Net Neutrality is the hottest topic in the media right now, and rumors that one of Net Neutrality’s biggest supporters – Google – has actually turned its back to the concept in order to “get its own fast track on the Web” have only managed to pour some more hot lava on the topic.

The story published Monday in The Wall Street Journal concluded that the companies that most support net neutrality, including Yahoo and Microsoft, are closing deals with the ISPs in order to get preferential treatment for their own content, in violation of the principle that Net Neutrality is based on: equal access to the Internet.

Net Neutrality is essentially about not allowing broadband carriers to use their position to discriminate against competing applications or content, and about allowing users to be in control of what content to view and what applications to use on the Internet.

Claims that Google is playing by interest, rather than by the principles it was supposed to stand for, have caused indignation and reaction from both Google and the Open Internet Coalition (OIC).

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google’s Edge caching concept would place Google servers directly within the network of the service providers, accelerating Google’s service for users. However, in a response to the story, Google said the story is based on a misunderstanding of the way in which the open Internet works.

Furthermore, Google said, the OpenEdge agreements with the ISPs are non-exclusive, allowing similar arrangements to be made by any other entity. Edge caching is necessary in order to improve end user experience, and companies such as Akamai, Limelight and Amazon’s Cloudfront are already offering local caching services, which help reduce congestion on the Internet and help broadband providers to minimize the need to send traffic outside of their networks, Google explained.

The company offered to “colocate” caching servers within broadband providers’ facilities in order to reduce bandwidth costs. What this means is that the frequently accessed content doesn’t’ have to be transmitted multiple times anymore. And this is a concept that Google has always supported, as long as the caching and collocation activities are non-discriminatory, the company said.

The Wall Street Journal story was dismissed by OIC in a statement on Monday as “fundamentally inaccurate portrayal of the current Net Neutrality debate, both in terms of the corporate participants and the issues involved."

OIC explained that Edge caching services have been implemented for many years now, in a legal and beneficial manner, with the purpose of improving access content by consumers.

Furthermore, these types of services do not involve the prioritization or degradation of Internet traffic. Edge caching is intended to reduce traffic congestion on the Internet backbone networks, and it promotes OIC’s goal to keep the Internet fast, open and accessible, the organization said.