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Google's Experimental Fiber Network
gmuslera writes "Not enough speed from your ISP? Google seems to go into that market too. 'We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.' The goal isnt just to give ultra fast speed for some lucky ones, but to test under that conditions things like new generations of apps, and deployment techniques that take advantage of it." If they need a test neighborhood, I'm sure mine would be willing.
this is great i hope its a huge success, comcast and time warner needs some competition to lower prices and get rid of stupid data caps. just wish i was available to more people.
Seriously, is there any market Google is not going into?
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Well, they could. So what? Instead of Comcast, Cox, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, etc, Google can get their stats direct. Yes, there's a much bigger pipe, but you and I are still generating the traceable data as fast as we can.
Of course, I see another possibility for this. You know how many of these ISPs are trying to make providers pay for "preferred" access? Maybe Google is seeing this as a way to ensure net neutrality in the market, or possibly turn the tables. We shall see if it makes it far into the market, and if it ends up making a real difference.
I, for one, would welcome such a bandwidth overlord.
Because it is damn expensive, that is "why not".
The "why" needs to give them a good reason. My guess is this:
1. Google's main revenue generator -- ads -- are very effective. I know a lot of people who hate Internet ads but don't mind Google's because they aren't in-your-face offensive. Considering their revenue, there are a LOT of people like that.
2. The better your experience on the Internet, the more money Google makes.
3. Google, therefore, rolls out products designed to improve your experience on the Internet.
4. Profit! (Goto 2)
This is the same logic I use to believe that Chrome isn't a threat to Mozilla Firefox. All Google cares about is better, faster, stronger Internet experience. They have the tools, they can rebuild it. Chrome isn't a competitor to Firefox.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I can see it now Google wants to put a settop box (GoogleTV??) in every house, running the latest ChromeOS it can then stream content and ads to you while you browse the internet and watch TV media and read Print media from your TV.
Makes perfect sense.
The big names in networking (AT&T, Charter, etc.) are going to sue Google on antitrust grounds because it is easier to hire lawyers than to upgrade failing and obsolete networks.
Perhaps they will. But consider: this is not a profit engine for Google, in much the same way that Android isn't a profit engine. Google says this service is to test new high-bandwidth technologies, and I don't doubt that's true, but it's probably also true that they're just trying to upset this market because the established cable companies are a threat to their other businesses, both because of their slowness to raise the bandwidth bar and because of their marriages to legacy content distribution.
Because of this, Google probably doesn't care whether they own this service or not. I bet if the big networking dinosaurs sued Google, Google could settle with them by agreeing to spin off the fiber Internet company, yet still accomplish all of the original project goals. It would be like if Google had to cut Android free - it would still satisfy Google's main goal of creating an open platform that's more friendly to their mobile web services than Apple's or Microsoft's is likely to be.
Among many other reasons, its a net neutrality insurance policy. Google favors net neutrality, but if net neutrality foes succeed (and that's an ongoing threat, because they don't tend to back off even as the FCC reiterates its support for net neutrality principles) it needs its own links directly to consumers as a hedge against other big network providers (particularly those that are also trying to compete with other Google services, whether video offerings that compete with YouTube, phone offerings that compete in some ways with Voice, or something else) -- impairing access to Google's services. If Google can position themselves as a competitive fiber-to-consumer provider, it puts them in a position where such actions by competing service providers that are also fiber providers are riskier because of the potential for retaliation.
Google has a strategic investment in not making the internet into a set of disjoint walled gardens, but ultimately the best way of insuring that is to guarantee that if its competitors try to convert it into such a system, those competitors will lose.
The big names in networking (AT&T, Charter, etc.) are going to sue Google on antitrust grounds because it is easier to hire lawyers than to upgrade failing and obsolete networks.
Maybe. Except that, if they base their anti-trust claim on the basis that Google would own both the content and the connection to that content, then Comcast's acquisition of NBC would also be subject to this same suit.
I can't see Comcast suing itself.
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When Google offered 1GB mail storage, that was industry changing. They didn't end up with 1GB storage per customer though, most people use far less. The trick was to avoid the pitfall of only getting the heavy users.
Perhaps they can pull the same trick with fiber.
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