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.

Comments

more competition

[saturnblackhole]

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.

Re:more competition

[WinterSolstice]

I see this as a response to the filtering and tiering complaints. Google seems to be attempting to say "Fine, take your toys and go home. We'll just give everyone new toys"

I wish them luck, and hope we're not seeing the founding of the new IBM/Ma Bell empire.

Re:more competition

[Eric52902]

Or, for those of us who've run out of tinfoil, maybe it just happens that they haven't hammered out the details. That seems far less likely than the marketspeak angle though, huh?

Re:more competition

[drachenstern]

Gigabit to the home not on Comcast? Um, sign me up for $120+/mo...

Or is that just me? I would expect the service to come down with time, and I realize this is a big gamble on their end, but $DEITY I would love to see anyone else in my neighborhood @now

Re:more competition

[A nonymous Coward]

You do understand the concept of RTFA ... oh wait. I see.

Re:more competition

[mcgrew]

I would expect the service to come down with time

Well, with Comcast, the service DOES go down with time. Unfortunately the more the service goes down, the more the price goes up.

Google

[russlar]

Seriously, is there any market Google is not going into?

Re:Google

[_PimpDaddy7_]

I don't care.

If this means more competition to the likes of Comcast and Verizon with internet in the home, so be it.

I am so sick of the cable companies stranglehold. It's obvious the FCC won't do anything about competition.

I'd gladly welcome Google.

Competition is GOOD.

Re:Google

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Privacy protection; and ad-blocking.

Re:Google

[mc1138]

I hope they'll take this a step further and offer up this sort of connection to corporate customers. I work from a company with a 20 Mbit connection and probably pay a lot more than what this connection is going to be offered for. Granted I'd still be fine paying more than a home user to guarantee uptime etc, but really, hopefully this will be a shot in the arm to other providers to wake up and not nickel and dime people for services that can't meet demand. It seems like Google is doing what they can to keep the US from falling behind the rest of the world.

Re:Google

[Z34107]

Problem: All the competition is incompetent. Google is not. Google will move in to this area, destroy everyone else, and then there will be no more "competition" (not that there necessarily was any before). In the end, we might end up with but one ISP....

Even if that happens, we'll still be (slightly) better off. Rather than have incompetent ISPs with no competition, we'll have a competent ISP with no competition.

You can sign up for the beta here.

Re:Google

[TubeSteak]

this is nothing but good in my book.

We already bitch and moan about our privacy and how much information we want any single company to have.
Now you're excited about giving the internet's biggest data-miner 100% of your browsing traffic and behavior?

Re:Google

[not already in use]

Google seems willing and ready to tap any market that is dominated by dick-wads that have gotten too comfortable charging too much for too little. More power to them. They're going to make a lot of money off of innovating and giving people their money's worth.

Old news

[Tmack]

They launched this a few years back iirc: http://www.google.com/tisp/

tm

Re:Old news

[Tmack]

TiSP is WIRELESS - this article talks about fiber to the home

"Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines."

RTFA!

tm

Re:Old news

[Firemouth]

I had this. I don't recommend it as it was pretty shitty.

Re:Old news

[rsborg]

TiSP is WIRELESS - this article talks about fiber to the home

Be careful, fiber will increase the "data" flow.

Way to go

[LeotheQuick]

ISPs are yet another market where companies have been allowed to sit high on the hog because of the cost the advantage they have in their existing infrastructure. Any sort of competition that can give these companies a good kick in the arse is a good thing in my book. Now Google just needs to get into the banking business :-)

What is Google's interest? Data Tracking?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Why would Google want to get into Fiber? Will they just track every packet you send over the net and sell that data?

Re:What is Google's interest? Data Tracking?

[MozeeToby]

A) There is undoubtably money to be made installing ultra-high speed internet, the market is large and the suppliers are few. It's entirely possible that they simple intend to move into the ISP business
B) It's in Google's best interests for everyone to have a high quality internet connection. Specifically, this is probably more about creating a market to test the next generation of web based apps than it is about anything else. Presumably, ultra-high speed connections will be more common in a few years, and Google would like the opportunity to see what exactly people will use them for. We already have the bandwidth for video, VOIP, and webapps, so what's next?

Re:What is Google's interest? Data Tracking?

[UnknowingFool]

Google is already into fiber having bought out a lot of dark fiber years ago. At the time, Google said it was help reduce costs by using their own pipes rather pay a network like AT&T to connect their own data centers. Now the real question is why are they going into providing consumers fiber access.

Re:What is Google's interest? Data Tracking?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

They could well have a tracking agenda, they are an advertising company, and a fair few ISPs have been seen sniffing around NebuAd and Phorm and their ilk. It certainly wouldn't surprise me.

However, if they just wanted the tracking data, there are almost certainly cheaper, easier, and very much quieter ways to get 90% of the effect. They already have ads on some huge percentage of webpages, and set cookies all over the place, not to mention the people who stay logged in to iGoogle and the like all the time. I'm sure the additional data they could get by being the ISP would be a bonus; but I'm a lot less sure that it is a bonus worth going into the infrastructure business, and bringing down the combined marketing/lobbying wrath of every cable and telco incumbent in the US over.

More likely, they have two basic concerns: Network quality and network neutrality.

If available net connections suck, webapps will suck and online experiences generally will suck. More people will continue to use desktop apps, or iPhone style purpose-specific applications, which will mean fewer people looking at adsense ads and using webapps. That would make Google a sad panda.

If the incumbent carriers, telco and cable, are in the position to do so, it will be immensely tempting for them to sell access to "their consumers". At worst, this will mean Google gets blocked entirely. At best, this will shift money out of Google's margins and into Comcast and Verizon's margins. Google really has to shiv them before they shiv google on this one.

Re:What is Google's interest? Data Tracking?

[bill_mcgonigle]

They don't. They want to embarrass the real ISP's into building decent networks so the network-neutrality issue goes away and they don't wind up having to pay the ISP's for traffic they're sending to its customers.

Google is always playing the chess board three moves ahead.

Re:What is Google's interest? Data Tracking?

[chill]

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.

Re:What is Google's interest? Data Tracking?

[DragonWriter]

Why would Google want to get into Fiber?

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.

Here is what is going to happen.

[eparker05]

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.

Re:Here is what is going to happen.

[FlyingBishop]

Which will pan out about as well as Palm's attempt to get Apple in trouble for breaching the USB standard.

Re:Here is what is going to happen.

[Random BedHead Ed]

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.

Re:Here is what is going to happen.

[russlar]

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.

Re:Here is what is going to happen.

[amorsen]

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.

Community Organization?

[Itninja]

I just tried to 'recommend my community' and apparently one needs to be part of some community organization to make the recommendation. I wonder if 'my house' can be considered a community organization?

Re:Community Organization?

[srealm]

Filling in the community organization is optional (not a required field).

Yes.

[ChinggisK]

Ostrich farming.

Re:Yes.

[abigor]

It's a "head in the sandbox" virtual machine.

Re:Yes.

[Tumbleweed]

Ostrich farming.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of an ostrich carrying a pack of SSDs.

Re:Yes.

[newell98]

They use sheep to mow their grass on campus. Close enough?

Re:Yes.

[timeOday]

Seriously? There are sheep working at google and I still can't get hired there?

Re:Yes.

[tattood]

If you are fine with eating grass all day, I'm sure there is an opening.

Re:Oh no...

[lorenlal]

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.

I'm shocked

[Locke2005]

23 comments about a 1 gigabit home connection, and not one of them has even mentioned the word "porn"?!? Man, you guys are slipping...

Ooh...ooh, pick me!

[Overzeetop]

Seriously. Blacksburg, Virginia (home of Virginia Tech) was supposed to have 10bT to every home back in the 90s - the Blacksburg Electronic Village they called it. You would think we'd be sitting pretty for even higher speed by now. It never materialized. We've got Verizon (copper only, 3Mb max speed) or Comcast (formerly Adelphia, ~7Mb max speed, when the moon is full). There are a few other minor players, but they are either geared towards the large apartment complexes or businesses (and make Verizon look inexpensive). Heck, I'm close enough in that my power is from Virginia Tech electric.

I don't need huge total volume, I just want blisteringly fast for shortish periods.

pulling a gmail

[speed of lightx2]

When gmail first appeared, the two big free email services were yahoo and hotmail. Hotmail have you 2MB to play with, and Yahoo was a bit more generous with 5 (if I remember correctly). That seemed to be the status-quo until google offered with gmail 200 times more free storage (plus features).

More advertising dollars

[cjjjer]

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.

Re:Mark Shuttleworth

[mibus]

People often forget too that downloading at that speed is dependant on hard disk throughput

Only if you're intending to save it to disk. Streaming multiple HD video streams (one for you, one or two for your kids) etc. etc. will use gobs of bandwidth with zero disk activity - and is only going to get larger (3D, 4K-resolution, etc).

Granted, you'd still have plenty of room left over in your gigabit, but I'm sure we'll find something useful to use it for. (Astronomers working from home? :)