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Google Explains ISP Rumors
WindozeSux writes to mention a Wired article explaining why Google bought all that dark fiber, the event that spurred rumors they were planning an ISP. From the article: "When asked by Wired News whether Google was buying up dark fiber, a company spokesman replied that 'Google has and will continue to invest in the equipment our company needs to give our users around the world the best and fastest search results.' Rumors of Google as an ISP were also fueled by the company being granted a large block of new IPv6 addresses last year." They plan to restrict their role as an ISP to the Mountain View and San Francisco areas.
As an aside, I think Walmart is a by-product if your inane zoning-laws. Mostly everywhere else, local shops compete with the convience factor, ie being local, close and within walking distance, but with your extremely clear-clut Residential / Commercial area split they lose that advantage.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
They say no current plans and that can mean anything in business-speak. And Google has and will continue to invest in the equipment our company needs [...]
What if another 'need' is to become their own ISP? Could be a very good reason for it, e.g. the fact that the connection to them could be cut down, because TelCo's want to get money twice.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I think it's a smart hedge against current infrastructure owners who are trying to make certain ones and zeros cost more than other ones and zeros. They say buying bandwidth isn't enough, they also want more money for certain ones and zeros depending on the aggregate meaning of certain groups of ones and zeros.
Google, benefitting in general from flat-rate fees for bandwidth regardless of content, only naturally would like to keep this from happening. In the event that they fail in the courts and in congress, it would make a whole lot of sense for them to simply own a LOT of the basic infrastructure themselves. This gives them leverage in two ways - first, they can sell this bandwidth at whatever fee structure they find fair, enhancing their business by catering to their customers. Second, they can use their infrastructure as a bargaining chip to ensure that other carriers do not levy additional content-based and company-specific fees. Try to charge google and google customers extra fees, and get cut out of google's search engine and lose access to their fiber.
The carriers have been entrusted with a national resource and have benefitted from huge government concessions and subsidies for decades, but now that they have a little wiggle room they're turning around and trying to gouge more money out of both the average consumers, but also content providers on a deliberately biased basis. Some customers are simply going to be charged more for their bandwidth than others, and some customers will find themselves throttled or cut off entirely if they don't pay the proper extortion fee.
The phone system was supposed to be equally accessable by EVERYONE in the nation. That's why the govt set up the telcos the way they did from the beginning. Minor variations by region and based largely on actual costs aside, it cost about as much to get a phone in new york city as it did in the middle of Arizona. And calling from California to Nevada or California to Maine cost the exact same amount per minute. But now the data carriers are going to take this nationally funded infrastructure and make it inherently unequal.
That's abuse of a national resource, but knowing that congress is hopelessly in the pockets of lobbyists and big business, it makes complete sense for google to bank away some insurance against this sort of thing.
Becomeing an ISP might give them more standing for law suits on the net-neutrality frount. Small and local ISP have as much to loose from neutrality being taken away as google does but for different reasons. This might allow google anouther avenue for law suits against the big carriers and a seccond chance to stop all this BS in the courts, before congress gets a chance to really screw things up.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The other ISPs are also recording your browsing habits (note: only 1 b in 'habit') - so whether you use Google or not as an ISP, your browsing habits will still come back to bite you if you're doing any browsing that is likely to do that sort of thing.
So far, unlike the big ISPs, Google has fought the Government in court when it comes to giving up records. Other companies just say "Here you are FBI, here's all the records no problem".
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Signing up for Google as ISP? Don't think so... They'll peek into your traffic to better get a picture of what kind of personality you are, so that they can more accurately target ads. And did I mention handing out a nice dossier about you when your favorite government agency asks for it.
Cheers to Google Skynet.
The consumers generally win though.
...until Wal*Mart has virtually no competition in the area.
One thing that the might Google will need to address is their (lack) of Customer Service.
Totally ignoring people just does not fly.
The folks they have assigned to Google Adsense are a prime example.
"I'm not ashamed I can't function in society like I'm supposed to." - Paul Westerberg
Google hasn't beaten MS in anything but search. Google is just the latest in a long line of media-proclaimed MS killers including Lotus Notes, Netscape, Java, Network computers, Linux etc.
What exactly are you going on about? How did Google fix the problem with IE stagnating and pissing off users? Mozilla did, yes, as did Opera, Safari and others. Google has never made a browser before, so I fail to see how Google helped fix the browser problem one bit, except for funding Mozilla AFTER Firefox already began to become popular. And why exactly are you grouping together Google and open source....Google may help fund a few projects, but every single piece of software they make for consumers is proprietary, and also generally for non-commercial use only.
I like a lot of Google's products, but seriously, quit making them about to be some savior of the tech industry that is going to take down "M$" (what a stupid acronym btw) and save the customers from their evil grip. They're a bloody search engine that also makes a couple of nifty web apps that next to no one actually uses (with the exception of Earth and Gmail), except for some of the people who worship the company. I wouldn't be surprised if the company is bankrupt in 10 years from mis-management, as they seem to have little to no control over their employees (the senior guys admitted as much recently) and they're throwing away money on stupid projects that are never going to make them a dime, and just sit there on their web servers not being used.
Of course, Gmail, Earth, News, Calendar and Google Search rock, but who the hell needs Google Spreadsheets? Do they honestly think it is going to make them any money? At least Ask.com is around and well for if Google implodes under its own weight...about the only thing that would be hard to move away from would be Calendar and Gmail.
This could also be a result of ISPs saying they are going to charge google a second time for bandwidth usage (tiered internet). I guess if the price gets too high, they have somewhere else to go.
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am