Slashdot Mirror
YouTube's Bandwidth Bill May be Zero
MrShaggy writes "Credit Suisse made headlines this summer when it estimated that YouTube was costing Google a half a billion dollars in 2009 as it streamed 75 billion videos. But a new report from Arbor Networks suggests that even though Google is approaching 10 percent of the net's traffic, it's got so much fiber optic cable it is simply trading traffic, with no payment involved, with the net's largest ISPs. 'I think Google's transit costs are close to zero,' said Craig Labovitz, the chief scientist for Arbor Networks and a longtime internet researcher. Arbor Networks, which sells network monitoring equipment used by about 70 percent of the net's ISPs, likely knows more about the net's ebbs and flows than anyone outside of the National Security Agency."
I really don't see why Google would be paying much. It seems the guy who wrote that article now discovered how peering works.
Routing graph for YouTube AS
Routing graph for Google AS
YouTube alone has direct peering contracts with AT&T, RETN, TINET and via Google AS with Net Access, NTT Communications, Telia, Level3, SIG, Sprint, Global Crossing, MFN, Cogent, Port80, Internet2 and AOL.
Depending on the terms, it means Google can also act as a peering or transit point between these companies and or even have an IXP's at their locations, so theres incentive for ISP's to sign up beneficial transit agreement, especially considering Google has data centers around the world. Google has more power than Tier 1 ISP's alone. The article's note about "serving customers YouTube faster" is a moot point - Google's infrastructure and routing contracts alone act as a great incentive for ISP's to make a peering agreement with Google.
Epic. Fail.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Google already ran the fiber for other purposes. So that cost was already planned for, well before they acquired YouTube. So, yes, it cost them nothing extra.
Owning and maintaining all that fiber is costing Google money. Even if they are not paying anything to other providers for handling YouTube traffic it is using bandwidth on their own fiber that they could otherwise sell or use for something else.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Suppose Google had all that stuff but not YouTube. It would be selling services to YouTube.
...
It's not so much the cost to run their own fiber (marginal cost), which could be very low. The relevant cost here is opportunity cost; they could be charging other content providers to use that fiber and the revenue they're giving up is the real cost of using it for their own content.
There's a reason the concepts of scarcity and opportunity cost are introduced in the first lecture of every Econ 101 course that I know of. Too bad the concepts don't stick!
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
If they weren't using it for Youtube they could leave it dark, saving power costs, or deferring future expenditures, or provide transit for other companies and receive income from them.
because i don't ride in other people's cars, my car costs are zero
except for car payments, financing, gasoline, repairs, insurance, inspection, registration, tolls, oil change...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
fiber cost don't go in the same column as bandwidth cost. Accounting solves it again.
Almost all companies lease their offices. They could buy them and save rent. It would possibly be cheaper. They don;t though. They don't want all that capital tied up in property. They can use it for business expansion instead.
So Google owns a bunch of fibre. This has a capital cost. That's money that could have been invested somewhere else, so it's not free. They could have leased the fibre from a third party. Presumably they worked out that it would be cheaper not to do this. They could probably have saved money by leasing bandwidth from a third party. The third party would then be able to amortise the costs over several customers if there's surplus bandwidth. Having capital tied up like this isn't "free".
It points out the folly when people say "Comcast/AT&T/Verizon/whomever has to pay huge upstream bandwidth costs, bandwidth isn't free y'know!", and it always gets marked as insightful.
These guys are so large, bandwidth, other than physical maintenance of their physical plant, isn't a big part of their expenses. When Comcast says "We need to limit bandwidth because of those evil hackers", that's code for "I don't feel like rolling out DOCIS 3 for a few years". When AT&T Mobile says "Those iPhone users are sucking up all the bandwidth so we have to limit you", that's code for "We dont' want to upgrade our cell towers".
People still have this picture in mind of a tier-1 provider asking their local LEC to run a couple DS-3's over to their data center. It's such a 1992 view of how ISPs actually work.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
You guys are looking at this from a completely different angle than a business person would. Google has that fiber REGARDLESS of YouTube's existence. It has that fiber to run its core business, advertising. Therefore the cost of maintaining the fiber is a cost to Google's advertising business. Furthermore, the cost of laying the fiber has (likely) already been paid and is no longer considered a cost but a capital investment.
Therefore, since the YouTube division is not paying for the fiber to be laid and is not paying for the fiber to be maintained, YouTube could have $0 bandwidth cost to Google.
If ISPs are willing to give Google half a billion dollars a year of traffic in exchange for Google giving them some equivalent value of traffic on its own fiber, we should at least consider the possibility that Google could otherwise sell that traffic. Our best guess for the opportunity cost might still be half a billion dollars.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
When you have as many servers as google, the bulk order is big enough to go direct to the manufacturer skipping all the middle men (and their markups).
But it is not like bandwidth itself costs money. It is always the infrastructure that you are paying for. You can either outsource network building and maintenance to a third party, or you can do it yourself.
It is no different than Google having lawyers and accountants on staff, while smaller companies only hire those people when needed. It is more cost effective for the smaller businesses to only pay for what they use, but larger companies are not bound by those same limitations. I am sure that Youtube does not pay any lawyer firms for any legal issues that arise within their operation also.