Slashdot Mirror
Google to Create a Private Internet Alternative?
dbucowboy writes "Times Online UK reports that Google is working on a project to create its own global internet protocol network, a private alternative to the internet controlled by the search giant, according to sources who are in commercial negotiation with the company. Should Google successfully launch an alternative internet, it is theoretically possible for them to block out competitor websites and only allow users to access websites that have paid Google to be shown to their users." We discussed this topic during summer last year.
Oh great, here's another way us geeks can be left out of the social circle, and in our own backyard.
-THE END-
"...it is theoretically possible for them to block out competitor websites and only allow users to access websites that have paid Google to be shown to their users." I don't see why this matters, or why it's worded how it is (seemingly to be scary or something). No one is going to force you to join this new protocol for their Internet, and if they develop it, what they do with it is their choice. I don't understand the seeming "concern" in the topic description.
Every day is another "Google planning launch it's own...."
They'll decline, and state that the new protocol is for internal use only, much like their OS
Sounds like a non-virtual private network, or perhaps an intranet.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Fortunately, Google is run by people who are a little sharper than your average reporter.
Sure, Google could set up their own network, and only allow paid access to it. That is, assuming they learned nothing from Compuserve and Prodigy's attempts to do the same.
More likely, they want to build their own global back end.
I, for one, can't wait. Google will tell the big telcos to go shaft themselves, will give us all 6MB internet pipes for free, simple for agreeing to use the Google Browser which contains targeted ads. Yes, I would much rather trust my Internet in the hands of Google, than Comcast who is just itching to find a way to increase my monthly cable modem fee 5x the rate of inflation, and ATT whose CEO just want everyone to pay him for everything, regardless of whether he actually deserves it.
This actually sounds more like Google wanting their own private backbone then a new internet protocol.
Google needs to transfer large amounts of data through out the world and is probably looking for ways to reduce latency across the world. We have a private DS3 line from our office to our co-lo, wouldn't google want the same kind of thing at a large scale, and without having to deal with Sprint, Verison, or AT&T.
They could also use this for an VOIP solution as well, which to me is more likely. That way they can ship the voice calls on to the local phone switches throughout the country. I wouldn't be suprised to see Google offices going up all round the nation.
Going last mile and creating another internet is a huge endeavour that I don't think even google could take on. Leave that up to the telcom who are already in bed with the govt agencies required to do something like that.
Or they could create an internet where:
I, for one, welcome our potential Google overlords. They can't stifle competition too much, or there won't be businesses willing to populate Google's new internet. Commercial acceptance would be necessary for such a thing to even hope to supplant the Internet. The Internet won't live forever. I'd be more happy with Google engineering the replacement than with some of the other big players of our time.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Argue all you want about Google in China or anything else. Simple matter of the fact is that if the paranoid stand in the way of a company's ambitions, they risk destroying a beautiful advance in technology and living. If they don't stand in the way and Google starts censoring the competition, people will switch back to Comcast or Time Warner and Google will lose a ton of money for the costs of starting up the service but not making enough revenue off of it.
This reminds me of the paranoid trying to stop the government from putting Fluoride in the water supply. Can't they spend their time in a more productive way than fighting progress?
It's incredible how people are putting a bad spin on anything Google these days.
If Google were to introduce a plan for peace in the middle east, the commentary would be
"Google only wants peace so that it could gain more political influence
to change privacy laws world-wide so that they could control all of their users information."
Did you ever think that with all this extra capital after the ipo, they have
money to spend on interesting, maybe even theoretical projects, their own version of the Bell labs,
hoping that something will stick?
Flash and image ads - in themselves - are not evil.
What's evil are the ones that are large sizes, that encroach on the rest of the page, and that are designed to try and subvert your control over either the design of your website or the functionality of your browser. Google has some very interesting guidelines in place to prevent the obnoxious features of flash or image ads from being used through their system.
Images must be under 50K - and this includes Flash ads.
Nothing can extend outside the proscribed space given to the ad.
Text and images need to be clear and distinct.
The user bar offering links back to the site will be provided by Google (probably so they can keep accurate track of the clicks)
Still no links to pop-up spawning pages allowed.
And one of my favorite lines in the list:
"Your ad should not contain universal call-to-action phrases such as 'click here,' 'link here,' 'visit this link,' 'this site is,' or other similar phrases that could apply to any ad, regardless of content."
It seems to me like Google is actually trying to take the evil -out- of flash and image-based ads.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Actually, they are taking care of their end users: The advertisers.
To quote from Blade Runner: "I'm not in the business, Mr. Deckard. I am the business." We who use Google products aren't the end users. We're the product that Google sells to the advertisers. It's the same with any other advertiser or advertising-supported medium.
I don't understand why that's so hard for people to figure out.
Sorry, I'm a writer. That makes you raw material.
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.)
Where did you get this information, or did you make it up?
I have heard nothing from Google employees about them caring about their stock price, and I posted this yesterday:
"The funny thing is that Google's owners and employees are probably the least concerned with their profits. Sergey that is one of the original two founders of the company works for a $1/year, drives a lavish Toyota Prius, lives in a small apartment, usually wears blue jeans, and is _personally_ worth $7 to $11 billion dollars."
Oh, and you want to compare Google's ads to any other company on the net? Take a look at the plain text ads, then go to any other website, including Yahoo!, and get dizzy from the animated gifs and/or flash ads. Oh, and while your at it, check out Google's philosophy:
http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html
I have not heard, nor seen any deviation from those 10 things, and I've never seen annoying ads on any of Google's services. Aside from the daily free ads that Slashdot gives Google, I've never heard some goofball yodeling "Google!" on TV, but have that for Yahoo!
Nice troll.
I don't want to speculate too much on why google is doing this, but i hardly think it's for what the journalist thinks.
the internet is awesome because it is open and free. if a company tried to cut out websites, people would use the unencumbered (i.e., the current) internet. nobody would switch to googleNet.
if anything, google is creating a backup network to cut down costs, create redundancy, and increase speeds. and if they really are making a second internet, it probably won't differ much from I2, essentially a faster way for google data centers to communicate with end users of their access points.
but i re-iterate: google is not going to be filtering the internet. that would be shooting themselves in the foot.
Google to make alternative planet Earth?
Seriously people, the Internet is world wide, no matter how sophisticated you believe Google to be I highly doubt they are going to create their own Internet, their own OS, their own Itunes, their own government, their own worldwide banking system... Let's keep it in perspective, they are just a search company... Nothing is saying any of these moves could even work financially.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
I thought AOL tried to create their own network - and were pretty successful for a while until the content on the Internet in general got bigger than what they could create themselves. then their attempts to monopolize people's internet connection started pissing people off, and they started leaving in droves (especially after their failure to provide a stable online connection!)
So unless Google has something very different in mind...
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
Gmail isn't "plastered with ads"; I don't even notice them because they're just text. Compare that to the free Yahoo! Mail with picture adds that take up half the page. Gmail was one of the first webmail programs to make full use of AJAX, and it has a bunch of great features. So you're saying you main complaint is that they're not charging you money yet? Yeah, that makes sense.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
From what I know of Google, this is more likely an effort to insulate themselves from the nut bags at Qwest, SBC, etc... who are throwing around the idea of charging a premium price for high-speed packet priority over the Internet. I wouldn't worry about it. Go Google!
"The funny thing is that Google's owners and employees are probably the least concerned with their profits. Sergey that is one of the original two founders of the company works for a $1/year, drives a lavish Toyota Prius, lives in a small apartment, usually wears blue jeans, and is _personally_ worth $7 to $11 billion dollars."
That means he's not concerned with profits? What is that trying to state?
I know many people who live in small apartments and wear blue jeans. Does it make Sergey somehow a good man by doing those things, while being enormously rich?
http://use.perl.org
If you're that concerned about web browsing stealing your computing cycles for a compile, why do you even leave your browser open at all? Good gods, man. You DO know that computers suitable for web browsing are reallllly cheap, especially used?
Also, I'd point you to the part of Google's guidelines that limits flash ad animation time to three-cycles only, of a max 30 seconds duration, before stopping. This is most likely designed to prevent the kind of CPU-sapping you're talking about.
(Disclaimerish Thing: I have four machines on my desk right now, with a dual-proc server in the corner. Web browsing is pretty manageable for me.)
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Flash ads and all animated gifs are inherently evil. Let me restate that.
Flash ads and all animated gifs - are - inherently evil.
Sound or no sound, flash is a resource hog, even on high-end systems. Don't even get me started on how many times a flash page crashed firefox either. Uninstalling flash has improved by browsing experience immensely.
Any animation in an ad is evil. I don't care if it's a 1x1 banner that switches between blue and light blue every 30 seconds, it's evil. There should be nothing moving or changing on my screen unless I direct it to. My eye is involuntarily drawn to movement, and it's just painful to try and ignore. Text ads or static images are an order of magnitude more tolerable than any animated gif.
Yet they say nothing about the ads intruding in an aural manner? I've made a point of personally boycotting any company that uses sound effects in their web-based advertisements.
I have heard nothing from Google employees about them caring about their stock price, and I posted this yesterday [slashdot.org]: "The funny thing is that Google's owners and employees are probably the least concerned with their profits. Sergey that is one of the original two founders of the company works for a $1/year, drives a lavish Toyota Prius, lives in a small apartment, usually wears blue jeans, and is _personally_ worth $7 to $11 billion dollars."
I fail to see how this displays his not caring about the stock price... If he's making a $1/year salary, but worth $7 to $11 billion, which I presume is largely in google stock, it seems to me he should be quite concerned with google's stock price.
The reason it is hard for people to figure it out is that your assumption is false. We are not products; if google keeps us happy, the advertisers will come automatically. If there are no users of Google's services, there will be no advertisers. This is no chicken-and-egg problem, FIRST they need users like us and only then will they have advertisers.
"Any animation in an ad is evil. I don't care if it's a 1x1 banner that switches between blue and light blue every 30 seconds, it's evil. There should be nothing moving or changing on my screen unless I direct it to. My eye is involuntarily drawn to movement, and it's just painful to try and ignore. Text ads or static images are an order of magnitude more tolerable than any animated gif."
You seem to be a particularly sensitive individual. The ads pay for the free or low-cost resources you consume on the Internet. If you don't like it, use FlashBlock/AdBlock or don't use the service. No one is forcing you do use these websites. If the majority of the websurfers feel that the ads are too intrusive, the site will die.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Or instead of nephariously trying to create a tiered controller internet, they might be trying to have some muscle to back against the current internet-pipe-giants who keep spinning their mouths off about doing just such. That might fit with Google's recent press & hubub about telling the we-want-to-rape-your-netizen-rights companies to shove off, ya think?
Perhaps google might use all this dark fiber its been buying (because its almost literally too cheap not to after all the crap we put in) to create indeed a private internet, but a private internet immune to the bullshit of the dumb-ass know-nothing dirt-eating baby-killing devil-worshipping feces-tossing telco's. If anyone, google as a company understands the value of the network as a dumb pipe. If anyone, Page&Brin have the wherewithal to go crusading for that. Its not a bad place in the history books. "I formed a massive fucking company" v. "I singlehandedly protected an entirely new form of of democratic adhocracy and free exchange from being anally raped by big buisness!"
Look, I loved beating down on Google when Google Chat wasnt federating. Nice big technical slipup. But the google bashing has gone a little far. They got the bad press for BushCo's wiretapping, when they were one of the two to deny the information. They're getting this bad press for the China incident, but its the chinese. You cant tell them no, we're not going to censor information. They're a totalitarian state, I dont care how much fiber google owns, they shoot people for that over there.
Give em a chance, Google is still immensely young. Think before you criticize.
Myren
Indeed, I don't have Flash. Why? Because my platform isn't supported: linux/ppc.
But If I were blind for example and I had to surf with a text-based browser, I would not be able to view those sites also.
So, yes, Flash is evil.
"The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they make a vacuum cleaner."
This is exactly my thought. With SBC threatening to charge Google for access to customers - while also charging customers for access to the net and therefor Google, this is exactly the kind of thing that Google needs to be doing to protect themeself.
So should we. Screw the telco - community networks of wireless boxes that guarantee end to end unfettered service I believe is the way to go. American's are too passive in their willingness to pay monthly *service* fees on things like cable, telephone, cell, virus protection, fire walling, financial software, etc....
We've got the power - or you can get it easily for $25 (a simple WAP) - why aren't we building connections that don't touch the telcos network?
-CF
Nope.
Poorly written Flash, sure.
Just like poorly written JavaScript, or poorly written Java, or poorly written C++.
Sound or no sound, flash is a resource hog, even on high-end systems.
Where do you guys come up with this stuff?
That's like saying "JPEG is a resource hog" -- because the 30 megapixel image you downloaded from NASA was kinda slow.
Sure, Flash *can* be a resource hog, just like any other programmable environment. But don't blame Flash -- blame the ad network (Google?) for accepting a poorly-written SWF.
Well-written SWF is actually remarkable CPU-efficient.
Yes they are. They are incredibly distracting.
You know, if all of these ad companies had just stuck to unobtrusive small UNANIMATED banners (circa 1994-95) at the top of their pages, I would never have even bothered with Ad filtering, and may have even clicked on the ad for some interesting stuff.
As it is, they don't have the opportunity to ever meet my eye. Greed leads to loss of revenue. Too bad.
In 1990, I was a programmer at Bell Canada headquarters in Montreal. Our cubes were next to those of a business group managing a new graphical dialup service called Alex, based on Telidon tech (look it up). I went up to them and said, hey, I have a second line in my apartment for modem work, I'll be a tester etc.
Then I heard their business plan. They were going to give 3 minutes of access free, then $0.50 per minute to access things like loto results, horoscopes, sports scores etc. I told them they were nuts, that they had to figure out how to make money on like $20 a month or whatever. But these were LD guys, used to making money by the minute. Their cubes were taken away about 6 months later after upper management pulled the plug.
I think that LD guys have moved from the phone companies to the Internet companies, or the phone companies are now Internet companies, and the LD guys just don't know how to think the Internet way. They will be wiped out. Besides, there are so many private-label DSL companies that anyone pulling a tiered-pricing scheme would simply be viewed as having a defective product.