There was a time not long ago when it was easy to believe that Google was a different kind of company — one that considered the public good as well as the bottom line in making decisions. My, how a week changes things.

It’s well known that the FCC is having so-called “stakeholder meetings” with the big phone and cable companies about their proposed “third way” to reclassify broadband Internet and codify net neutrality rules, which would allow the FCC to protect the Internet for consumers. These meetings, coming in the wake of the court case that essentially took away the FCC’s authority to protect the Internet and implement the National Broadband Plan, have included all the big phone and cable giants – AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and the like – but have excluded consumer groups who are advocating for protection against these corporate behemoths.

Most observers see these meetings as the prelude to the collapse. The FCC will meet with the big corporations, they’ll come to an agreement behind closed doors, and eventually, the FCC will put forward net neutrality and other regulations that are either so full of loopholes as to be nonfunctional or absent altogether. In other words, most people think these meetings are where deals to sell out the Internet to big companies are made.

It’s certainly possible that these meetings are exactly that, despite denials from the FCC. But what if they’re something different?

I got a call yesterday from a telecommunications lobbyist who had an interesting and very plausible theory: What if Julius Genachowski, chairman of the FCC, is simply running out the clock?

In early April, a federal court stripped the FCC of its power to regulate the Internet. Now it seems the Obama administration is considering doing nothing in response, giving power over our Internet to the greedy phone and cable companies.

To understand how we got to this infuriating juncture we need a bit of a history lesson.

Over 250,000 people signed the petition to the FCC in the wake of the court ruling earlier this month that took away the FCC’s power to regulate the Internet, effectively handing it over to big phone and cable companies. The petition asks the FCC to do the right thing, correct the Bush era mistake, and reclassify broadband so it can be saved from the big telecom companies and regulated properly again.

Now, all eyes are on FCC chairman Julius Genachowski.