Slashdot Mirror
Google Seeks to Develop Parallel Internet?
KhanReaper writes "As reported on On the Media and Business 2.0, Google appears to be purchasing dark (unused) fiber optic cable across the United States with the intention of building its own alternative parallel internet that would presumably be called GoogleNet. Possessing such a thing could allow Google to offer internet access in the form of free wifi or other means and create a powerful captive marketing audience which Google could monopolize. Outside of these marketing opportunities, such a development in infrastructure could help reduce Google's long-term content delivery costs were it to take on more bandwidth-intensive activities in the future."
I suppose better Google than Microsoft, right...?
Its to connect datacenters together so that all of Googles search databases have the same information. Just maybe that is the reason the would need a high speed internet of their own.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
12345
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Free Wi-Fi.... It'll be free, but think of Gmail and AdWords and privacy.
Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The whole censorship thing has been blown out of proportion and has been beaten to death (and beyond) on Slashdot. Please don't bring that up again. Personally, I think that they don't have any moral obligation to oppose censorship, but they do have a moral obligation to follow the laws of the countries that they're doing business with, and so they are justified in complying with Chinese requirements. You can denounce the Chinese internet policies as much as you want, but I don't think you should be blaming Google.
Free wi-fi is a very cool idea, except some cities have tried to do it and the process is getting bogged down in court. It is possible that the same may happen to Google in its attempt.
Yes, how dare they obey the laws of a land they are opperating in. I suppose you also think Google is evil for complying with DMCA takedown notices in the USA or the anti-nazi laws in Germany or the competition in advertising laws in France?
May be at First. After they have consolidated required market share, charges will apply to anything you do. It is a corporation, you got to think of shareholders and their profits.
We are seeing another monopoly happening.
Couldn't be just that they need cheap conection between their computing nodes?
--
Dreamhost superb hosting.
Kunowalls!!! Random sexy wallpapers (NSFW!).
Hosting 20G hd, 1Tb bw! ssh $7.95
If there is one thing I have noticed as of late, it is the fact that the Slashdot audience as a whole, especially those in charge of posting stories, have had a sudden swing in viewpoint about Google. Now all of the stories about Google have negative undertones, and there's always a hint of disdain in the way the story is worded.
The gradual making of a new evil entity, and new Slashdot scape goat is nearly complete! We're all being set up to hate Google now. Gotta love it, Google has not charged me for a single thing. They provide me with excellent free email, outstanding search, a nifty map site, and even a suitable chat client now. And how much have I paid them? Nothing. I for one still love Google, say what you want about them buying the world.
Google to create its own Internet? Unlikely.
The whole reason that Google is an important company is that it crawls through the publicly-accessible parts of the Internet in order to index its contents.
If Google is to retain its premier position in the search engine market, then it will very much so remain firmly connected to the existing Internet.
This is why I agree with the parent post: It is quite reasonable to believe that Google might require this bandwidth for its own purposes.
There is nothing at all wrong with this. The Internet, after all, is merely a network of networks. All this means is that behind Google's accessible IP addresses lurks a mammoth network of its own.
Yo, Eric Schmidt*, let me tell you about this little debacle called "Iridium", wherein a once proud US technology titan, name of "Motorola" [you might have heard of 'em - back in the day, they had this bitchin' little CPU called the 68000 series], thought they could dominate [maybe even monopolize] the US communications bidness, by launching a whole mess of satellites into geosynchrynous orbit; invested billions of dollars in the thing, which, at one point, was widely believed to have been the largest privately financed infrastructure expenditure in the history of mankind.
Care to venture a guess as to the return on their investment? A big fat goose egg, that's what. Actually even less than that, if you factor in the fees that the bankruptcy lawyers must have charged them.
*It's a real testament to Novell engineering that this moron didn't drive them into bankruptcy, as well...
Free wifi is getting bogged down in court because it is the government competiting with companies, and you can see the point of the companies who want to make a livelihood from these services.
Google is a company. There is nothing wifi providers can do if suddenly GoogleWireless is free or cheap across the country. Google is hardly a monopoly, just a rich company, and if this expansion of services will lead to longer term benefits to the company (there will be a few duds, of course) then they should be doing this stuff.
What I'd do if I was a company is offer free wireless whereever you can, but rate limited to 5KB a second or so unless you are subscribed to the service. If you are poor yet somehow have a wifi enabled computer/PDA/phone/toaster, then you will still be able to get wireless access everywhere, which is the point of these free metropolitan networks.
You're right that the tone has changed, but it isn't completly unwarranted. We like Google for all of the products and services they've offered us (free), but only a fool could watch a business acquire the kind of widespread power and dominance Google is working towards without atleast a little apprehension.
How else do you think Skynet controls those giant tanks in Terminator? Wi-Max, that's how. In fact most Terminators are merely controlled via Wi-Max by Google^H^H^H^H^H^HSkyNet. The ones that were sent into the past had to have a large part of SkyNet itself compressed into their systems.
...
Wi-Max is evil and should be stopped. If all those terminators and tanks and stuff were all connected via very long ethernet cables it would have been easy for us humans to overthrow them.
We have only ourselves to blame for the inevitable future
Google may also be more geek friendly with their TOSs too. They have a track record of not being dickheads, so you never know.
All I want is 3-5Mb/s down and 1-3Mb/s up...and an ISP where I can say what protocalls/ports get open or blocked and where I can run some basic servers (no, I do not want to run a website from an ADSL, but too damn many things fall under the "Non-permissible server" title as defined by most ISPs.)
Well, yes, I think a strong case can be made that obeying an evil law (and I do think censorship is evil) is itself evil. Interesting that your short post should mention the existence of Nazis, as I do believe that in Nuremberg, it was decided that in FACT obeying evil laws was still a crime. Now, before I have to pull 10 people out of my throat because they jumped down it, I am not saying that censorship is as bad as say death camps. But that doesn't make censorship not evil, just because something else is more evil.
San Francisco Photographers
In all honesty, and it's been talked about already in this topic. That Google is simply buying fibre to connect their networks.
Now with the amount of fibre they could be buying, why not put up free access points and come up with a good advertising delivery mechanism behind it. Could well be the targetted location based internet advertising that so many marketing companies have wanted to do for so long. "Buy a coffee at Joe's! Mention this ad an get a free donut!"
As well, could you imagine the communication costs that they are incurring as we speak? The amount of data that would be traversing their network at the moment would be out of control. Why not just buy some fibre now, setup another company to manage it and slash your comms costs? Especially if they are ordering in the hundreds of gigabits of data which I am guessing they probably are (Think about it for a second)..
Gmail going live, there's another few terabytes worth of data burnt each week having to store all that... All the extra internet content that gets loaded on each day, and they have to index it... Site redundancy.... The lists go on and on...
So what if they setup a second internet? Let them! If it encourages competition, why the hell not? MCI and AOL and everyone else isn't exactly going to sit on their hands and let their market dissapear in front of them are they?
In all honesty though, what are the chances of them making a change in business tactic from being a content search facility and marketers to being an internet service provider.. I don't think it fits in with their business model.
The only thing I think they could be doing is connecting datacentres and possibly (Not having seen WHERE they have bought fibre) they could quite easily be trying to get peering arangements with all the major ISPs to try to distribute the input load onto their network as it could quite well just be getting beyond the point of stupidity and manageability.
BTW, how much are they paying Akamai at the moment?
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
I have no mod points, but: best. post. ever.
I almost can't wait for Google's facade of goodness to slip. They're just like any other large company who are more concerned about their stock price and making money - than about taking care of their end-users. For example, they still don't have an email service that isn't plastered with advertising (even for a small fee) - which ought to be a clue that they're an advertising company first, functionality is secondary.
If Google went dark tomorrow the extent would be to click Firefox over to using Teoma or Yahoo as the default search engine. I'd barely notice. As reluctant I am to admit it, Yahoo is still the single most important suite of web services to me, and I'd be lost without it (if I was stranded on a desert island and could only pick one website to bring with me, Yahoo would be it).
(And now that I think about it, I wonder how many of these "Google is doing X" posts are purely to try and keep their stock price artificially inflated.)
It's funny to watch Slashdot. A single article said Google is evil, now, reading the posts, according to Slashdot Google is evil.
What was Google guilty of? Raising salaries for software engineers (heaven forbid we should make money comparable to our corporate masters) and draining talent (which just means that people want to work there). Oh, and it's hard to get venture capital because venture capitalists want ideas that can compete with Google. I guess that I'll have to put off getting hired by some lame website that sells toe-nail clippers.
Get a clue. Seriously. Tell me what they are doing that is evil.
> If Google applies their anti-spam engine to network nodes, spam virtually faces extinction.
And if Google applies their anti-free speech engine to network nodes, freedom virtually faces extinction.
My other car is first.
The moment Google 'forks' the Internet, they lose value because less people can use their services. The fact is that Google is one of a handful of companies that knows that they NEED open protocols. They have a corporate culture document that says 'do no evil' because doing evil would detract from their bottom line, and top management wants everybody in the company to know it.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
What if this turns into a 'private' network, with Google in total control
They control TLDs, they control access, they control content..
Dont laugh, it could happen.. Remember Compuserve?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There is no good evidence, or inclination, that such a independent Googlenet exists or is getting worked on. Quite hypothesizing on bullshit stories from bad reporters.
Google is buying unused fiber. The location and extent to which (to my knowledge) hasn't been specified. The most LIKELY reason they are doing this? To take out a middleman in their operating budgets!
Why, when Google's livlihood comes from Internet services and thus, bandwidth, should Google be paying someone else to get from point A to B? Google should buy their own fiber between datacenters (and elsewhere, maybe connecting to directly to major Internet hubs or ISPs) and save gazillions on bandwidth.
The more Google grows, the more data they have to store, replicate and feed out. More data means more bandwidth.
Everything about Googlenet and wireless is bullshit speculation. The most obvious GUESS at what Google is doing is trying to lower operating costs, as any good business should do.
How's this for a conspiracy theory then:
- Free/cheap WiFi for all
- All HTTP requests transparently proxied through Internet Accelerator
- Content cached, indexed, etc at each of these proxies
Suddenly the need for regular spidering has been quite dramatically reduced.
Glenn
The Smrt way to trade CFDs on the ASX
Google is in a space where anyone with a better algorithm can raise venture money, like Google did, and enter the search market.
To strengthen their position, Google has integrated the Ad business via Adwords to not be at the mercy of a third party like everyone else was. Google has done a LOT to strengthen their position.
However, the one thing Google has NOT ever done, and has made clear that they WON'T do, it lock users in. They do have a bunch of patents to try to keep a new competitor out, but they haven't tried the lock in.
The founders have made it clear that they believe handcuffs on users counter-productive and don't believe in them.
They have consistently made it clear that they believe that they are the most innovate company, and have no need to block competition, they will simply out-compete.
That's their corporate mission, identity, and culture. Don't Be Evil is a clever way of putting. However, the company has been focused on winning by being the best, and believe that the best way to fight as a tech company is to be the best, not lock consumers in.
I applaud that, and respect the company, and have no problem with them dominating ANY industry, as LONG as they don't try to create barriers to entry or customer lock-in, they aren't a monopoly, and will never be a monopoly.
If Google was the ONLY search engine, they wouldn't be a monopoly, because without barriers to entry, they can't extract "monopoly rents," they are forced to the competitive rates because with no customer lock-in or barriers to switching, they are in the competitive space, which is where Google seems to want to play. Go Google!
Alex
Google believes that barriers to switching, or vendor lock-in, is counter productive. In many ways it is. Customers LIKE to have choices, and lock-in deters them from choosing you. They have decided that avoiding the lock-in deterrent is a worthwhile trade-off from not having the lock-in down the road.
Instead of looking for industries where they can establish barriers to entry, they have chosen to just be the best in the industry.
Google has made it their corporate culture to do what we as consumers should desire, a company that doesn't erect barriers to entry or barriers to switching.
As long as they are willing to compete whenever and where ever they are, I say, AWESOME. If only EVERY industry had players willing to do that.
NOTE: I say this as someone who owns no Google shares, engages in SEO and has been mistreated and banned by Google more than any other engine, and is generally floored by the way they run their company. OTOH, I respect an entity that is willing to play in a competitive marketplace, instead of looking for sleazy tactics to monopolize industries.
Alex
This is a fact. Fact's are good.
This is wild speculation. Wild speculation is bad.
What's been happening to
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
As some stupid amount of all internet traffic is P2P and increasing would they not save a hell of a lot of money by providing internet to everyone in america, they would then have to pay nothing for the P2P bandwidth going outside their network, and surly would make a hell of a lot more money?
Nick
It might be way beyond old, but it's also way beyond true.
The article never says they're going for "Internet Google." Of course, the article title on Slashdot does. If you say anything bad about Google, you get 10 people bitching at you, and modded down, no matter how rational you are.
If you say something good about KDE, you get 5 people telling you how bloat it is, and how Gnome is better. If you say something negative about OSX, you better get a new phone number because some OSX fanatic will probably track you down and kill you.
It's the same old shit every day on Slashdot, and for the supposedly more intelligent people that work with computer systems every day, it's a lot like a herd of lemmings.
But I still read it, because if you have the sack you can sift through all the crap sheepish posts and get some really thoughtful ones. And that, at least for me, makes it worth it for now.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -