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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."
Phone companies are one of the single greatest causes of people talking. More people talking means more oxygen consumption. And the externalities of all that poisonous CO2 exhalation.
Phone companies are literally living off our dimes. And the Amazon and Sting and Al Gore don't even get a cut.
Loaded fine for me. Here is the post. "Response to phone companies' "Google bandwidth" report Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 3:28 PM Posted by Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media Counsel Earlier this week I thought that the announcement of a broadband access "call to action" was an encouraging sign that the phone and cable carriers could set aside their differences with Internet companies and public interest groups over network neutrality, and focus on solving our nation's broadband challenges. Unfortunately, a report issued today suggests that some carriers would still rather point fingers and keep fighting old battles. Scott Cleland over at Precursor Blog is, of course, not exactly a neutral analyst. He is paid by the phone and cable companies -- AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, and others -- to be a full time Google critic. As a result, most people here in Washington take his commentary with a heavy dose of salt. The report that Mr. Cleland issued today -- alleging that Google is somehow unfairly consuming network bandwidth -- is just the latest in what one blogger called his "payola punditry." Not surprisingly, in his zeal to score points in the net neutrality debate, he made significant methodological and factual errors that undermine his report's conclusions. First and foremost, there's a huge difference between your own home broadband connection, and the Internet as a whole. It's the consumers voluntarily choosing to use our applications who are actually using their own broadband bandwidth -- not Google. To say that Google somehow "uses" consumers' home broadband connections shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Internet actually works. Second, Google already pays billions of dollars for the bandwidth and server capacity necessary to connect our data centers together, and then to carry traffic from those data centers to the Internet backbone. That is the way the Net has always operated: each side pays for their own connection to the Net. Third, Mr. Cleland's cost estimates are overblown. For one, his attempt to correlate Google's "market share and traffic" to use of petabytes of bandwidth is misguided. The whole point of a search engine like Google's is to connect a user to some other website as quickly as possible. If Mr. Cleland's definition of "market share" includes all those other sites, and then attributes them to Google's "traffic," that mistake alone would skew the overall numbers by a huge amount. Mr. Cleland's calculations about YouTube's impact are similarly flawed. Here he confuses "market share" with "traffic share." YouTube's share of video traffic is decidedly smaller than its market share. And typical YouTube traffic takes up far less bandwidth than downloading or streaming a movie. Finally, the Google search bots that Mr. Cleland claims are driving bandwidth consumption don't even affect consumers' broadband connections at all -- they are searching and indexing only websites. We don't fault Mr. Cleland for trying to do his job. But it's unfortunate that the phone and cable companies funding his work would rather launch poorly researched broadsides than help solve consumers' problems. "
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'm not sure technical arguments are really necessary to demonstrate this as bunk. Google's services add a lot of value to a consumer's bandwidth. I would wager that their contributions exceed their consumption.
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"
Because they're not in a business relationship with Google. The traffic from Google appears at their network borders as a result of transit contracts with tier-1 carriers, not with Google directly.
Basically some providers see themselves in an important enough position to try and negotiate deals which put them higher up in the food chain. Instead of bargaining with world-wide network backbone connections, these ISPs try to bargain with their end-user reach.
Network neutrality is a (necessary) kludge, because many home users can not choose a different provider. If users could always choose another provider, then the market would indeed deal with ISPs which overestimate their importance.
"It is ironic that Google, the largest user of Internet capacity pays the least relatively to fund the Internet's cost
So how much does Google pay for it's usage of the Internet?
There's a local company offering a 1.5TB external drive when you order a 2mbit or faster internet connection. Since few people are likely to fill the drive up with holiday photos, the use for this combo is obvious.
ISPs and digital storage manufacturers benefit from online piracy. I'd wager the profits are greater than the loss the content producers face, and are of net benefit to the global economy.
But, my perspective on the issue is skewed. I've been a pirate since I was 7. :p
All rites reversed 2010
I was under the impression that Google purchased business/carrier Internet facilities (OC3/OC12/OC48/OC192 and Gig-E interconnects) just like any other major business.
Unlike shared residential services such as cable/DSL/FIOS, these are dedicated facilities. They are paying for all their bandwidth, whether they use it or not.
How can they be "hogging" what they are paying for?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
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 consumers use bandwidth, and it is the consumers who should shoulder a significant cost of the bandwidth. Google, et al, need to pay for the redundant lines that connect their facility. It is true that due to different usage patterns, some consumer will pay out of proportion. It is also true that some taxpayers will pay for something they do not use. But such is life.
Let's say that I am in the city. I drive like 20 or 20 miles a day, and the roads I do use are well traveled and largely cheap surface roads. Then why am I paying taxes and high gas taxes to subsidize the suburbanites excessive travel and wear and tear on the roads? Well, for one thing I do not want them in the city. Second, i need them in the city to serve me. I am likely paying out of proportion of my direct use, but not me total use.
It is the same thing with taxes. Suppose I am in the top 25% of the income. I likely am part of the group that pays a huge percentage of the nations taxes, maybe even in excess of the proportion of money that I earn. This is caused by the fact that the bottom third of the wage earners pay almost no taxes. A family earning 30K, after deductions, maybe a token couple thousand. That is, of course, because we all get a deduction basic living expenses, just like business only pays on profit, actual humans pay taxes only on their excess income, and the more money you make, the more actual excess income you have. It is an observable that 50% of the population have almost no excess income, while, when on reaches the 10 20% of the wage earners, excess income becomes the majority.
On one hand this is bad, as it means I pay higher taxes. OTOH, this allows us to keep wages low, as it is possible to pay barely enough to keep a family together. If everyone had to pay, say, 10%, then many family might double their tax bill, which might force them to ask for raises, which they would need to have to survive. This might mean that a couple who had been earning $9 an hour each, might now need to ask for $10, which might be more than a business could afford without increasing costs.And since business do not increase cost proportionately, such an increase could end up costing more overall. Or at least this is the conservative arguments.
So, fairness is not really crap, but fairness is dangerous, as people will inevitable skew the facts to make themselves the victims.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
for, if they had PAID their share of the bargain and INVESTED the HUGE profits they made from OVERSELLING bandwith for all those years, there would be NO issue about bandwidth anywhere. actually, there arent any issues about bandwidth at all. there is a SUPPOSED problem about 'internet breaking down due to bandwidth' in united states only for around 3 years now, and nothing happened.
considering all the pointers at hand, i have decided that the supposed 'an analyst with ties to the telecom industry' is either a non person that is invented to propagate a shitty corporate agenda, or a corporate shill to attempt justifying controlling internet, YET AGAIN.
you americans are WAY too much tolerant of this 'lobbying' thing. way too much.
Read radical news here
The people who go to Google are the hogs. If your pricing model doesn't take into consideration your consumer's usage patterns, then FAIL.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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 "they" that are complaining about google not paying their "fare share" aren't the same "they" that sell google their bandwidth
So charge Google's providers more for peering. Or just don't connect to them and see how many customers you get if you Google isn't reachable from your part of the Internet.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
First of all, the traffic a web site gets from Google's spider is dwarfed by the the traffic it gets from legit users.
Secondly, if it weren't for Google's spider the web site wouldn't receive a lot of user traffic anyway.
Finally, Google pays the telcos (but not the web site) for the spider traffic it generates on its end.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Crawl-delay directive
Several major crawlers support a Crawl-delay parameter, set to the number of seconds to wait between successive requests to the same server: [1] [2]
User-agent: *
Crawl-delay: 10
I don't see a way to use robots.txt to limit the number of crawler hits per interval other than just denying it. So you can block it, but that's undesirable if you want people to find it. It's also undesirable to have a robot hit your site every two seconds if ShieldW0lf is saying the truth, but robots.txt only address it in a simplistic allow / disallow.
I'm not sure if any of the other providers implement this, but Google does. SiteMaps
Lets you specify how often to update certain content, what URLs to block. It's a more advanced robots.txt.
There's no place like
Crawl-delay directive
Several major crawlers support a Crawl-delay parameter, set to the number of seconds to wait between successive requests to the same server: [1] [2]
User-agent: *
Crawl-delay: 10
Further, not only do the Google crawlers obey the robots.txt described above (or other standards for robot exclusion), they also use HTTP's if-modified-since to make a conditional request. The file is only returned to the crawler if it has been changed. That saves a lot of time and bandwidth.
PC World will also lose out if double-dipping is allowed.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Oh - and here's a big PS: If you feel you're getting too much spider traffic - meaning you're somehow SO wildly popular that you really believe Google is hitting you too often - you can reduce the Google crawl frequency via your Google webmaster account - voila, your (non-existent) problem solved.
And for those that don't use the service, and I do - the Google webmaster features in no way require you to be hosted at Google.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Please disregard everything I just said and I apologize for my bad attitude.
I don't know how, but I read your first sentence 100% backwards from what you wrote.
I totally fucked up and I'm sorry.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
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.
I was going to mod this +5 for the first apology ever on slashdot, but that option wasn't there.
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.
No problem, and I take back my insult above. I posted it before I read your second reply.
All is good.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Google hits my server regularly - but doesnt use much bandwidth in doing so. But then again, I run Google ads on my sites, so they monitor the content to show more relevant ads. Considering most sites are 80% graphical, 20% html/css/javascript; these requests are no big deal.
When it comes to them indexing the site for their search engine, a simple directive in the robots.txt file to tell them how frequently you wish them to stop by is all that is needed - and is spelled out numerous places on the Internet (of course, including on their own pages). Any webmaster who is not aware of that (especially since Yahoo's bot is at least 20 times worse per my server records for www.startreknewvoyages.com where it would be 10-15 GoogleBots and 200-300 YahooBots) just doesnt know what they are doing. Both Google and Yahoo honor it (the "how many times in x minutes to visit flag in robots.txt). The only reason I put it in was for Yahoo, followed someplace inbetween by Microsoft, and in least invasive position at a fraction of the number of simultaneous bots, Google.
I dont care how many pages they index, but Google's bots at least seem a lot smarter. Often I would have 10 or more Yahoobots reading the exact same page.
Their overall traffic use (all combined) was nothing compared to normal site traffic from the same number of "requesters"
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
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.
There are a lot of things you can do. If Googlebot is using too much bandwidth, you could easily (man tc) add an outbound QoS limit to your webservers.
http://www.google.com/search?q=googlebot+IP+range
If you're unable to do this, there is the GoogleBot webmaster tools that let you manage your hit rate.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters
If the government had just stayed out of it, there wouldn't be a problem.
Alternatively, if the companies had been less greedy and, y'know, invested some of their huge profits back into infrastructure...
Prioritization based on "price paid" is moronic, and not seriously suggested, IMO. OTOH, prioritization is a perfectly legitimate tool for congestion management, which is at the core of the problem here. ISPs have historically oversubscribed based on the prevailing assumptions about customer utilization. Those assumptions no longer hold true, because sites like YouTube and applications like BitTorrent. ISPs can do one or both of increase infrastructure to match these new assumptions (at enormous cost), and/or implement some form of QoS to drop or delay one application's packet instead of another's, when congestion occurs (where a packet has to be dropped or delayed either way). You can still have a "fair price" being paid in either direction, and have a need for QoS (prioritization) to effectively manage congestion. This runs afoul of some definitions of "net neutrality", unfortunately, and is impractical to do anyway on an untrusted network (like the public Internet).
So ISPs are actually stuck between a rock and a hard place. You have to oversubscribe to be cost-effective (this is why business-grade 1Mbit data connections cost 10x more than consumer-grade; the former is not oversubscribed while the latter is). But since that ratio has to go down to match today's expectations (through no "fault" of the ISPs), ISPs have discovered that they have to invest in significant new infrastructure, and they're looking for creative ways to pay for that. Unfortunately, most telco ISPs aren't exactly creative, so this is what we get.
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.
They think Google is being unfair, block it outright. Why haven't they done this? Because they know that 1) They're in the wrong and 2) They would lose just about all of their customers You know there's more to it when the simple and obvious solution is not employed, and then forgotten about. Google is what the consumers want, the consumers have paid for their internet connection, as have Google, end of story? Hah I wish.
Can I leave this box empty?
That man in the middle would still be selling dial-up if it weren't for the Google offerings that consumers want, specifically Youtube. There are others too such as Hulu and Veoh and even the major TV networks' sites that stream episodes on demand, plus all the Shoutcast streaming radio stations.
What this is really about is whether the ISPs still have common carrier status, and how that conflicts with their vertical service integration for services like TV and phone. These ISPs are charging for what is either free or for less money elsewhere.
The solution is very simple. The FCC grants the ability for these anti-net-neutrality ISPs to charge whatever they like for whatever content they choose to carry over their networks, in exchange for the return of every government subsidy and grant given over the last five decades, with interest, in addition to the rescission of their common carrier status. The government can then take that money and give it to companies that will act like common carriers and build net-neutral data infrastructure.
Actually if his first point is untrue, there is no reason for the site to exist. Anything that generates more traffic to spiders than users has no point in existing.
The people complaining have peering arrangements in place with those who serve Google and should renegotiate with THOSE providers if they don't like the results.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Apple makes shiny, flimsy hardware that's designed to appeal to faggots who work in interior decorating and which breaks as soon as you breathe on it or hit it with a hammer.
Actually, you're wrong.
From a business standpoint, you'd be right, except that Google was designed to be a search engine, not a way to sell advertising, so the GP is correct.
Google is designed to be an excellent search engine with minimal interference that very quickly leads consumers to the sites they were searching for. It also sells advertising within that limitation.
As proof that you're wrong, Google doesn't carry the high-profit pop-up or pop-under ads, flash based ads or image ads on their own search engine, even though they offer them through Adsense. They don't offer them, because they'd be in the way of the primary design functionality of the Google website.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
10x more? Not anymore. I pay less than double the normal price on my business-class DSL line. I could never afford 10x more, but at this rate, I'm happy to pay the extra so I don't have to deal with any of this ISP traffic control nonsense.
Not a typewriter
I'm not an expert on all things google, but it wouldn't surprise me if google actually owned as much bandwidth as they bought. If ATandT and Verizon's consumer ISP had to buy their bandwidth at the competitive rates other ISPs pay from their parent companies, it might be cheaper for them to plug into google at the IPX and cut their parent companies out of the equation.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Then why don't the ISPs publicize this and offer consumer home connections that are not oversubscribed and charge a higher price for it, while continuing to offer hit or miss oversubscribed connections at the current rates? Those who are happy with sometimes slow traffic can stick with it, and the rest of us can move up to the non-oversubscribed lines. And our additional payments should give them money to invest in more infrastructure.
I actually probably couldn't afford this idea myself right now due to working my way out of debt and getting ready for our first child, but I can certainly see a day when I would be ready to move up a more expensive, unshared connection if one was actually an option.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
This conclusion seems bizarre to me. The ISPs "oversold their resources" (oversubscribed their data connections) based on sound, rational thinking at the time. They failed to anticipate the explosive growth of bandwidth-hungry services. Hindsight is 20/20. Like every other Big Business, they're going to try and point the finger elsewhere (such as the services "responsible" for that growth). This shouldn't be surprising at all. But I don't think the ISPs were irresponsible for getting us in this state. They just didn't do a good job of foreseeing the bandwidth used by future services. Or maybe they foresaw it, but saw that none of their competitors were doing anything about it either, so they chose to ignore it. (If they had been the only ones to make the investment, they wouldn't have been able to remain competitive with those ISPs that chose not to. They might have been vindicated in the end, but would they have survived to get there?)
In the US, ISPs do not have, and never have had, "common carrier status".
If there were no (good) search engines, people would use up quite a lot more of bandwidth in trying to find stuff on the Internet. Or not. But then there would be no business to be an ISP, because the Net would lose half of its appeal.
I work for Google, so I'm biased, but here's how I see it.
The Google search engine is supposed to be as useful as possible to users so that they will use it. Google adds some compromises to the usability of search (aka ads) so that the resources behind search are paid for along with a healthy profit.
That's the order of priorities as they have been repeatedly described to me.
Google search provides space where advertisers can pay for space that is simultaneously useful to users (something they're interested in investigating) and to advertisers (a selling opportunity). The first part (useful to users) is what Google is motivated to enforce, because then the ads also support the original statement: "The Google search engine is supposed to be as useful as possible to users so that they will use it."
I can't deny that Google uses usage data to improve the quality of search, but I'll assert that (1) everyone at Google is well aware of it's potential for "big brother" type scenarios and (2) everyone at Google is also aware that even a passing hint of misusing personal data would threaten the user trust on which Google's value is based. Google does better when people can trust Google, and I don't believe that an instance of data misuse would stay secret for more than a day. Far too many Googlers work there because they also trust Google's "don't be evil" policy. If Google was to breach user trust, employee trust would also be lost.
In conclusion: yes, Google system software is paying close attention to how you use Google. But no, it's not keeping a dossier on you. the goal of that software is most explicitly not to keep an eye on you, but to provide feedback so that the next time you use Google, it's even more useful to you.
I haven't RTFA but...it's very simple.
1) Google has their own backbone. They bought dark fiber, put their equipment on it, and run packets over it. They don't owe jack shit for this. They bought fiber so they wouldn't have to pay some inflated monthly fee to another service provider.
2) Google also pays for transit when their packets exit Google's network.
#2 covers it. Google pays fees, that's all they owe. Some other random ISP isn't owed a damned thing, if they are having problems they can either do #1 (light up some dark fiber to keep more traffic "on-net"), or #2 suck it up and pay for a larger pipe.
Exactly how I see it.
I paid my ISP their asking price for my bandwidth.
Google paid their ISP for their bandwidth.
Why the hell would google have to pay my ISP a second time for my bandwidth?
I see it as nothing more than greed.
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!
How many freakin times do we have to play the "you sell pipes now leave me alone" game? Just because companyX found a way to make $1000 off your $50 a month pipe dosent mean they owe you $950. Get over it.
And... will John Q Public ever figure out that the logic behind using up all the internet for free is a lie of biblical proportions?
No, but the telcos have and some of them turned into ISPs too.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
If there wasn't government intervention there'd be even less free market in the ISP market than there is now.
The only reason you have a choice of phone companies is because the government forces them to share the infrastructure, without that, only really large companies could afford to offer you phone service at all because they'd either have to build their own infrastructure(which is prohibitively expensive) or hire it out from Bell(they're back if you hadn't noticed) at whatever price they choose to charge, which by very definition cannot lead to any sort of real competition.
As for cable, I've gotten cable from a number of different companies, but I've never lived anywhere which had more than one you could choose from. Cable is pretty much a single provider kind of thing and has close to zero competition.
The only way in which any sort of free market can exist is when there is a minimal barrier to entry into the market. Net Neutrality, government owned infrastructure, and general government regulation, at least in the telecommunication arena if not in other areas, serve to maintain this minimal barrier to entry. Sometimes you need government regulation to have a free market because if you don't the big guys regulate the market themselves and squeeze the little guys out.
If you think that government regulation has hurt the internet then you really have no idea how it all works, or what it'd be like without it.
A misuse of the term "ironic" and no one has mentioned Alanis Morissette yet? Where is this world heading to?
The filesystem is the package manager
which is why it pissed me off when Verizon used to redirect my browser to their crappy branded search-engine rather than just relaying the DNS error--which i have a Firefox plug-in specifically for handling (by adding convenient google cache and way-back-machine links to the DNS error page).
i know a lot of libertarians see the Free Market as a cure-all for all the world's problems, but critical societal infrastructure like public utilities are too important to just leave to private corporations to commercially exploit however they will. besides being a natural monopoly and a service with inelastic demand (both of which make communications networks particularly susceptible to corruption/exploitation), the public has a strongly vested interest in the fair management & proper upkeep of our societal communications infrastructure.
either we effect industry regulations to protect public interest (as opposed to only catering to corporate interests as things currently stand), or local communities need to petition their municipal governments to set up their own public ISP as many cities are already starting to do. then we can start catching up to South Korea and Japan in terms of FttH deployment and address the disparity in broadband speeds/costs. instead of paying $150/month for 50 Mbps asymmetric "wideband" service, we should be paying $38/month for 1 Gbps fibre connections; that's $3.00 per Mbps versus $0.037 per Mbps symmetric bandwidth.
as things stand, consumers have no influence on how their ISPs are run. that's because individuals have no legal say in corporate policy, and due to broadband networks being natural monopolies, there are no free market forces to pressure ISPs into serving consumer interests. but individuals do have a voice in local government, and thus they would be able to influence how their municipally-managed ISP is run.
this would also bring us a step closer to ubiquitous wireless internet access. once internet access is treated as just another public utility (and a basic part of public infrastructure), the natural next step would be to roll out municipal WiFi/WiMax networks. and when that happens we'll also be able to replace our carrier-crippled cellphones with wireless VoIP handsets that aren't tied to a single (closed) cellular network.
I can't speak for anyone else on /. but as far as what I get Internet connectivity for, it's for access to the backbone so I can access services on other providers. Services such as google, youtube, hulu, tvland, amazon, and so forth. I couldn't give a flying leap about Comcast's internet service offerings; in fact, they are inferior to other portals such as yahoo, igoogle, and even msn. I don't want to use Comcast's internet services. I buy internet access to get access to the INTERNET, not Comcast's extranet.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Even accepting your argument (which is definitely debatable), how does this justify the *ISPs* charging Google a fee?
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.
Electricity supplies could be more affordable for everyone, if TV Broadcasters paid their fair share of the Generator's cost," wrote Clitland in the report. "It is ironic that Fox, who'se viewers are the largest user of generating capacity pays the least relatively to fund the Power company's cost; it is even more ironic that the company poised to profit more than any other from more HDTV deployment, expects the American taxpayer to pick up its skyrocketing electricity tab."'
I believe a similar argument was used against the BBC when it first brought out Iplayer, the big difference however was it's use of a peer to peer arangement.
None of the urls you just posted are the same. Are you complaining that google indexes your site ? To do that they have to visit the various separate pages. Maybe if you didn't run everything through a couple of PHP scripts, they wouldn't put so much load on your server.
Yahoo has been guilty of large amount of spidering on my sites, but google is only once every week or so. But then I don't use php so much. If you don't like google doing what you see, then script a robots.txt file that changes according to the day/date whatever. Crontab might be your friend.
>>> Why the hell would google have to pay my ISP a second time for my bandwidth?
The truth? So Comcast, Time-Warner, et al don't block google.com from sending bits to you. That's what is running in the back of their minds: "Google better pay for access to our users, or we will simply block google." Extortion.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
The truth? So Comcast, Time-Warner, et al don't block google.com from sending bits to you. That's what is running in the back of their minds: "Google better pay for access to our users, or we will simply block google." Extortion.
But by doing so, they'd also be blocking their own users, and many of them will probably leave for a competing ISP.
If there is one. The last mile monopolies need to die.
And if they can't pile up the money, how will they ever build the cash-pile-of-Babel.
And they need that so they can climb up and say "Hey God(s), Religion is kinda popular on the internet. Time to be paying your ISP taxes."
Put another way: I'm paying as a customer to access the world of the Internet, and as a business for the world of the Internet to access my sites. How in the *world* does Google need to contribute to payment in this anywhere?
They pay the bills for the world of the Internet to access Google.com and for Google.com's crawlers to access the world of the Internet.
If Google is costing a particular web hosting company too much, there are numerous remedies, including:
Running 'Nix is like owning a Lightsaber. It's "a more elegant weapon for a more civilized time."