Greetings. A joint (very short notice) conference call between the Google and Verizon CEOs has completed. Very brief nutshell from my notes:

1) The firms vigorously deny that they made any carriage or related deals. They declared recent reporting to the contrary to be totally wrong.

2) The firms set forth a "Joint Policy Agreement" including seven principles that they would like to see broadly implemented.

3) Of the seven principles, I personally view five of them as entirely noncontroversial.

4) Principle #6 on different handling of wireline and wireless data invokes some issues that need to be discussed.

5) Principle #5 on the creation of "non-Internet" differentiated services (which Google's CEO pledged not to use) appears significantly problematic in a number of respects, and was (appropriately) the focus of virtually all questions on the call.

Google has posted the principles on their main Policy Blog.

I'll write up my thoughts on all this in more detail as soon as possible.

--Lauren--