Cleland, a frequent Google critic, estimated the firm used 16.5 percent of all U.S. consumer Internet traffic in 2008, and that share could grow to 25 percent in 2009 and 37 percent in 2010. The driving force is Google’s search bots that "regularly copy every page on the Internet, some as frequently as every few seconds," and the YouTube video sharing site, which streams almost half of all video on the Internet, the paper alleged. Cleland estimated Google’s payment to fund just the U.S. consumer broadband segment to be approximately $344 million in 2008.

Google's Washington telecom counsel Richard Whitt responded to the attack on the company's policy blog, pointing out that Cleland is paid by AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner and his report is "the latest in what one blogger called his 'payola punditry.'" "In his zeal to score points in the net neutrality debate, he made significant methodological and factual errors that undermine his report's conclusions," Whitt said.