Google’s new server deal isn’t evil; it’s smart business.

If Google isn’t the tech industry’s God, then it certainly is the industry’s Chosen One. Google, as a company, embodies everything that the tech blogosphere prides itself on. It takes advantage of idealistic, blue-sky principles, mixing innovation, utility, and “Don’t Be Evil” into a successful and profitable formula. Most tech blogs spend several posts a week dissecting, analyzing, and soothsaying Google’s minutiae. Where Google goes, the tech world follows. But sometimes a leader can’t please everybody.

On Monday, the Internet faithful awoke to news that its Chosen One had reportedly become a heretic. The Wall Street Journal reported that Google was thinking of encroaching on some of the sacred tenants of net neutrality. Google wants to pay extra money to get extra speed—a major no-no to some die-hards. Net neutrality is, for all intents and purposes, a founding commandment of the tech community. In its rawest form, it stipulates that no Web site’s data should receive preferential treatment that no other site can get. The idea’s legitimacy and widespread adoption in left-leaning policy circles are tied in large part to Google’s hearty support. The idea of Google violating the principles of net neutrality is equivalent to Moses delivering the Ten Commandments to the golden-calf masses and then bowing before an idol. Except Google’s act isn’t just interpreted as heretical; it’s hypocritically evil.

The Journal piece implied that Google’s paid-speed upgrade clashes with the Net Neutrality Purists (NNPs). The tech blogosphere took the bait. Techmeme, the indispensable site that chronicles what the techweb is chattering about, lists an impressive 33 posts about the WSJ story from premier tech blogs. Many of them are using the WSJ piece to nervously imagine a world in which Google betrays its own core commandment of “Don’t Be Evil.”

Simply put, this is total hogwash. Google’s new business move has little to do with turning to the dark side. Rather, it’s a continuation of Google acting as a smart company should—identifying and acting on potential revenue generators. Google’s supposedly galling decision is, in fact, the kind of savvy that transformed it into the Chosen One in the first place. And that will come in handy as it prepares itself for the Internet’s next evolution.

Google has reputed the Journal’s claim that it’s turning its back on net neutrality, calling the paper’s story “confused.” It has, though, confirmed many details of the story. The company is thinking of putting some of its caching servers—machines that make sites (Google’s, in this case) faster to load—in the same place as your Internet provider’s delivery servers. Google would be caching the sites on the Internet providers’ premises, which is judged to be a deal with the devil because 99 percent of all Internet providers are either a user’s phone or cable company.

But co-location isn’t what has incited the blogorrhea. The real issue is that money is changing hands in exchange for faster load times. This, supposedly, violates some tenant of net neutrality that not only doesn’t exist but couldn’t practically exist even if it wanted to. The essence of net neutrality is that big Internet companies shouldn’t be able to make a deal with an internet provider to exclusively send one site’s packets of data faster than anybody else. This is where the NNPs think that Google has betrayed them: The co-location deal means that Google is paying extra money to ensure faster service for their goods.