What is the principle of net neutrality and why is it good for consumers? Why is it a big deal that Verizon and Google are merging and what will it mean for me?
Currently we have net neutrality. What that means is that every person who has an internet account to get on the net gets speeds determined by what they pay for (out of what the available choices are). And every content provider gets the speeds that they pay for. So you, as the user, can go anywhere and do anything, and the speeds are more or less the same. If you go to a place with low speeds, you get that, if you go to a place with high speeds, you get that. But it is your choice and theirs. There are no limits to where you can go or what you can do.
And that has work extremely well for everyone.
What the opponents of net neutrality want to do is take those choices away from you. They want to control the speeds with which you can get to certain places, so as to discourage going there and encourage going to places that pay a premium. This will restrict user access to places they want to see. You know how CFC is often slow? Imagine your ISP deliberately making it slower because some other company has paid more to get traffic priority.
And that's not even counting what they can do to control traffic directing. What happens when you try to go to a site and are redirected to an advertising site with some similarity? You know how much trouble those banner ads are already, what happens when your ISP won't allow you to go where you want until after you have visited the advertiser?