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Can Google Save Us From Slow Internet
CoveredTrax writes "As part of the beta test of their new gigabit fiber network, Google has provided Stanford University with mouthwateringly high-speed Internet. Since the program was announced, the service, which is now being provided free to students and faculty in the Palo Alto area, has got a lot of people to asking (sometimes begging) that their city be next on Google's list for communication salvation. But can Google save us all from inferior web access? And more importantly, is it a good idea to let them?"
It should be quite easy to implement a fast forward button...
.... Oh I see, that was not what you meant, was it?
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
when google gives us free high-speed access and tons of other services to which we will all benefit greatly! But the cost will always be our privacy. Understand google's profit comes from advertising and then piece together how they will benefit. I'm not in favor.
all those problems you mentioned, comrade Lenin has already addressed. Please go see him.
Anyone who thinks that Google is doing this out of the kindness of their hearts is silly.
Google doesn't care whether you have high-speed access. They want to be able to trace your browsing and other internet usage habits, and they want to make sure they can serve up their ads in a way that minimizes the requirements on their resources.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Every problem you name has a technical workaround that your average Slashdotter could name off the top of their head.
Don't buy what Google is selling if you don't want it.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
If only America would elect a liberal supermajority for Congress followed by a liberal president so that all that stuff could easily get solved. Oh, wait...
As a current student and network admin of a small fiefdom at Stanford, I can tell you that the story is partially incorrect; Google is currently installing their fiber in the "faculty ghetto," a large Stanford-owned neighborhood by the school's foothills. They are not providing fiber to students - all student housing, academic buildings, and the campus core have separate mouthwateringly fast internet, Internet2, and wireless (via the SUNet).
More importantly, though, Google is *not* installing fiber in Palo Alto. One of the things that likely helped Stanford's case when we were selected is that the school owns *all the land* and even, as far as I know, all the utility lines on our campus. When you buy a house at Stanford, you actually only buy the building – you only lease the land. Because of that, when Stanford says "we're gonna install fiber," it's probably not tied up in regulatory messes, multiple contracts, competitive bidding, or the like. It takes the school's approval process, which may or may not be slow, but that's the only one; we don't have to ask the county, the city, or AT&T if we can do something - something that definitely speeds our adoption. I'm kinda scared that those kinds of facts might hurt further development of Google fiber.
I live in a rural backwater 100 miles from nearest large metropolis. The ILEC Bell won't even put a DSLAM in my CO.
Fortunately, they missed buying up one of the local CLECs in the 1980s when they were on a spending spree, and said CLEC acquired a large mom-and-pop ISP around Y2K.
The CLEC moved into my area, put a DSLAM of their own in my CO, and gives me 5Mbps ADSL 2+ service (we tested to 16, but I didn't want to pay for more than 5). This uses the ILEC's copper from CO to NID but everything else is done by the CLEC/ISP.
Next month or so, the CLEC will be burying fiber in my yard -- for free -- and the yard of anybody else in the neighbourhood that already has underground services and wants it; whether they are a current customer or not. This is because they just strung fiber on the pole and have a crew in the area that can just go down the street and bang-bang-bang get er' done. Unlike Verizon FiOS, said CLEC is also NOT ripping out the existing copper infrastructure.
So, about 2 months from now, I expect to be running 20 Mbps fiber service from these guys; 6 months or a year later, I'll also have Internet TV through them (they just bought a small traditional cable company in the area). In a rural village. And a few years from now, I bet they'll be pushing a lot more than 20 Mbps through the fiber.
So, no, we don't need Google to get fast internet. We need competition!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Back in my day, 14.4 kbs was blazing but there were always those malcontents that wanted images too.
Our expectations will probably always outpace available bandwidth.
I'm sure nothing could go wrong in encouraging the gatekeepers of the web with a closed-source monopoly platform on search and advertising, as well as a history of privacy issues, to become your ISP.
The point is obviously why is the bandwidth set at a fixed position. Is this technically sound? Probably. Is it sales wise sound? Mostlikely. If any cable or DSL operator decided to increase the bandwidth at a competing price others will follow. But it seems Google tries to do something else: what is the maximum achievable bandwidth given an acceptable end-user investment in hardware. If this applies to cable: the maximum Docsis3 rate would apply, and to DSL: the maximum VDSL2 rate would apply. Given that in the spectrum of telephone lines and hfc-networks maximum offers tend to be read as: "I demand for what you maximumly promised me" opposed to: "this is the maximum we can technically do" results in understanding the technical argument for a safe margin that helps sales keep their promises. But usually this safety is no more than a sales cap, thus any competition could offer a better deal, get customers and others will have to compete.
Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
Just waiting on Google to press Enter.
Have gnu, will travel.
Chattanooga achieved 1Gb/sec on EPB's network without any help at all, and both AT&T and Comcast fighting them every step of the way. The fight went well on up the court system hierarchy but the end result is that the fastest service in the U.S. is now here in tiny Chattanooga. I'm proud of that, and can attest firsthand for the quality and cost savings of their service. We went from roughly 600.00 for phone and internet on our business to 100.00/month. Now, why should we wait or expect to burden Google with this, when the very power to attain this resides in your very own communities.. Takes a little doing tho. Good Luck@!
But that unholy trinity sued, and then sponsored a law to prevent it, saying PUDs may not compete for telecommunication services. The only counties that got grandfathered in have gigabit fiber to the premises, for cheap. Two of the least dense counties in the state, and the PUDs are making so much money at it they have to lower power rates to compensate. But somehow those three don't see a profit in it in the most densely populated CITIES, let alone counties.
Somebody needs to explain to Google's wizards that Mountain View, CA is nice, but Cow Country isn't as close to Oakland. And for about the price you can get for your suburb five-bedroom conversion on 1/6 acre in California you can get almost 4.5 SQUARE MILES of ranch property with over a mile of major river frontage, countless trout and salmon ponds and streams and so on. And if you've got gigabit internet and HD telepresence software, who needs to go in to the office anyway?
Give us the Fiber Google, and the world is yours.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Call me when special interests don't hold the media hostage and force politicians to dance to their tune to get any air time during election season.
Everyone is wondering what's in it for Google. There is a lot in it for Google. This is a really excellent way to shut up the telco's etc... about net neutrality mumbo jumbo. If they want to charge people for bandwidth usage, and premium bandwidth, then Google is saying that if they make it too expensive for google to reach the target eyeballs, google'll go get them themselves, so f*** off. The monopoly co's will be SOL. So they test by asking some small companies to run the fibres for them, and get a good idea of the costing involved. Their business plan will be ready to execute if net neutrality goes south. Google will know exactly when it becomes cheaper to build your own than to pay the bandwith protection ... ahem... premium. Once the break-even gets to a few years, they're off.
I love what google does, but they always have a way of making the good things they do pay for themselves. I'd prefer municipal broadband, treated as a utility with a CO in each town where the fibre terminates and one can connect to the ISP of choice, but it isn't looking like I get to choose, so Google's option is, by far, the best thing on the horizon.
They're not practically a gatekeeper of the web. I switched to Bing for a while and found that I was getting the same quality that Google was providing if slightly less fresh. And then I switched to duckduckgo which was a bit better than both.
The only reason to use Google is if you demand the absolute most recent results, which in most cases aren't going to differ significantly from the slightly less recent results from the competition.
Because australian tax-payers are investing in australian infrastructure, that's why.
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
The indian tribes fixed that for themselves. Single-payer elections. Everyone gets the same amount of money from the tribal nation government, and aren't allowed to privately fund-raise for their political campaigns. It really levels the playing field.
Furries make the internet go.
The reason the gov asks isp's and telco's for your traffic is because tapping all those lines would involve passing legal hurdles. It's harder for the gov to directly stomp on your legal rights than for a corporation. It seems the people don't trust the gov so they watch them, but corporations get a free pass.
Oh, you mean like redirecting all customers' voice and data traffic through the NSA, without any warrant or anything, and without telling the victims of the snooping, and all just because they were asked? Yeah, AT&T did that. You bet I trust Google more.
Its intentional, 85% of the fiber in the ground in most areas is not lit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fibre#Overcapacity
They took $200 billion taxpayer money and ran off with it,
they are just more of the pirates running the country into the ground.
http://www.tispa.org/node/14
We paid for the upgrade already, we got the shaft as usual.
Pirates of the Potomac taking bribes to hand off our money to corporate pirates.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I dissagree. Both in the same market trying to subscribe the same customers is doing the job.
I started with Dial Up. Upgraded to Comcast about 4 years ago. 2 Meg down connection.
I dropped Comcast and got Qwest with a lower price and a 6 meg down connection.
This week Comcast had a door to door salesman stop by. They just pulled fiber and are offering 20 Meg down for about $5 less. This does not happen in a monopoly market.
The truth shall set you free!
-tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
We got a similar system for our politics. Every party (that gets more than a few votes, just to keep the lunatics from cashing in) gets their campaign expenses reimbursed from the country. At first, a huge outcry was heard (after all, we should pay with tax money so politicians can lie to us with ads?), but face it: They need money to campaign, and they will get it, one way or another. And this way, I buy the politician. Not some corporation.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I often wonder if the image of communism would be different if it didn't only occur in countries that were falling apart to begin with.
Great Intellect...
I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of where all that unlit fiber is. Virtually all that unlit fiber is long-haul trunks running between metro areas, not last-mile deployments. These companies laid fiber during the dot-com boom to support backbone networks, not home/end-user ISP service. It's not like everyone has a fiber optic cable running to their house and nobody wants to light it up and provide service... that Fiber To The Home (FTTH) is simply not there for the vast majority of US residential users. And in areas where copper to the home has been replaced with FTTH (e.g. Verizon's FiOS service areas), it has proven to be marginally profitable or unprofitable. So the existence of all that dark fiber doesn't bring you or me any closer to getting a gigabit drop to the home.
"95% of all Slashdot