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-
Credible,
Sources report Google is starting it's own religion that will effectively replace all of the other religions in the world. Thus saving the world from itself.
And while they are at it reports are that each new coco-crisp cereal grain will contain a Google branded RFID device which will bring immediate live streaming video to the small intestines of those who eat it.
Brought to you by Google Rumor Central
Caution: Contents under pressure
"...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
Does Google have a secret controlled gossip leakage department staffed with PhDs? ;)
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Google plans to offer free universal wifi. Al Gore plans to help create the next internet, and bring internet TV to the masses with current TV. Apple plans to offer Itunes over the new internet, through Googles new internet based linux operating system. Now all we have to do is bring Sony into the fold and get some of the gaming companies involved. I look forward to the day where I can play games online through wifi from anywhere. Here are some URLs to back up my statements. Al Gore, Google, Current TV, free wifi for all Information on who Google is hiring Google Hiring Google will hire all the best Phd students from the elite universities first. Once Google becomes so large that they run out of Phd students from elite universities, then they will begin hiring us! So I'm now in love with Google. Google if you are reading this PLEASE PLEASE give me a job, even if I'm just doing something completely stupid, I'm sure with all the millions of jobs you are creating that you'll find something for me. I hope Google continues to innovate because these innovations are creating jobs by the millions. Building a new internet would create millions of jobs for all of us. Building a new OS would create thousands of jobs. I hope Google gets involved with the gaming industry and lets me have access to a video game search engine. I hope they let us gamble and bet on games. I hope Google creates a new video game stock market where we can bet on the success or failure of games. GIMME MONEY DAMNIT!
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
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
they have the Internet on Google now?
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
And who knows? Maybe they will do it. But just because they can doesn't mean they will.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
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.
We've known about this for years. We even know the name before google does. It's gonna be Sky Net.
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.
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
We all know there real secret plan is to completely buy out AOL and then time warner, and then the movie industry, and then all government anyhow. And then once everyone has downloaded google earth, a virus will be leashed upon us. Imagine the Ring and Snow Crash combined with a beautiful Siren singing to draw you to the nearest monitor, cell phone, or television. And then they can have ultimate control and we will have a perfect utopia with no evil anywhere on earth.
If they went down this route it would be very easy to slip into being an evil monopolistic company, i don't know exactly how the rules work but if the shareholders thought that the execs were working against the interests of the company (ie. letting other people in for a low amount) then there could well be a move to oust them... Then google will be just another evil face in the crowd (assumuing they are not already)... It seems like it would just be easier to avoid this...
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
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.
I almost can't wait for Google's facade of goodness to slip.
Already done, in my opinion, the moment I first saw a Google Flash ad for McDonalds.
I use adblocking plugins and specifically left Google ads unblocked due to their nature. No longer. Ugh.
Google changes it's name to SkyLab.
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
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.
What is the benefit of such a network? I've been planning to build an advertisement free network for public access and am not clear on how Google's concept improves the experience for anyone but them.
"Benjamin Cohen is a regular contributor to Times Online, writing about the internet and commerce. He is the CEO of pinknews.co.uk".
PinkNews is a GBLT site. Not that I care about the sexuality of the author, but Cohen apparently serves as 1.) a CEO of a separate media company, and 2.) one that deals with alternative lifestyles (NTTAWWT*).
My question is, does either of those two attributes make him more or less qualified to comment/report on potential Google plans, do you think?
*(Not That There's Anything Wrong...")
I hope this doesn't get too popular. I remember last year when I placed adsense on my site. After a while I got banned from adsense, and "due to security issues" I couldn't get an explanation. I can live with that - it wasn't important. But say all the "good stuff" was on GoogleNet, and you, for some reason or another, got booted off there. It would be like getting your internet connection cut, and not being able to re join. Scary thought, eh?
I see lots of obvious things to be worried about, but at the same time, I see a few things that're actually not so bad. If Google were to go this route, the only question is how far they'd go. Could this network simply be a way for Google to slap down enough bandwidth for the "Google Cube" rumors, or would it be a wider-access thing intended for Total Domination? So far, Google hasn't gone evil despite the best efforts of many to try and call them out on it, and as long as there's a way to make any money and not be evil, I'm pretty sure Google would do it long before they'd consider anything else barring a stockholder revolt. (The only thing I can forsee being a true evil-catalyst)
Now on the other hand, with the Telcos getting all bitchy about Google and others using "their pipelines", I've been wondering just how long it might take for someone to start up an "OtherNet" so to speak, restricted to non-commercial use like the old days were. It might be slow, but you -can- get an unlimited-long-distance line and slap modems together, and combine that with a meshed wireless, etc.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Google isn't a common carrier, so who cares? My old school district created it's own private network and ran fiber to each school back to the central office and IT hub. They controled traffic on their fiber and they could block what ever they wanted, because they were not a common carrier.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I seem to remember someone predicting this might happen in the future, or at least something like it.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I heard google is in talks to create their own universe.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
They forget the flip side, which is that Google could also use this separate internet as a refuge from the "tiered internet" asshattery we've been hearing about.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
Wouldnt it be easier to run storys about what google isnt doing?
Guys, you have to stop believing everything about google ^^
However, industry insiders fear that the development of a network of Google Cubes powered over a Google-owned internet network will greatly increase the power that Google wields...
You mean a network of Cubes like this?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Hey, I've heard of that before...isn't it called AOL?
I love google though. The average googler is smarter .
-TLAY
So Al Gore serves as an unofficial advisor to Google's senior management and now they want to create their own Internet?
Maybe the stories are true?
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
If you think gmail is plastered with advertising i would seriously hate to see any plastering that you have done
If you were trying to make a Terminator reference, it's Skynet, not Skylab.
Skylab: 1970's orbiting space station:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab
Skynet: 1980's science fiction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet
Seems like Yahoo has found a new way to advertize ;)
Sorry, a bit off topic, I was assuming it was my ISP being slow, but I noticed google searches say they take ~0.5s now. I'm sure they used to take ~0.02s before. Is this because they have been continuously adding features (however minor some maybe)? Well, just a bit of a rant, it's just not quite as instant as it used to be. I just tried Yahoo, took 0.15s, and MSN took 0.03s, that used to be one of the advantages of google because it was faster I assumed (maybe because it didn't have some useless portal like Yahoo did then).
Google does not do evil. :)
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?
Google announces plans to colonize mars with human clone army.
nothing
I for one thought of Jessica Alba and a Swiss Army pocket knife. Not necessarily in that order.
Although I will admit that checking my Yahoo! calendar for TPS report deadlines would be mildly amusing.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
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Isn't Google Rumor Central still a beta?
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
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.
"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."
It's also theoretically possible that they won't allow images to be displayed on their pages unless they include one or more primates and their monkey genitalia.
It is theoretically possible that a lot of things could happen. We know, if you can control something, you can create all the possibilities in the world. That doesn't mean that any selection from the infinite possibility space will actually occur.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
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 has known for a while.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
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
Instead of another version of the internet, imagine browsing a 100% google cached version of the current one. Instead of hopping 15 nodes across the globe to get Europe's sites (for example) you just get the most recent version off google's cache. Once google cache works out some of the wrinkles (out of date sites, postback issues, etc) in its system, I would use it for almost everything.
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.
AOL/Compuserve/Prodigy did this years ago...
Move along, nothing to see here.
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!
I love how this boils down to the exact same thing as previous stories about companies creating a tiered internet, but those companies were derided as evil. When Google does it, we use words like "alternative" and "private", because they are a magical pixie dust company that rains sugar and lollipops across the whole world. I'm seriously starting to wonder if Slashdot editors hold stock in Google or something, this is just absurd.
But I have a good feeling about this one!!!
Comment of the year
I'm sure this'll never happen, but if it did, and they implemented their own protocols, it could be a really good thing. The protocols we use now are old and weren't designed for the types of networks and security issues we have now. TCP/IP just fell into place as the most common, even though there were better protocols out there (or so my instructors told me). A complete rewrite, considering todays types of networks and security issues would be a good thing, instead of the massive stovepiping we have now. It's be one hell of a job to do and enough tougher to actually make "catch on", though.
---John Holmes...
Considering that the Bell Operating Companies (e.g. Verizon, Bell South, SBC-->AT&T) are planning to charge tolls on each side I think having a Google provided service might act as a counterweight to all that.
+1 wisdom, +2 intelligence. You have levelled up.
"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
The wording of the whole article is very suspect.. while China might have been stealing a cookie from the 'evil' jar, trying to segregate the internet would be establishing giant co-owned 'evil' factory on a Seattle campus.
Unlikely, at best.
..don't panic
Flash and image ads in themselves are not evil things.
Yes, they are, they consume my bandwidth and CPU! And there's no way to switch them off!
As a general rule i had to close my browser so i can start compiling my C++ programs, otherwise the flash steals the CPU and my compilation times multiply.
That was, Of course, before adblock - but i find that a bit counterproductive for sponsors. Well, it's their loss now.
Actually, this may be a good thing, in that it will compete with other internet providers who want to create a multi-tiered internet. Who would dare to charge for something that your competitors do better for free? Also note that the potential for new features will be huge. Free city-wide wifi--- in every city, anyone?
The toad can't burp - and for some reason can't fart either, so it swells up and eventually explodes. --Anonymous Coward
Credible sources report that Google is currently constructing a prototype Chuck Norris/Vin Diesel hybrid. The hybrid would be almost as powerful as Google itself.
That doesn't follow at all. They simply mde the judgement that it made more sense for them and their users to have a free email client with unobtrusive ads compared to for-pay client. None of that impacts the functionality, unless those ads prevent you from working, at which point I'd advise you take your Ritalin.
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
"They have the internet on computers now?"
fak3r.com
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.
Can I get a "Duh"? Google is a public company with a responsibility to their shareholders - otherwise known as their owners. What do you propose they do, stop trying to make money? I mean really, if you think making money is so evil, why accept compensation for your job - just work for free and stay good!
Complaining about corporations trying to maximize profit is kinda missing the point. The very purpose of their existence is to make money...that's why people invest in them.
hot foreign sheep.
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.
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.
Maybe because it's a naive viewpoint that others don't agree with?
People that use Google's products are end-users, by the very definition.
If Google's products sucked, no one would USE them. Clearly they do not suck.
Advertisers pay for your use of the service, since you do not.
Therefore it is an even exchange that benefits everyone:
(a) You get access to a product you enjoy without paying for it.
(b) Advertisers get the opportunity to sell you their products.
(c) Google makes enough money to pay their expenses and earn a nice profit.
Sorry if there's not enough hyperbole in that description for you.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
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.
Okay, I suppose some people have a little more raccoon in them than... Hey, flashy thing!
Of course, if I could get one of those 1x1 graphics to stay on my machine at all times, it might a a nice way to deal with the dead pixel on my monitor.
You say flash based ads are evil, sure, but just keep in mind that the site you're on now depends on those ads - with even less strict guidelines than Google has in place - to keep operating. The big "Click Here" ad that we see every time we load this page (unless you're adblocked, as some of my lower-spec machines are) is a good example of one that Google would strongly discourage, if not disallow.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
In a stunning counter-move, Yahoo and Microsoft seek joint ownership of Caterpillar Inc., the largest supplier of backhoes worldwide. Analysts estimate Google's fiber-optic lines could see as little as 9.99999% uptime.
"Evil"
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
That's a good question, actually. I just emailed Google AdWords support to see what the stance on audio in ads is. The use of audio in flash ads (at least, auto-starting and hover-triggered audio) is definitely one of the most vile things to be unleashed on us in years. Now, ads that had relevant audio that played (and stayed under the 50K limit to load) when you explicitly click on it, wouldn't be that bad - though I wouldn't be likely to click on any of them, personally.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
whats wrong with gmail?
i LOVE gmail
there are only a few adds, and they are usually relavant to what im looking at so sometimes provide useful links
2nd, you dont HAVE to use their online interface, you can use ANY pop3 mail client and then you will see ZERO ads
you can also relay any of your other address into gmail, and recieve them from any client also
you can also SEND from any of your other address thru gmail, thru a client...
so basically just about anything you would want to do with email, gmail does it for free, with fantastic spam filtering and like 3 gigs of freespace
did i mention i LOVE gmail?
no other free email gives you so many flexible features, they allow you to completely bypass their advertising if you want!!!
but i love their online interface so much i just use it now, i havent checked my mail using thunderbird for like 4-5 months
it has great filtering/grouping (label) functionality and their mail search tools beat ANY local clients no contest
i have seen a few posts knocking gmail and i honestly dont understand how ANYONE could have a problem with it.. either they dont know how to use a damn email client, or they are too stupid to notice all the fantastic features
What's really amusing is the fact that took several of those false rumors and made another rumor from them.
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.
Anyone else think they are pre-staging themselves for Internet 2?
.com/.net/.org fiasco, more backbones, etc.
May as well get started early and correct a lot of the current problems before the ball gets rolling.
Like the DNS
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
More fear, uncertainty and doubt ... story at 6.
So what if Google creates a "private" network? How is this different from Comcast's private network, Verizon's private network, etc.? The Internet is nothing but a network of networks. Maybe Google wants to control its own network traffic rather than buying bandwidth from someone else. How does this lead to all these crazy arguments about "world domination" and "Google locking out traffic from other search engines"?
Penny - plain text accounting
I am shocked and apalled that a corporation like Google would attempt to make money. I mean they did say their motto was not to be evil but if they try to make money they obvioulsy lied. We all know anyone that tries to make a buck is evil. Look at the catholic church they make tons and ask for it regularly, they must be the pinnacle of evil. I mean if everyone tried to make money what kind of world would we live in? So sad that Google is evil after all.
WTF?
The word you are looking for is "Schaudenfreuden".
I suspect this is deliberate FUD. This "revolutionary new internet" story has too many holes in it.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
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
Why can't "good" and "making money" be in the same sentence?
Just because a company makes money, doesn't make them evil. It makes them evil when they do bad things to make money.
I mean the CEOs of Google aren't killing a kitten everytime their stock price goes up... At least I hope not.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Deja' vu all over again.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
Google is not turning itself into a new version of AOL or Compuserve. Google is, however, quietly building out its own network infrastructure. Right now anyone who wants to can do BGP peering with Google at any NAP it happens to have built out to. What does this buy them?
Let's say that I'm a mid size ISP (I happen to work for one so this is a first hand account) and I peer with Google at a regional NAP. What happens then? Any traffic between my network and Google's network will cross that peering point. As a result, I don't have to pay one of my upstream ISP's for bandwidth to Google. Google, in turn, doesn't have to pay their upstream ISP's for bandwidth to my customers. Everyone wins (except for the upstream ISP's of course).
Any large network operator is already doing this kind of thing on a large scale. Google is already doing this. The reason they bought all of that dark fiber is so they can do it without having to rent a bunch of OC-48's from the phone company in order to make it happen. There is no secret, so stop trying to figure it all out.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Is google the walmart of the internet?!
I'm not so sure Google is buying dark fibre, to necessarily create their own internet, with the sole intent to only allow Google customers traffic.
Think of the other news out there related to telecom and you'll come across, Verizon setting aside large amounts of bandwidth on their network to their new IPTV offering. Leaving the rest of the bandwidth to be shared by the rest of the internet, including other IPTV providers.
Telecom, especially those that own the pipes or wires, are looking for service related subscription models. Currently, you pay a flat monthly fee, no matter how much you upload, download. In the future, you will pay for the internet as you use it. If you download a lot of music, video's or song, you will not only have to pay for the video or song, but the bandwidth necessary to download it.
So, it makes sense for a business to provide a contingency plan, especially if someone else controls the pipes and wires. It also provides users with an alternative.
So far so good, I wouldn't call Google evil yet, but I'm almost there. The grid computers and the Google box, does provide some people the ability to surf the web possibly for a lower cost in the future. It is expensive to most to purchase a computer and internet connection. Google may have the potential to bring that cost down, more than anyone. So with that, you know that the Google box will track your internet usage and provide you with some search related advertising. They can effectively do this much better than anyone, especially if they own the box and grid comps. However, that image still sticks with Google's main line of business, search related advertising.
So when do we call Google evil? I'd call them evil once they start charging internet websites like espn.com to appear on the new Google network. That's building a new business model around the network, with monopolistic characteristics, the same as verizon.
A lot of things need to fall in place for Verizon and Google to be evil and mainly they fight against each other to pass legislation that will help their cause. Both arguments have valid points, and it is the legislation written and how it is upheld, which will determine the future.
We all ready know Google is planning to provide free WIFI all over. To do that they are creating a backbone. Yes for free you know get a slow connection. But you can pay for upgrades.
Where is my free Telco access or Free cable access? Want to bet you get more for less from Google?
Is free TV Evil? Sure I don't like commercials, but we except that if we want to watch.
three cheers for Google.
Wow.
...according to sources who... ....
....industry insiders fear that...
..it is is theoretically possible for them to....
It is believed that from here, Google plans to link up...
It was also reported in November that Google was...
Google has long been rumoured to be
The technology industry has also been alive with talk that Google...
Should Google successfully launch....
Holy crap. That was amazing -- this article took no less than three unsubstantiated rumors, at least two lines of speculation, two "insiders" and combined them to be a story! Now that's journalism!
The idea of an alternate network raised by Google, although not a new idea, makes me wonder about the recent views Google has made public against the notion of the UN taking control of the Internet. Does that action effect the new Google network or is it rather Google just ironically saying they don't care?
"So don't get programmed by anybody but yourself" --Bill S. Preston, Esquire
Resource hog? My 400Mhz Pentium II can handle both flash and animated gifs just fine; this machine doesn't have a lot of memory or a speedy internet connection, and I've never seen flash or animated gifs present a perceivable delay, slowdown or whatnot in my browser or overall system performance. I can't imagine newer machines being worse.
Usefullness/annoyance factors are another issue...
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.
"That's why your company is still alive. This universe was created for you, so the Total Stock Price Perspective Vortex predicts a target price of $800. In the real universe, the market would have corrected you out of existence."
"Whoa.... Is that fairy cake?"
i don't know what would. Good riddance google.
Web browsing is fine. But Flash uses orders of magnitude more CPU time than it ought to.
English is easier said than done.
"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/
Google-Net verses Verizon-Net. Looks like I just subscribe to both because each is going to give me what the other one doesn't.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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
Really? I block Flash ads. Yet I still see plenty of ads on Slashdot that I do not block. It would seem that Slashdot does fairly well without Flash.
"The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid." ...they could just be creating "a giant processing and storage grid" that will not be hindered by any other traffic and will not necessarily have anything whatsoever to do with the search engine and more to do with making a distributed supercomputer that will make Blue Gene look like a TRS/80. The biggest one has 131,072 processors. Consider that you could conceivably stuff 5000 processors in each of those shipping containers (assuming damn near cryogenic cooling), it would only take 40 of them to best the biggest BlueGene installation by 50% in terms of processors. Now, imagine they drop a few thousand of them down, all connected by private, dedicated fiber and rollout a 20-million CPU grid.
Hello, SkyNet...
You know, there's a great feature of all modern preemptively multitasking operating systems: priorities. Whenever the OS is looking for programs that need CPU time, it always goes to the one with the highest priority. This priority is inherited by any new child processes.
/? for details). For example, set the shortcut for launching your favorite browser to "start /low <rest of command line> and it'll start with low priority.
On Windows, you can use the Task Manager to set the priority of currently running processes, and the start.exe program to set the priority upon launch (see start
On Linux and many unicies the program nice is used to start a new program with a different priority. Set your browser lanuching command line to nice <rest of command line> for the default lower of priority. See man nice(1) for details.
This should fix the effect that the flash ads running in the brower have on your compilations, but won't help with heat or power consumption (the brower will still be churning the rest of the time). Like you mentioned, that's what adblock/flashblock are for; prevent them from running in the first place.
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."
I bet that some of the facts are accurate, but the interpretation is informed more by the writer's deisre to create a "good story" that fits a well established pattern, rather than any informed analysis.
Google may well be building a global network. They may well be planning on opening it to consumers and they are no doubt doing it to serve their business interests. That doesn't mean they have to lock out their "competitors" for such an investment to be worthwhile.
A huge reason for them to make that kind of investment is so they have a lever against network providers (like AT&T) who think they deserve some of Google's revenue. They don't even necessarily have to do a complete build out, they just need the ability to reach a significant number of AT&Ts subscribers and be able to make a creditable threat they can extend their reach in the future and old Ed Whitacre is likely to change his tune. Google's ace in the hole is that they can subsidize access with ad revenues, which has got to scare the shit out of a telco guy even more than the idea of free long distance.
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
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P143257.asp they used to make 45k+stocks, which is a moderate salary. BUT, Brin, for example, made 1.45 BILLION (with a B) selling stock since the beginning of 2005.
[...]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.
It's also theoretically possible that Google will create a giant factory outside of Copenhagen, dedicated to producing black and white kittens. Theoretically, twice a year, employees of Google would load the kittens on a large theoretical plane and drop the kittens into Mount Vesuvius. Again, this is theoretically possible.
Great bit of speculation, that.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
Yes, they are, they [flash ads] consume my bandwidth and CPU! And there's no way to switch them off!
Yes there is: FlashBlock.
Works great.
-- Alastair
and is _personally_ worth $7 to $11 billion dollars.
I'm also worth $7 to $11 billion dollars, it's just that I happen to be closer to the $7 than the $11 billion!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
after all, "do no evil". Would not EVERYONE consider that evil?
If Google's products sucked, no one would USE them.
I dunno. In the context of advertising-supported services, I'm having trouble reconciling that statement with the success of commercial television.
Or for that matter, the success of Microsoft software.
-- Alastair
I'd pick a site that had something to do with naval patrolling. If the island were in US waters, for example, I'd make it the Coast Guard site - so I could get off the fucking island.
"Heeeeelp!"
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
They collect so much data it doesn't matter if everyone working there suscribes to the same motto. The data will eventually be used for purposes you probably aren't comfortable with. Even if it's not Google who abuses it. But no one seems to care because Google has a warm comfy sunshine filled do no evil FAQ page. Well, George W. Bush also swears he upholds a certain ideal that is outlined in the constitution. Do I really have to continue the point?
Everyone needs to take a step back and re-examine Google. Everyone is singing their praises, and it seems like their fan-boy base is so large, they are exempt from criticism. Just think about it for a second... what if Google was sold to Timewarner tomorrow. Or Microsoft. Just because they aren't "evil" now doesn't mean they can't easily go that way. And no one will have seen it coming because they were too busy talking about how "totally awesome" Google was.
Criticism of Google is important. Keep them in check.
They have come up with some pretty unsound .com business idea's lately - parallel internet, free wifi for the whole world, etc... I like Google, but it's getting silly.
Steve
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
hmmmm?
Wake me up when you ASK them something and they answer.
Endless specualtion =! news (not even for nerds). meh.
Be sure to use flashblock too. And noscript is nice as well. I install those 3 things, and suddenly browsing is a nice experience. I wish noscript could be set to allow scripts for the originating site though, anyone know if that's possible (because if I could then I could install it for more novice users).
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
An intranet? Bah...Tinker-toys!
[sarcasm] Hey, let's start a proprietary subscription based service where people can connect and see controlled content. We'll call it "Q-Link" or maybe "America-On-Line".[/sarcasm]
Well, since that has been done before, more likely I think were looking at interactive TV delivered through fiber-optic (as the article mentioned the "Google Cube"). Just think of tailored commercials for each individual user determined by a mixture of your subscription data (age, address, credit score), your past buying habits, and past viewing habits, and your surfing habits. Or think about commercials where your remote has a "buy now" button for instant targeted impulse buying (hey you were surfing for 'Perl Jam', now see several commercials about their CD Box set). The Data-Center-in-a-Box will be the local processing/routing node that determines which commercial the individual local viewers in its assigned sub-net get to see.
Think about a combination of cookies on steroids (actually they don't need a cookie, just your Google Cube MAC address) and a hugh highly indexed data-warehouse of individual past behavior that should make any privacy advocate cringe. I think Google's ability to collect, sort, index, retain, and retreive information about individuals will make the NSA look like third-rate amateurs. People get exercised about the NSA, but the Government is (mostly) constrained by law and periodic elections. Google (as a borderless international corporation) will not be restained by anything. My own personal alarmist, chicken-little-the-sky-is-falling prediction, Google enters into an information sharing agreement with VISA and DISCOVER, so they can track your off-line buying habits just as efficiently as your on-line habits.
Another piece of evidence that Google is not concerned with stock price is the fact that they do not give earnings guidance to the street. They could have easily avoided the recent tumble of share price if they would have called the lower earnings last quarter, then the street would have expected a "measly 82% revenue growth" instead of 130%. Remember that page and brin both lost more than 2.5 million today on the stock decline.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
to that link that says click here to get the plugin.
What's evil are the ones that are large sizes,
You are absolutely correct! All my ads are 2x2 gray-white "chess-board" GIFs, and I just love them that way (thanks to privoxy).
Then again it might all be just a way for them to tie all their disparate data centers (they have them all over the world) more reliably
The Laws of Physics may work but its still in beta so if you suddenly collapse into your own gravity be sure to send an email to support@googiverse.com!
But seriously the more google does this way or that way you have the word "evil" get thrown around. Ads are evil, flash ads are evil, this is evil that is evil. Though I suppose google should just remain where it is right now and die out.
Turn based strategy game that runs over XMPP. Phalanx
I'd finally be able to find those damn socks!
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
As soon as gmail allows you to do list serv and has a decent address book, it will be the best thing since sliced bread. With Jelly.
"Victory can be anticipated, but not assured" - Sun Tzu
Nope.
Poorly written Flash, sure.
Just like poorly written JavaScript, or poorly written Java, or poorly written C++.
will they bring fiber to my house!?
MORTAR COMBAT!
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.
Everyone is singing their praises, and it seems like their fan-boy base is so large, they are exempt from criticism.
I thought we were talking about Google here not Apple. Read a few posts above and below this one. There are plenty of criticisms. Apple hardly gets any where it is due (iTunes) yet bitch about Google planning a DRM based technology. Just an observation.
Turn based strategy game that runs over XMPP. Phalanx
I dunno. In the context of advertising-supported services, I'm having trouble reconciling that statement with the success of commercial television.
Or for that matter, the success of Microsoft software.
You are correct, I should have said, "If Google's products sucked, not enough people would use them for Google to turn a profit on the advertising." I just sort of summarized that.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I've never met a Flash ad that I thought wasn't evil. What I consider evil in an ad is causing motion in your peripheral vision to divert your attention from the content of the page and toward the ad. (Of course, Flash ads can be a lot more evil than that if they use sound.) I suppose Flash ads could be completely static, or at least except when the user is mousing over them, but, like I said, I haven't seen one yet. Adblock is an absolute necessity for me.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
LOL, and I bet you haven't heard anything about them not caring about their stock prices either.
Personally, I haven't heard Google employees talking about caring about anything at all. Maybe that's because I: a) don't know any Google employees; b) am not a Google fanboy so don't stalk Google employees; c) wouldn't remember anything a Google employee said even if I did hear it because, well, I just don't care.
Or it won't, since no site has majority usage. All it takes is a few thousand people to "ruin it" (or "support it" depending on your point of view) for the rest of us.
After all, I am strangely colored.
I remember the last time some company tried that, when it was called AOL. Or was it MSN? Or maybe CompuServe.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
"if I was stranded on a desert island and could only pick one website to bring with me, Yahoo would be it"
/.??? Down with the karma! ;)
You mean it wouldn't be
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.
Actually, it's in beta. Want an invite?
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
The article was written by Benjamin Cohen, he of itunes.co.uk fame. He spent the dotcom years publicity whoring about being the youngest jewish dotcom millionaire etc & then claimed to be in the adult entertainment industry. I have no clue as to how he was able to parlay his crap into a column in The Times but this is just old crap regurgitated. Does no one look at the credibility of the author?
That's because Google is talking about making a separate internet, one that they bought and paid for. The companies you are referring to are trying to take Our internet and turn it into a different one.
Google's separate internet leaves you free to choose something else. The same won't be true if the current one is wrecked.
Please don't read my sig.
Think with your brain for a moment. How many sites like Slashdot with millions of viewers own Google stock? Hundreds of them.
Slashdot is not going to go against Google, most people on Slashdot will not go against Google. Google will make Slashdot into a billion dollar company if Google gets it's way, and hell, I don't blame any blog site or website for siding with Google when Google pays people and makes people fortunes in advertising revenue, stock, and who knows what else goes on behind the scenes.
I don't think they would block out websites that haven't paid - but I think
- this might FINALLY lead to a well organized internet
- which means you could find the information you're searching for much faster (opposite to todays mess where information becomes harder and harder to find)
- bad stuff like child porn or nazi content might become impossible to spread
- hell, even trojans, exploits, viruses and worms might disappear
- spam might be defeated
I sure hope they can achieve this!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Thank you, no. The universe I'm already using is unstable enough, thank you. :-)
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Look, if the religion is profitable, people will support it.
People support profits. If by worshipping Google, money will rain down from the sky, well then we all will worship Google.
because we who set up blogs like Slashdot must pay Google, along with everyone else, to advertise ourselves.
Google simply organizes the worlds information so people can get from point A to point B. Google is like a map, they don't control the market they just map it out and make everyone pay for the map, then they give money back through stock and free services which save us money and make access cheaper. Brilliant plan really. You are free to go anywhere you want as long as you use their map, and you are free to do business anywhere in the Google universe as long as you use GoogleWallet, and you use their systems. Google is inventing Capitalism 2.0
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.
Sure, it's not here today, but tomorrow! Perhaps...
I think that this is a good thing given where the telcos are going with the paid internet of choice (theirs). Which side would you rather be on? Google's or SBC's?
It gets strange when you ask about Yahoo, but perhaps these companies can work together to create another internet. What version would this one? 2.5 or 0.5?
People that use Google's products are end-users, by the very definition.
Although this is correct, I have to agree with the grandparent's intent. We are not their customers, we are the raw matierial for their product, which is advertising. Google Advertising is their product, and advertisers are their customers.
People are confused into thinking Google is a traditional business. Google's invention is going to be as important as the invention of capitalism. Google does for information what capitalism did for trade.
Google is capitalism 2.0, and this means completely new industries worth billions or trillions of dollars will be based off Google. Google is so important for the future of capitalism that many people are fans of Google simply because their business depends on Googles success, and the success of capitalism 2.0
Capitalism 2.0 is peer to peer, Capitalism 1.0 was client server.
This goes back to the open source debate, by making the software open source, it broke us out of the dot com crash. By moving to capitalism 2.0 it will bring trillions of dollars into the industry, and this site will be a billion dollar business when billions of viewers are going to slashdot, or even hundreds of millions. Slashdot could literally create a new industry around this site, but this can only happen if Google exists to allow people to find this site. This can only happen when the information is organized enough, and access is cheap enough for it to happen.
Because trillions of dollars are at stake, this is not going to be something that is easily solved. How do you convince Slashdotters to go against their cash cow? How do you convince Richard Stallman to go against Linux? How do you convince Microsoft to give up Microsoft Word?
It's impossible to convince these big companies to ever give up their future plans to make trillions of dollars, too much money is at stake. The consumers will be given stock and herded with incentives. In the end, this new internet war, or whatever you can call this situation, will be good for the economy. Everyone benefits from conflicts like this because the Telecoms and Internet companies will be investing billions in the USA to pay lobbyists, to give stock to blogs, or whatever other methods they choose to use to get their way. This creates jobs. When Google or the Telecoms decide to actually create their new internets, this will create millions of jobs.
Why can't "good" and "making money" be in the same sentence? Just because a company makes money, doesn't make them evil. It makes them evil when they do bad things to make money.
Don't bring logic into this conversation!! What are you thinking?!?! Everybody knows companies exist to only serve the needs of their customers, not make money or help their employees and thier families prosper.
-brain
But it only would take one rogue router/DNS in the system to blow it all to hell.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
but the Chuck Norris half of the hybrid killed the Vin Diesel half just by looking ugly towards it, and all we got was one more Chuck Norris clone.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Unfortunately, poorly-written Flash is far more ubiquitous, and used it situations where it is unnecessary. I can understand my browser using a lot of CPU time if I'm using some Java applet, but if I'm reading /. I shouldn't have to deal with a slowdown.
English is easier said than done.
Does it make Sergey somehow a good man by doing those things, while being enormously rich?
Yes. Its called modesty. Its something that few Americans know anything about. But then again he's Russian.
The moment the arpanet backbone was commercialized we ran the risk of filtration of access.
Personally I think it would be suicide to not maintain your network as a universal interconnection point - since the value of any intranet increases with the increase in the number of nodes (Metcalf's Law). As mentioned perviously, AOL is a prime example of how its percieved value was lower than their competitors - and it ended up having to open up its network.
The folks at Google are smart. I don't see them making the same mistakes.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Inconceivable!
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Have you turned on POP access to Gmail? If you do that, you can avoid all the advertising. And Google supports this.
Microsoft-free since March 28, 2004
All this discussion of such things has my brain cooking.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
I suppose this is their method of killing two birds with one stone. Eliminate the threat of a tiered internet and replace the American telecom oligopoly with a shiny new Google monopoly. Brilliant. (Though I'd be much fonder of an effort to create a nation-wide mesh network, under no one party's control...)
I'm just wondering how they're going to pull this off if they're still hemmorhaging money from their little P.R. up-fuck in regards to China. What were their losses up to in stocks, 13 billion? That's... a lot of money. Sure, they have plenty more, but good lord.
But then the compiler very well may stall your browser.
I can't compile and do anything else and have both be fast on my windows machine. If I up the proprity for the compiler all hell breaks loose.
As an aside, have you ever lowered your mouse priority below that of the system idle process, or above the kernal processes? Makes for some interesting times.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I've not seen this anywhere else, but I have a theory. I've heard that Google has set thing up to host images for free. It would be easy with these new facilities mentioned in the article, that they could then offer web hosting for free (or almost nothing, whatever). But with one catch:
As more and more people take advantage of their hosting, the less content that Yahoo and MSN can access, so the more relevant Google's search is, so more people use Google search, so they have more money from their ad income to go and provide free hosting... lather, rinse, repeat.
Then, add in all this dark fiber to interconnect their webhosting sites and they can provide the best access to information. Will they eventually BECOME the internet? I doubt it, but they sure could make buckets of money as this system develops.
I agree.
I think of all the threats the internet faces, Google starting it's own very small and discrete mini internet isn't one of them.
If anything, I'll bet Googles "internet" will end up like the insular enclosed system that Prodigy used to use 1988-1994.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
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.
No, it's a little different with Google.
In other ad-supported mediums, the people who control the medium also control the content on the medium. To the extent that Google-users trust Google to relay the internet to them faithfully and accurately, Google do not control the content. If they tried, their user-base' trust in them would disappear in a minute, and they would be quickly swallowed.
one day in the future, all us older folks who these flashy and distracting ads bug the most will get too old to play computer any more and eventually pass in this life. the younger generations who have been living in this media-crazy world who are not phased by flashing lights and distracting ads will not be hash ing through such arguments. it's evolution. it's the same with a lot of television today. the editing is just too fast and flashy for our older generations to consume. kids/youth/young adults/tail-end gen x'rs just don't have the same problem.
Yep. And while it is in beta, you will only get access through a Google invite.
In this new Googleverse, chairs throw Balmer (so it must be a Soviet Russia Universe, with Sergei Brin being Russian and all.)
You can't handle the truth.
who will control the new Global Goonet's root servers? Ahem.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Why? Very simple. Because:
d =14110356d =14110356
"Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying. They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible."
by http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169294&ci
seen on http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169294&ci
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Wasn't this called Prodigy a dozen years back? Or maybe it was AOL? Or Genie? Anyone remember why those services were surpassed by adoption of the "raw" internet as somehow more desirable than these tailored sandbox-safe services? When the "raw" internet became usable to the average person?
Unless google has some compelling service that can't be had on the internet, any restrictive service won't work. And if they do put up a compelling service, it's only a matter of time before the geek/guru/wizard types among us put those service onto the internet for everyone to use.
Marketing question - would anyone pay for fiber to their home at ANY price point, if the only content was the modern equivalent of mid-90's AOL specific services? I wouldn't...
Gates Foundation is about 28 billion, over five years. Now we look at the profits of MS:
36.84BN in 2004 (and I'm assuming the same for 2000/1/2/3). Same source says 39.79BN for 2005.
I make this approximately a little less than 224BN for the last five years.
Bottom line: Microsoft gave 12.5% of profits to the Gates Foundation. That's a lot, but they could have given a lot more.
Also, another point of interest: what about bundling IE with Windows? Or the forced upgrade cycles? Or .doc format keeping us locked into Microsoft Word?
MS stays #1 on my evil list despite what you say.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
Personally, I don't have flash installed. If I wanted to "spank the monkey and win a FREE OMG FREE xbox", I could probably track down the site without the add.
I have yet to see flash that did anything beyond eye candy. But, I would love it if any flash fanboy could prove me wrong (the odd game doesn't count).
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
Although this is correct, I have to agree with the grandparent's intent.
And what was his intent? He stated, "Actually, they are taking care of their end users: The advertisers." To me it was the implication is that Google doesn't care about the users, only the advertisers. Anyone with a brain can see that makes no sense, because if you don't take care of the users, they'll disappear, and with them, the advertisers. Jesus.
We are not their customers, we are the raw matierial for their product, which is advertising. Google Advertising is their product, and advertisers are their customers.
Who cares what we're called and what the advertisers are called? The fact is everyone is benefiting from the relationship. We get free services which are by-and-large agreed to be great. They make money. The advertisers attract customers.
Please enlighten me as to what the problem is with this scenario?
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
And I got labeled a moron for calling this in another slashdot discussion a while back about Google buying up dark fiber. Why in the hell else would you be buying up all that fiber, and you're a HUGE internet company? CREATE YOUR OWN INTERNET, OF COURSE!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Google can do a better job of censoring their private network than China has been able to do so far. The Chinese will be very thankful! :-)
:-)
But seriously. Everything I've read says the network will be ad based or subscriber based. If you can't get to what you want, don't buy ads or pay them subscription money. If Google builds their own net it won't be the only game in town. Well unless the Chinese hire them to run their internet for them.
Well, if Cringley is right (as reported on /. here)
my guess that this network is the backbone for Google's distributed and portable datacenter. If there's 3.5TB of storage in each, that's a lot of data that would need accessed.
Which is EXACTLY why we are the product, and the access to us is what the end-users [paying customers] are BUYING.
The idea that we are the end users isn't crazy, either. Obviously we go to sites to see the sites [ha ha ha], but the advertisers role in the whole operation is NOT to subsidize our 'fun'. Why would they do that? Out of charity? No. We are the product, as far as they're concerned, and they are aware of that fact enough to PAY for it [access to us].
The idea that without us, the advertisers wouldn't exist is valid, but the without the advertisers, the SITES wouldn't exist either. Making the advertisers the 'end users' as far as Google AND the sites, themselves, are concerned. Cows, on their slow march to McDonald's, don't run away from the farm, hell, they like getting fed... the sites are the food, we are the cows....and you can finish the rest when you see the next McDonald's ad.
It's a funny thing, I feel like I'm the end user, too, you know, it isn't taking a huge stretch of the imagination on my part to see it that way. But it hinges on the definition of 'use', and 'user', and 'consumer' and 'product'. The site [a product] attracts my [another user] attention [a product], for the usage of, and the ensuing enrichment from that use, by the ultimate 'user', 'purchaser', consumer of my 'attention'...the advertiser. Picture a guy, puts dog food on the porch, dogs attracted to the food, get killed by the guy, turned into burritos for the local off-road restaurant. The dogs might think they're the 'end user' vis a vis the 'free' dog food, but hey, they're just burritos in development.
it's like that scene in Chinatown..."I'm an end user (slap), I'm a burrito (slap)...an end user (slap)...a burrito, ", etc.
Which reminds me...the clock on the micro says it's Burrito Time. Over and out.
Why don't you just use lynx? That way, browsers use hardly any CPU.
:-]
Google has to fight against the incumbents who want to charge money for nothing other than padding their profits, the pigopolists that want a monopoly or at the miniumum a severely restricted commercial only internet, basically an attempt to convert todays internet into yesterdays TV network system (no search engines required as there would be no real choices).
So fo google, the more companies that are looking for more customers the more money they make. Google thrives on anti-monopoly practices. It only really has to stick to the "no evil" approach because M$N will always abandon it for a quick buck (so they will keeo going up and down i.e. pretend to be good and get customers, exploit customers for maximum profit, lose customers, repeat, oh yes after the first half dozen times dont expect it to work any more).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
As someone also on linux/ppc, I will disagree. Yes, Flash is often used for crap. However, they are some cool games and art pieces out there making use of flash and actionscripting. Now don't get me wrong -- I hate Flash from a developer perspective. It is crap. However... I also have wasted dozens of hours watching Homestar Runner.
They make money. That's not allowed, I think.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Parent was intended to be funny in an ironic sort of way. Any moderators out there with a sense of humor :-/
It's a matter of vector v bitmap in development. But if I remember correctly .swf's use jpeg compression. Either way the use of vector art makes for a cleaner end product.
The other point of matter is Flash is a tool for creative output on the web. You called it "eye candy." You are correct. What you should consider is theat the majority of users consider the web to be an interactive television. They are looking for media but not neccessarily information.
I am actually quite impressed with Flash's ability to handle dynamic content. It makes building slide shows and galleries almost drag and drop. Yes this can be done with javascript, CSS, a serverside scripting language and DHTML. And 5 years later when I've figured all of that stuff out I still have to hack stylesheets to work with non-compliant browsers. I look back and say to myself, "this is a buttload of work. I should have just stuck to flash."
And the drawing API built into Flash is prety damn cool (scribble a design onto a t-shirt template and have it shipped to you.)
So the answer is it streamlines the production of media across a wide variety of fickle non-disabled browsers. And it entertains those that use the internet for entertainment. And it shows media in a way that other formats just fall short. And it's blatently interactive.
All that being said...most of the flash on the internet is absolute crap.
(creative speling at work)
But it is SOOO much easier to blame software. Software doesn't get all depressed when you say it sucks. Crappy developers, on the other hand, might bring a gun to work tomorrow. So to be on the safe side, I always blame the technology.
Actually, if this rumor has any substance at all, then I'd say it's much more likely to be a tor-like or freenet-like anonymity network. Google, especially with Google Update, would stand a good chance of making that widely successful, and it could tie in nicely with their other philosophies and issues. Google China would become less of an issue then, for instance.
"Flash and image ads - in themselves - are not evil."
Actually, they are. Period. End of Story.
fuck you.
There's always above/below normal for a compromise. I've been happy with Windows NT's priority system; if a background app is making my other programs laggy, setting it to low always fixes it for me. I think the flash plugin starts its own worker threads to do the heavy lifting: setting those to low priority could make flash slow without sacraficing the rest of the browser. Really, the best way is to avoid running those flash ads in the first place with flashblock.
Mess with the RawInputThread scheduling? Sounds like something fun to try. The idle thread is already at zero priority, so I'd have to raise it before anything could be below it. I can't think of any way to do that offhand. The RawInputThread is hosted in csrss, a process that is already at high priority, a level above many passive-level kernel operations. Anyways, I set the priority of the entire CSR process to normal, below normal and idle priority levels while running an infinite loop at normal priority. CSR at normal didn't seem much different, below normal was noticibly lagging in sending keyboard and mouse events and animations like the fade menus, while the thread waits for the completed-io and starvation boosts to raise the dynamic priority high enough to actually get anything done. CSR at idle priority was awful, but still recoverable: it took 15 seconds for CSR to send one click, delete and enter key message to tell Process Explorer to kill the hog (after which everything was fine). The mouse cursor itself wasn't affected, even with hardware accel set to none and the hog process running at 'realtime' priority. Updating the cursor must be handled in a DPC or something.