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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?
Anybody want my mod points?
tm
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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 :-)
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.
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?
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Ostrich farming.
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.
23 comments about a 1 gigabit home connection, and not one of them has even mentioned the word "porn"?!? Man, you guys are slipping...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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).
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
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.