The most recent chapter in the debate over net neutrality has been, like previous chapters, cacophonous. One notable difference this time around, though, was the relative quiet of many large tech companies. In previous years, these firms had been outspoken about the issue. What changed?

Netflix’s net-neutrality journey is an illuminating example. In 2014, Reed Hastings, the company’s CEO, issued a strongly worded warning about oppressive “internet tolls” that could threaten the web’s status as a “platform for progress.” His company had recently tussled with Comcast (ultimately agreeing to pay the cable company to get data for its streaming videos to customers smoothly) and Hastings felt a need to take a stand in favor of net neutrality. In advance of a 2015 Federal Communications Commission vote on the issue that went as Netflix hoped, the company’s representatives reportedly contacted or visited FCC officials more than a dozen times.

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Indeed, when I asked Larry Downes how big tech firms might recalibrate their business strategies after last week’s vote, he warned me, “This is going to be very boring.” Ryan Singel, a fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society and a former reporter at Wired, agrees that it’s hard to imagine the Googles and Facebooks of the world doing things differently after net neutrality’s repeal. “These guys can afford to pay for fast lanes”—the priority treatment that ISPs will soon be permitted to charge for—“they can afford to pay access fees, they have the clout to make sure that when they do pay for those, that they get a better rate than someone else,” Singel says. He remembers when, roughly a decade ago, Google strongly advocated for having net-neutrality–like rules govern the FCC’s auction of a newly available segment of the radio spectrum. This time around, he says, “Google was nowhere near the level of fight they put up in 2008, 2009, 2010.” (For Google’s part, a company spokesperson told me that it “remain[s] committed” to net neutrality and “will work with other net neutrality supporters large and small to promote strong, enforceable protections.”)

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When it comes to large companies gaining power, the flip-side concern is about smaller companies losing it. Net neutrality’s proponents fear, among other things, that an internet with “fast lanes” will squeeze out smaller firms that don’t have the funds or negotiating power that large tech companies can use to push back against ISPs. “It’s the smaller retailers … that are going to feel more of that pain,” says Singel, adding, “Openness is the tool of insurgents.” Indeed, it was smaller companies that were most vocal leading up to last week’s vote, which makes sense: Some of yesterday’s voluble insurgents are today’s quiet behemoths.