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Verizon’s Go90 Doesn’t Count Against Your Data, but That’s Not Good News


Verizon customers can now stream videos—including live NBA games!—from its otherwise-forgotten go90 video service without it counting towards their data caps! This sounds good, but it’s a trap. Here’s why.

Verizon launched its go90 service back in October to very little fanfare. In fact, Verizon doesn’t have a great history when it comes to bloatware in general, so you’d be forgiven for completely ignoring it. However, if you’re a Verizon user and you want to watch, say, The Daily Show, you have two options: watch it via Hulu, Comedy Central, or the web and have it count towards your data cap, or use Verizon’s special go90 app and stream to your heart’s content.

Last month, we talked about how sponsored data lets carriers pick and choose which services count towards your data cap, and why that’s bad for the internet. At the time, the concern was hypothetical: what if a carrier decided they wanted to build their own service that got special treatment, while everyone else had to compete on a different playing field?

Well, this is it. Through the magic of capped data—and remember, Verizon doesn’t offer unlimited data plans anymore—go90 now has a leg up on its competition. Verizon has used its status as a carrier to promote its own products at the expense of other services using the gateway it controls. More importantly, go90 shares some content with other services, which means Verizon can take customers directly away from competing services solely due to this advantage. After all, why watch a video in a service that counts towards your cap, if you have one that’s free?

Now, this isn’t the apocalypse or anything. Go90 isn’t going to be the downfall of the internet, or even Netflix. In fact, it’s unlikely that go90 will become a video powerhouse at all solely based on this promotion. But this is one of the most crystal clear examples we’ve seen yet of how carriers can use your capped data plans to pick winners and losers on the internet, manipulating your choice as a consumer in the process. That’s probably not a good thing.

Verizon go90 Update Lets Post-Paid Customers Stream Without Using Their Data | Droid-Life