It is appalling that Google would do that, but not so surprising for other ISPs. Verizon is a phone company; if you are a "home user" then you are expected to be a consumer of services, just like it works with the phone. Comcast is a cable TV company; "home users" are expected to be consumers there also, since that is what a cable TV receiver does.
Of course those companies miss the point of the Internet. Those companies do not really like the Internet anyway, with its neutrality and the philosophy of "all nodes created equal."
Now, we should expect better from Google, given Google's origins...
The internet has never been based on a philosophy of all nodes being equal. It's only in the past few years that such an arrangement is even technically possible. For the vast majority of the internet's history, communicating nodes could be assumed to be grossly unequal in both bandwidth and latency.
The neutrality does not refer to technical limitations like bandwidth. It refers to the capabilities of an Internet-connected computer to communicate with other computers.
This seems obvious if you are used to the Internet, but there was no technical reason things had to be made this way. Look at a modern cable TV system: that is a computer network too, and if you have a digital cable receiver then you have a computer connected to such a network. You cannot run your own cable channel just because you have a connection. Your receiver is a different kind of node than what is at the head end; head end nodes are allowed to transmit video, receivers are only allowed to receive video and make on-demand requests (and a few other things, none of which include transmitting video).
> It refers to the capabilities of an Internet-connected
> computer to communicate with other computers.
There is no inherent property of the internet ensuring that all nodes are equally capable of sending or receiving packets. There are large sections of the internet placed behind routers that enforce non-transitive forwarding rules. Sometimes, hardware failures or software policies prevent communication between arbitrary sets of nodes.
There is no indication that Google Fiber, or any other major ISP, is planning to ban incoming connections. The TOS does not ban users from replying to SYN.
I will also note that phone networks are just as node-egalitarian as the internet. In a typical phone network, any endpoint may establish a circuit to any other connected endpoint. Saying that Verizon expects its users to be consumers because they sell phone service is incoherent.
Of course those companies miss the point of the Internet. Those companies do not really like the Internet anyway, with its neutrality and the philosophy of "all nodes created equal."
Now, we should expect better from Google, given Google's origins...