What Are Google and Verizon Up To?

pickens writes "Robert X. Cringley has an op-ed in the NY Times in which he contends that Google has found a way to get special treatment from Verizon without actually compromising net neutrality, by beginning to co-locate some of their portable data centers with Verizon network hubs. 'With servers so close to users, Google could not only send its data faster but also avoid sending it over the Internet backbone that connects service providers and for which they all pay,' writes Cringley. 'This would save space for other traffic — and money for both Verizon and Google, as their backbone bills decline (wishful thinking, but theoretically possible). Net neutrality would be not only intact, but enhanced.' So why won't Google and Verizon admit what they're up to? 'If my guess is right, then I would think they're silent because it's a secret. They'd rather their competitors not know until a few hundred shipping containers are in place — and suddenly YouTube looks more like HBO.'"

Comments

Google TV

[dsginter]

We can ditch the cableco and finally get ala carte programming.

Re:Google TV

[odies]

Well, I don't really understand what is so interesting about this. Akamai and other CDN providers have been doing this for 15+ years already. It's nothing new.

Re:Google TV

[AnEducatedNegro]

Yes. In fact, if you watched the worldcup on ESPN online you were watching the stream coming from a local server hosted by your ISP.

Although, to be pedantic, not all CDNs host in every ISP's datacenter... only the really rich ones do. Everyone else just uses anycast to reduce latency. A good write up about anycast is here

Google presentation on their data centers

[mbone]

None of this would surprise me. Akamai has been placing gear in ISP's premises (for free!) for over a decade now.

Here is a 2.4 Mbyte pdf on Google's approach to data centers, and a video tour.

Verizon's bad psychology

[MikeRT]

Verizon would have been better served all along by approaching this from a positive angle along the lines of "how we can get your content to our users, faster" than "you are screwing us by not paying us." Everyone likes a company that says "what can we do for you" a lot better than one that stamps its feet like a brat.

Really?

[Alcoholic Dali]

Has Cringely ever been right with one of his predictions/theories? I like the guy a lot, and his ideas are always pretty interesting, but somehow I never hear a follow up where someone says "Yep, he was right!"

So?

[nweaver]

This is the entire Akamai business model: It saves money for BOTH google AND Verizon, and improves latency for Google.

And unless the user is actually transferring data at full line rate (saturating buffers), does not penalize anyone else. (During full rate transfers, TCP dynamics cause short RTT flows to be favored).

How is this different?

[dachshund]

I'm sorry, but how is this fundamentally different from the sort of tiered service that net-neutrality advocates worry about? Google pays Verizon a substantial sum of money, and in return Google gets preferential access to the network in the form of local datacenters. This gives Google an advantage over competing providers /provided that the bottleneck is in the peering or backbone connections/. Given that Verizon FIOS seems to have substantial excess fiber capacity within its network, that seems like a likely scenario. (Wireless less so.)

There's a finite amount of room at Verizon's data centers, so I imagine they'll be able to charge plenty of money for this, and that smaller providers will be locked out (or will have to pay fractionally, e.g., through an already-colocated service like Akamai). Verizon gets a new profit center and Verizon users pay for it invisibly through advertising and the cost of any services that Google eventually offers for pay. Which is the truly worrisome aspect of net non-neutrality.

Obviously this is only one step on the road to ISP-controlled, for-profit, tiered service. But it's in the same spirit, and it may be that Google has made it clear they're willing to pay for access to those networks.

Re:How is this different?

[DwySteve]

I'm sorry, but how is this fundamentally different from the sort of tiered service that net-neutrality advocates worry about? Google pays Verizon a substantial sum of money, and in return Google gets preferential access to the network in the form of local datacenters.

This is different in that Google actually paid for something physical and not just a 'It'd be a shame if your nice internet caught on fire' protection scheme. What *I* feared about a lack of net neutrality wasn't Google getting faster because they paid, but everyone else getting slower. These large communication companies have a history of trying to sell the same infrastructure as many times as they can. This is different in that new infrastructure was created instead of old infrastructure unfairly and arbitrarily reapportioned.

You nailed it

[Anonymous Coward]

This has nothing to do with being anothe akamai. This has everything to do with Google getting more detailed information on exactly who you are. I'm not a Google hater, but when Google and Verizon partner, they will know almost everything that was in your credit report, where you are right now, where you've been walking with your cell phone, which computer at home you're using (assuming you use their router), what you're watching on TV right now, and what type of porn you like on PPV.

Net neutrality remains, but your privacy most certainly does not.

Newsflash: This is common practice

[BitZtream]

I'm not sure why this is news, this is and has been common practice for at least the last 15 years that I've been involved with Internet infrastructure and it wasn't really new then either.

Regardless of 'net neutrality' issues, this is just common sense and good network design. If you're going to need a new datacenter putting it as close to the users as possible has always been 'good design' practices. The traffic not only gets to its destination faster, it also unloads links that previously carried the traffic. Its a win for everyone involved.

This is no different than mutual peering agreements or the Akamia and iTunes hosting that pretty much every major ISP does already anyway. I haven't ever downloaded a song from iTunes or an app or movie that didn't come from the TWC datacenter a few miles down the road. Surprising this is the first we've heard of Google doing it actually. Its a safe bet this isn't actually new for them either.

The only downside is that Verizon may not put as much effort into their backbone connections so external sites end up suffering, and thats a problem, but you can only legislate so much, shitty businesses will always figure out a way to rip you off unless they have competition.