Could Google Fiber Save Network Neutrality?

nmpost writes "Could Google Fiber, set to launch next week, be the savior of network neutrality? Some speculate that the program is Google's answer to attacks on network neutrality by the big internet providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T. These companies complain about the price of upgrading and maintaining their network, and want to charge websites like Google extra money to allow customers fast access to its sites. This practice would violate the long held spirit of the internet, where all data traffic is treated equally. Google may be out to prove that fast networks can be built and maintained at reasonable prices."

Comments

Dibs

[pubwvj]

Dibs on first run to my house!

Not likely

[bearded_yak]

Even the best efforts tend to become commercialized. Look at Google Shopping's new upcoming direction.

What is to stop them 3 years later from creating a paid class system? And who would be able to honestly blame them? After all, it would be THEIR network.

Re:Not likely

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Yeah this supposes that everyone in the world puts money above all other values. In reality, that only describes a subset of humanity. If it described everyone then every opportunity to commit a financially advantageous criminal act would be taken by everyone every chance they got.

The reason civilization holds together isn't because we pass laws and intimidate people into obeying them. The reason civilization holds together is because most people want to live within the boundaries society sets. In fact, the generalized will of the people is where those boundaries came from in the first place. Even draconic enforcement just couldn't coerce a population into overcoming impulses that assail them every hour of every day.

What we have in America and elsewhere is a economic system which fails to punish sociopathy early on. In fact, it does just the opposite, it rewards it differentially with career advancement. The people at the top ARE different- they're worse, much worse, than the average person.

I heard some woman talking on BBC a couple nights ago about how the CEOs involed in the LIBOR scandal are really no better or worse than you or I, they just have bigger opportunities. That is exactly wrong. The bigger the potential to wreak damage on larger numbers of people,. the MORE earnest and conscientious the average person becomes with dispatching his or her duties. That's called "having a conscience"

Of course from a sociobiological point of view, we can forgive her for talking this way. Having been selected as a commentator on the behaviour of the executives of banks means she has had and likely continues to have some opportunities for socializing with them. So of course she's going to use this interview as an opportunity to signal her willingness and availability for copulation with the powerful males in her tribe. Still, if anything other than her limbic system had had control of her mouth and behaviour, any of the above facts might have popped into her head and resulted in a smarter and more insightful interview.

Not everyone is a sociopath and consequently not everyone prioritizes the accumulation of personal wealth above all other values. I count the execs at Google amongst the more morally normal people in business.

Re:Not likely

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually has helped I think.
Almost every Google ad I see is unobtrusive, Many are somewhat relevant, once in a great while clicking on the ad takes me to what I was looking for.
And Google gives me a detailed list of my history with them and allows me to remove the stuff I do not want saved. (Umm...Assuming I would ever do anything that I would want removed. Which so far has ummm never happened.)
Google, So far, has been the best massive, money making corporation I have ever come in contact with.
I am beginning to trust that they are smart enough to make a lot of money and not have to fuck their customers in the ass to do it.

Re:Not likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Any corporation rewards those that make money for it, it's the essence of capitalism which means that's what you get from top to bottom and the sociopaths that care about nothing else floats to the top. It might not be how people act, but it's how corporations act and Google definitively is one of them. Don't expect those executives to keep it from turning into just like every other big company.

In the case of Google, though, the top executives are also the largest shareholders and have so much money that financial rewards are effectively meaningless to them. Of course, many CEO types still keep trying to increase their net worth even after they've got more money than they could possibly ever spend, because it becomes the way to keep score, and they're all about winning. But Larry Page isn't a typical CEO type, his degrees are in computer engineering and computer science, and you just have to listen to him for 30 seconds to realize he's a geek to the core. He claims that he's motivated by the opportunity to do great things that make the world better, and that the need to make money is just a means to that end. You can call him a liar, but there's really nothing in his history to support your claim.

Of course, that's now, and Google probably will eventually come under the control of a bean counter, or of a leader whose focus is on "maximizing shareholder value" in order to maximize his own net worth. But I think that's really not what's going on now, and it won't be the case for many years.

Re:Not likely

[Fjandr]

There's a significant difference between a psychopath and a sociopath. That said, it is quite true that the business environment rewards sociopaths inordinately over non-sociopaths. The actual proportion is nearly impossible to know, however, as sociopaths who succeed in business are those who have exceptional adeptness at manipulation and the spinning of fabulously intricate and entirely plausible webs of utter bullshit (while only rarely being caught doing it).

The error is in believing the current system is the cause of this, rather than coming to the true conclusion that sociopaths have an inherent advantage when it comes to concentrating power through manipulation. They are almost purpose-built (the ones who don't spend their time abducting and killing, anyway) to excel in games of social engineering, which is the basis of both business and politics.

The other error is in equating the successful businessperson with the rich in general. While the former generally belongs to the latter group, the latter group as composed of many who are not the former. The bulk of the world's concentrated wealth is more likely to be held as an accident of birth than as a result of being a highly successful sociopath, and in that they are much more likely to be average than clinically insane.

Re:Not likely

[Raenex]

Google (whom I do not work for) does seem to me to be a company apart.

You really need to open your eyes and stop buying into propaganda. I agree to a certain extent that Google puts some effort into behaving, but at the end of the day they are a for-profit company bent on creating a digital empire.

Google have pretty much lived up to the "don't be evil" slogan, a bout of WIFI panty-sniffing excepted .

Google now has a long history of disregarding privacy, and the WiFi sniffing is just one example. Other examples are not deleting email when requested by the user, the Buzz privacy fiasco, pervasive tracking (including forcing cookies on Safari via a loophole), and keeping data around for too long. Most of these problems have been addressed after public outcry, though the pervasive tracking is still there.

Comcast and Verizon and ATT are purely evil in that they want only money and the larger society can go fuck itself. They have no sense of civic duty nor do they care about the fate of this nation or its peoples , except as a PR move.

So is that why Google dodges taxes using tax havens?

"Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

Google's income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the "Double Irish" and the "Dutch Sandwich" -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries. "

What?

[BitHive]

The solution to network neutrality is to buy up tons of dark fiber in the wake of a bubble and use it to build your own national network? Does anyone else see a problem with this?

The real test

[Trongy]

If Google becomes successful with this, the real test will be whether they offer their competitors equal access to their network.

Re:The real test

[Qzukk]

Bing will be replaced by Google and Microsoft websites will load half as quickly.

If you call and complain they'll disavow any knowledge of problems on the network and it must be Microsoft's fault.

Re:Fast Networks

[AngryDeuce]

Or better yet: The state

And with those words, you would drive half the people of this country into hysterics. We can't even agree to a public option...I doubt highly that enough of us would agree to fund something like that no matter how beneficial we all know it would be. Look at what they're doing to NPR...

I want a pony

[PPH]

I've long proposed that Municipalities build their own networks,

And the Big Operators have fought that. A few early adopters have slipped by them. Tacoma, WA built the Click Network through their power PUD. But the commercial operators have put legislation in place in many jurisdictions to prevent the further spread of public networks. Where this hasn't been possible, they have recruited astroturfers to scream about the horrors of public infrastructure to frighten the public away from supporting such projects.

Reasonable price != market-building price

[cdrguru]

We are still in a mode in many areas where ISPs are trying to build market share, especially with DSL. DSL took a big hit when the equal-access provisions were found to be unworkable - technology passed them by and nobody noticed - but you still see offers for $14.99 DSL service.

Look at "business rates" for DSL or cable and you will see what the real costs are. Nobody is interested in competing on price for business customers, so they do not. The result is the prices are 3-4 times the residential rates and in many areas they will not give you a "residential" (i.e., cheap) plan at a business address.

On the residential front, most of the ISPs are trying to compete on price because the service is pretty well known. What is the difference with business service? Certainly nothing that changes the real cost structure, in fact things are added which cost more for the ISP.

Where most of the "network neutrality" flap has come from is the ISPs are offering below-cost service to residential customers in an effort to still build market share. Of course, any residential user that is doing more than web surfing and reading email is costing them more in peering than they are getting from the customer on an Internet-only plan. Should be obvious why they want you on a bundled plan with cable TV and phone service. The business customer is in a market-building mode so they are charged full cost plus.

So why are the ISPs screaming? Because they boxed themselves in with below-cost pricing for residential customers. The same residential customers that are doing much more than just web surfing and reading email. They can't raise prices to their customers - they are building market share. So where are they going to recoup their real costs? You guessed it - the other end of the connection, the one with no options and the one with the deep pockets.

Could Google come in an offer service to residential customers? Maybe, but they are far more likely to offer service on their own terms to ISPs - perhaps with no peering charges at all. Google is paying nothing or almost nothing for the existing fiber - they bought it already. So their costs are already sunk into it. Would an ISP sign on with Google? If the other option is to continue to pay someone else for traffic to Google... maybe it makes sense.

Could Google compete on a residential service level? Sure, I suppose. But they would have the same costs as the ISP does for customer service (script readers in India) and physical plant maintenance (outsourced to independent contractors) and they would have to make a huge investment into local terminations - nodes where the connections to homes would be. It makes much more sense for them to offer independent Google connections bypassing the current peering arrangements to save the ISPs rather than paying the ISPs for the privilege of having eyeballs.

The advantage for Google is with a completely independent pipe to each and every ISP they can do a much better job of geographic data mining. And traffic analysis so they know the Detroit suburbs aren't going to Amazon as much as the folks in Scottsdale. There are probably hundreds of other things they can collect this way with a tap into every ISP. Probably with a router running custom Google code to facilitate this tap. It makes paying for the fiber a rounding error on the balance sheet compared with the value of the information they can collect.

Re:Fast Networks

[pubwvj]

Yes, it really isn't that expensive. I put in my own fiber network for our farm, home and business. Small, but then we're smaller than Google (surprise!) and I had a very good reason. Fiber is immune to lightning strikes which are a huge problem up here on the mountain. Next I would like to lay fiber the mile and a half down to the phone company. It pushes the lightning strike problem that much further away from us.

Did they say Gigabit speeds?

[theshowmecanuck]

I guess it's true that a lot of fibre will open up your "pipes".

Re:Last mile

[Areyoukiddingme]

I gather you don't know anything about the Google Fiber project. They pulled last mile fiber. That was the whole point of the project: that the existing last mile was ancient, unupgraded, substandard crap, raped and abused and ignored by cable companies and telcos for the last half century, in the certain knowledge that when people decided it needed to be better, they could go crying to the government, get a HUGE handout, and pay every last dime of it out to shareholders as dividends, leaving their cable plant in exactly the same miserable state. Wash, rinse, repeat.

How do we know this? Because they've already done it successfully.

So Google did get to the front doors of all the people in Kansas City, and Charter and AT&T couldn't stop them, because the city agreed to it. Charter and AT&T's wires are still there, but they're going to lose 90% of their customers in a day. And they deserve to. Read that link. It will make you truly angry.

ISPs have become oligopolies

[Taco Cowboy]

At the beginning of the "Information Superhighway" - at least that was what they called "Internet" back then - there were a lot of people pulling cables and starting local ISPs

At that time, competition was fierce, and everyone tried to one-up each others, on price, on service, on usage, et cetera, to attract new customers

While the competition was fierce, there was a feeling of comradery and responsibility amongst the ISPs, and they did respect the "Freedom & Equality" spirit of the Net

But that golden era was not to last, for big and established players from the telephone and cable industries (AT&T / Comcast), with deep pockets, out-maneuvered the smaller players - and that's what we have today, an oligopolistic structure of the ISPs

As oligarchs go, the big players got so much power that they get to do almost everything they want to do - and as we have all witnessed - not even the government has power to reign them in
 

Re:ISPs have become oligopolies

[Anonymous Coward]

this is all about monopolies and their control over competition

long ago there was the pots and because the government had helped develop it, the local operators had to provide access to their competitors, this lead to the proliferation of DSL carriers and competition was introduced into a stagnant market where only isdn was offered

the incumbent local operators worked to destroy the competitive DSL carriers and rolled out their own offerings, which resulted in relatively high speed access to millions of customers. Cable providers rolled out their own services and for a while we saw speeds climbing and easier deliveries of services

the FCC made allowance to the carriers installing new networks to support these services that they would not have to provide equal access to other carriers if there was any segment of fiber on the new network, effectively locking out new competition. This has resulted in slow growth in data speed offerings and attempts to Monetize their assets by jacking up fees and charges on people using large amounts of data

The only thing that will re-introduce competition and the resulting increase in service levels and lower of costs will be a challenger that is willing to bear the cost to build out their own fiber to the curb network. Fortunately Google has that type of money to invest and relationships with the big data carriers to support this buildout

all hail the new king, but be wary of their monopoly should it come

Re:ISPs have become oligopolies

[dgatwood]

Think positively. At least the GP didn't say "rain them in". When it comes to online forum grammar, I'd call that a small victory.

Some packets are more equal than others

[dgreer]

May I point out that all packets are NOT treated alike, and haven't been for over a decade. Controlling priority and limiting heavy services are common procedures in all major networks, and users should be darned thankful for it.

The original argument that started all this nonsense was complaints that TWC and Comcast were ratcheting down services like eMule and Torrent. Then somebody speculated that they may start doing it to people like google (followed about a month later by Comcast and Verizon floating just such a plan ... probably suggested to them by somebody reading the original discussion here on /. BTW) and the /.ers went crazy and started demanding that somebody in government regulate those evil ISPs.

My advice now is the same as then: let the market work. If you drag the pols into this, you will get results that you REALLY don't want because they will do what their donors (who are NOT you) want them to do. Unintended consequences will surely follow.

Google buying dark fiber to take TWC, AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon on head-to-head is what my suggestion looks like. If they are successful, other investors will smell the blood in the water and we may find ourselves sitting in 1999-type network growth again (only this time, nobody will be dumb enough to say that profit doesn't matter).

Regulation will be the death of the break-neck innovation that has gotten us where we are. Is it fast enough yet? Of course not, but it isn't going to get faster if every decision has to go through some bureaucrats in DC.

Re:Some packets are more equal than others

[Altrag]

let the market work

That's only a viable option whenin markets with meaningful competition. Which in most jurisdictions, is just not there in the isp market.
Without competition, the only remaining control options are regulation or crossing your fingers for corporate benevolence (pretty likely, right?)... Or well, just giving up your net+phone+tv... And if you're willing to do that then power to you, but there's not enough people willing/able to make that sacrifice for the isps to care.
Government definitely fishes things up a lot.. but I'd rather a well-meaning half measure than an intentional fuckover..

Re:Last mile

[Kargan]

// So Google did get to the front doors of all the people in Kansas City, and Charter and AT&T couldn't stop them, because the city agreed to it. //

As a Kansas City-area resident, I'm afraid this is not the case. I don't know anyone that lives in Kansas City, KS that currently has access to Google Fiber services, or that has seen any trucks or workers in their neighborhood.

Google has been very short on public details with this entire project, and this launch that the article is referring to has to refer to a very limited and localized deployment.

Keep in mind that physical installation did not even begin until this past February: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytjn-5_li-I

'A Google spokeswoman would not say whether the announcement actually means somebody in Kansas City will finally get a light-speed connection next week.

"We're excited to announce more information Google Fiber next week," said Jenna Wandres. "We haven't elaborated on what arriving means."'
http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/18/3711326/google-fiber-to-make-july-26-announcement.html#storylink=misearch

I'll be curious to eventually find out who has access to it, exactly, and how long it'll be before any significant portions of the city are lit up.