perfectly okay for the indie companies to try to band together and bargain collectively, but the ruination of society itself if human beings do it to protect their labour?
There's a lot of "defend the fatherland established power structures" here, with a lot of hatred directed towards those who have managed to carve a new niche out for themselves in the world. Perhaps most of the griping is simply a chronic dislike of change itself...or perhaps some rage over not having invested enough in Google at the outset.
Nobody is in the right here.
Google are offering substantially worse terms to the indies. They are also kowtowing to the majors who are asking for (frankly) some insane terms that are utter bullshit. Google shouldn't be giving the majors those terms or the indies. Both the Indies and the majors are trying to dictate to Google how Google's own marketplace will work and that's equally bullshit. If they don't want to use Google's market they can fuck right the hell off an make their own.
The proper way through this is to set one set of terms that applies to everyone. Those terms should be sweet enough that the content creators want to shift their content through the market but not so sweet that the content creators get the run of the place.
In a perfect world, the goal is to replace the labels entirely, with the new markets that are emerging being a cheap and easy way for creators to access an audience. Of course, creators need to not be able to be isolated in a divide-and-conquer fashion by those who own the market, so some form of collective bargaining needs to be possible.
It's about balance. The creators shouldn't get to run roughshod over the distribution channels or the end customer. Neither should the distribution channel dictate terms to both sides, and the end customer shouldn't have an expectation of getting content from either the creator or the distributor for free.
The problem here is that people with power - and by that I mean not only those with money, but the pundits with vast audiences who influence public and political opinion - have all picked one camp and evangelize the power and grace of their chosen tribe. Half the world is off bitching about the poor, starving creators, or the poor beleaguered middlemen or the inherent "right" of the end customer to get everything for free.
The other half is trying to insert themselves in the middle as yet another layer of middlemen that should have a "right" to not merely some of the profits, but somehow most of the profits. How many middlemen do we need? There are labels, markets, CDNs, backhaul providers, last mile providers, software developers, various government agencies and device manufacturers all trying to be middlemen.
Well it's the 21st fucking century. This can go Creator --> Market --> End customer. A market like Google can handle everything from advertising to electronic distribution to the last mile to the device. We don't need layers upon layers of middlemen all creating artificial scarcity in order to bleed money from the stone of an increasingly impoverished end customer.
What we need is to take as many middlemen as possible - starting with labels - out back and putting two in the head and three in the chest. We need mechanisms so that creators can bargain collectively without labels, but that prevent this collective bargaining from getting too much power.
Balance. Find it, maintain it. But this ridiculous posturing where the chosen tribe of every mouthpiece with the soapbox should have ultimate power and everyone else can scrounge for crumbs needs to end. We all gotta eat, so stop trying to screw everyone around you and work cooperatively for a fucking change!