Continuous Partial Attention? Try maintaining any attention when you have this blared out from overhead every three minutes:
Im Selfimportant, you have a call parked on 666. Im Selfimportant, 666 please.
I'm a "knowledge worker." I don't appreciate a voice interrupting my thoughts all the sodding time. I'm scatterbrained enough as it is, but I feel like Harrison Bergeron some days. It's usually a call for someone in Sales or Support anyway; why the fuck not forward the caller to their bloody cell phone, instead of blasting the grating voice of the receptionist to everyone in the building?
ISP-Planet's most recent rankings of U.S. ISP market share show AOL still way out in front of everyone else, at 20.8 million U.S. subscribers. Say that Google decides to use AOL's backbone, ATDN, for at least some of the traffic to and from Google servers. Assume also that SBC, BellSouth, or whoever - let's call such a company "Jerkweed" - begins to charge traffic to and from Google at a higher rate than anywhere else. What are Jerkweed's options?
1) Have some sort of metering at Jerkweed<=>ATDN transit points. That's a shitload of traffic to meter. I mean, you have Google traffic, then you have traffic from all those AOL subs. Does Jerkweed count individual packets bound for Google, or does it just say fuckit and count them all, even though a lot of those packets will be for AOL subs, not Google? Either way, it costs money to do that sort of metering, and it'll probably slow down the transit. If people complain, ATDN can point the finger squarely at Jerkweed. Winner: ATDN.
2) Rewrite the peering agreement between Jerkweed and ATDN to charge higher rates. Well then, you have contract negotiations, during which ATDN will say to Jerkweed, "OK, we will charge you more to access our 20.8 million AOL subscribers in the U.S. Oh, and don't forget our even larger number of worldwide subscribers, either." Winner: ATDN.
So, with this move, Google is bringing the noise, both vs. MS and vs. Jerkweeds everywhere. The message is clear: "If you try to pin us down, you'll only be hurting yourself." Turnabout, after all, is fair play.
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Continuous Partial Attention? Try maintaining any attention when you have this blared out from overhead every three minutes:
Im Selfimportant, you have a call parked on 666. Im Selfimportant, 666 please.
I'm a "knowledge worker." I don't appreciate a voice interrupting my thoughts all the sodding time. I'm scatterbrained enough as it is, but I feel like Harrison Bergeron some days. It's usually a call for someone in Sales or Support anyway; why the fuck not forward the caller to their bloody cell phone, instead of blasting the grating voice of the receptionist to everyone in the building?
ISP-Planet's most recent rankings of U.S. ISP market share show AOL still way out in front of everyone else, at 20.8 million U.S. subscribers. Say that Google decides to use AOL's backbone, ATDN, for at least some of the traffic to and from Google servers. Assume also that SBC, BellSouth, or whoever - let's call such a company "Jerkweed" - begins to charge traffic to and from Google at a higher rate than anywhere else. What are Jerkweed's options?
1) Have some sort of metering at Jerkweed<=>ATDN transit points. That's a shitload of traffic to meter. I mean, you have Google traffic, then you have traffic from all those AOL subs. Does Jerkweed count individual packets bound for Google, or does it just say fuckit and count them all, even though a lot of those packets will be for AOL subs, not Google? Either way, it costs money to do that sort of metering, and it'll probably slow down the transit. If people complain, ATDN can point the finger squarely at Jerkweed. Winner: ATDN.
2) Rewrite the peering agreement between Jerkweed and ATDN to charge higher rates. Well then, you have contract negotiations, during which ATDN will say to Jerkweed, "OK, we will charge you more to access our 20.8 million AOL subscribers in the U.S. Oh, and don't forget our even larger number of worldwide subscribers, either." Winner: ATDN.
So, with this move, Google is bringing the noise, both vs. MS and vs. Jerkweeds everywhere. The message is clear: "If you try to pin us down, you'll only be hurting yourself." Turnabout, after all, is fair play.