Slashdot Mirror
Net Neutrality Opponent Calls Google a "Bandwidth Hog"
Adrian Lopez writes "According to PC World, an analyst with ties to the telecom industry — in a baseless attack on the concept of Net Neutrality — has accused Google Inc. of being a bandwidth hog. Quoting: '"Internet connections could be more affordable for everyone, if Google paid its fair share of the Internet's cost," wrote Cleland in the report. "It is ironic that Google, the largest user of Internet capacity pays the least relatively to fund the Internet's cost; it is even more ironic that the company poised to profit more than any other from more broadband deployment, expects the American taxpayer to pick up its skyrocketing bandwidth tab."' Google responded on their public policy blog, citing 'significant methodological and factual errors that undermine his report's conclusions.' Ars Technica highlighted some of Cleland's faulty reasoning as well."
If you're an ISP then you will note that almost all of your customers are hitting google, and google is sending data back to them. It's not the search engine crawler that people are complaining about, it's the traffic in both directions. The traffic that is a fundamental part of google's business.
Of course if both ends just paid a fair price for traffic (which is currently the case), then there does not need to be any complicated scheme of prioritizing packets at each hop based on what you paid to that provider.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Your customers who use google are already paying their fair share. Any bandwidth used by google for it's indexing is purchased from its ISP. The telcos just want to double dip.
Google is a content provider after all, maybe they should start charging AT&T. People pay to connect to the internet for the content, not to say they can connect to the AT&T network.
If people don't want to be crawled by google they can just get a robots.txt
I use google, I use it because I want to or rather because the other search engines aren't that good. Here's the thing : I pay my freaking internet bills! Just for the concept of being able to use any web site I'd like. So the ISPs are already getting my money for google hits. Not only that, but google also pays for its bandwidth to an ISP already. This sounds like lame excuses 2.0 with a demagogic twist. How about you fuck off?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
In all likelihood, most of the sites being spidered want to be indexed by Google. If they don't, they can say so in their robots.txt file.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
It is ironic that Google, the largest user of Internet capacity pays the least relatively to fund the Internet's cost
Economy of scale is not ironic. It is a appropriate, and makes sense to anyone who understands basic economics.
The "they" that are complaining about google not paying their "fare share" aren't the same "they" that sell google their bandwidth. The "they" that are complaining actually want google to pay for the pipe to the backbone and again for the pipe down to the actual consumer of the content; the problem is I all ready pay for the pipe from the backbone to my computer. I don't mind a company making a fair profit in a competitive market but what they want is to double-dip after already getting billions in tax incentives and favorable legislation and regulations.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The telco's and backbone providers would love you to look at it that way.
It's important to note that there is a war on for how the Internet is perceived. The telco's would love to create the legal perception that a "broadcast model" is at work. ie: Google "broadcasts" over the tubes, and pays the tube-owners nothing. The reality -- which they are trying so desperately to avoid -- is that http is a 'request'.
The revenue stream comes from the users who pay for the right to make these requests and receive the response data.
When they say "it is ironic that Google, the largest user of Internet capacity", they're clouding the issue: Google is the "most requested service" on the Internet.
The telcos are attempting to 'share the wealth' by taxing popularity.
It is the users that are the bandwidth hogs. After all, without the users Google doesn't use much bandwidth at all.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
So ISPs are losing money because of Google? Fine. They should do what Sprint did and block all access to Google. Let their customers use the "Internet" of the ISPs email and the ISPs news. Let's see how long that lasts.
ISPs need to wake up and realize that people don't want their email, don't want their home pages, don't want their internet "content", and almost universally don't want anything the ISP provides except a pipe to the outside world.
Yep, but you're assuming that the "man in the middle", the ISP, doesn't have any business interest in things other than shuffling bits back and forth and solely getting paid to do that at a decent profit. Some of the ISPs (cable companies and the ILEC telcos themselves providing some of these big fat dedicated pipes to the Googles), also have internal business units that they want to push forth at the expense of the rest of the world they allege to serve. They want users on THEIR networks to use THEIR search engines, THEIR media delivery services, etc., not Google/YouTube, FaceBook, etc. Why? Well, they're not symbiotic partners, they're parasites. They don't want to be merely infrastructure that facilitates the rest of the system. They want to BE the system, and think that they are. The world of "The Matrix" is a colossal wet dream for them.
The Telcos are lying to us (a lie of omission): They carefully avoid estimating the reduction in total bandwidth consumed due to the optimization that search engines provide. Search engines serve as a repository of index information used to optimize our access to internet services and products. The net effect is reduced resource utilization.
Earth to telcos: Google is an example of a service that increases the value of the internet, which drives our willingness to pay for it. I have been an internet user since modem dialup days. My use of the service has increased during the last 18 years because it provides value. Google improves that value. It's a big win for the telcos and service providers, and they are trying to prevent us from recognizing that fact.
Free bandwidth indeed! Google pays for every bit of their bandwidth just like everyone else, probably with a bulk discount just like every other customer of a service with a predictable and large utilization.
The value provided by Google is far greater than the value provided by spammers. Take out the spam first.
Even though Google may drive traffic that's something that we can live with.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Google pays exactly the amount that Google's ISP was willing to accept. If that's too low, then Google's ISP shouldn't have accepted it!
The ISPs on the other end of the connection -- the ones complaining -- have peering agreements (directly or indirectly) with Google's ISP. If they want more money, they need to negotiate more favorable terms for their peering agreement, causing Google's ISP to raise its rates. All this noise about charging Google again for what it already paid for is greedy, offensive, and ridiculous!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
you're assuming that the "man in the middle", the ISP, doesn't have any business interest in things other than shuffling bits back and forth and solely getting paid to do that at a decent profit.
And that is what they should be. They are a utility -- they have no more business trying to guide you to their search engines than your power company has trying to sell you their own brand of hair dryer.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Through no fault of their own?
To the contrary. The big telecoms in the USA (and many other places the situation is similar) have already been paid out of tax money to build new networks with the required capacities. More than once. They take the money, they put it in their pockets instead of rolling out fibre and adding more trunks with it, then they come back to DC next year looking to get paid yet again for the job they still havent done.
Screw em.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.