Why Google makes the perfect ISP

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133547-why-google-makes-the-perfect-isp

by doc4t • 14 years ago

82 57 14 years ago

PaulHoule2• 14 years ago

There's always been a touch of Willy Wonka style unreality about Google Fiber.

Municipalities across the U.S. know that their broadband sucks, and they wrote proposals to Google in lieu of real action, hoping Google could solve their problems with their magic wand.

Google still has a "non-evil" and academic reputation in some quarters, although anybody who makes a living on the streets of the internet knows that Google is the most dangerous and rapacious company on the net. People think, for instance, that Google is a noble warrior against web spam, although Google sustains web spam by (i) being the only signficant source of traffic for many site types, and (ii) making it possible to monetize crappy content. In fact, Google has gained "question answering" capabilities in the last few years thanks to web spam farms run by companies like eHow.

What gets me is that, in a time where the world is overflowing with capital (signified by low interest rates and general low investment returns) both the private and public sectors in the U.S. seem completely indifferent to investments in infrastructure.

(And why should they? Telecom companies can make minimal investments in infrastructure and charge champagne prices for beer products.)

Google steps in because, like Microsoft, they've got a small number of wildly profitable products and an inability to use the profits from those products to create new products of comparable profitability.

This is good for Kansas City, but it's one of just a long list of distractions, such as snake oil fixed wireless schemes for rural access, that have stood in the way of a real national plan for broadband U.S.

VikingCoder2• 14 years ago

> anybody who makes a living on the streets of the internet knows that Google is the most dangerous and rapacious company on the net.

I make a living on the streets of the internet, and could not disagree more with your conclusion.

You don't speak for everyone, because you certainly don't speak for me.

fear912• 14 years ago

You are clearly in a minority though. I bet that at least 80% of internet marketers hate Google.

PaulHoule2• 14 years ago

I'll say that you can have good times for a while with the "Big G" but there will come a day when they need to post better numbers for their investors and they decide the little bit of margin from their ecosystem belongs to them.

Back in the 1990's, venture capitalists wouldn't fund any company that competed with Microsoft. For quite a long time, there's been no funding for companies that compete with Google. Thus, there's a "lost generation" of companies that have never gotten off the ground since to Google's dominance of the web landscape.

backprojection• 14 years ago

Maybe I'm missing the point, but what's the problem? It seems to me that the worst senario here is that Google supplants traditional telcos, and essentially becomes another monopoly for >1Gbps web access. Compared with what we have today, I'm pretty happy with that outcome.

Actually, the worst outcome will be that the general public doesn't care enough, Google fiber flops, and the traditional model becomes further entrenched.

I would also be a bit happier with a real, innovative, public broadband program. I don't think the US has the political culture to pull that off.

> In fact, Google has gained "question answering" capabilities in the last few years thanks to web spam farms run by companies like eHow.

I was under the general impression that they're trying to minimize this. It also seems like this kind of plague would affect any dominant search engine.

briandear3• 14 years ago

> I would also be a bit happier with a real, innovative, public broadband program. I don't think the US has the political culture to pull that off.

The political culture is one that caters to specific groups. If it was "broadband for farmers" then you'd get the farm lobby pushing for it. If it was "broadband for the poor" then you'd get the food stamp crowd on board. If it was "broadband for investment banks" then you might get the bank crowd on board.

The fact that most infrastructure doesn't get broad-based political support is a symptom of "what's in it for me." It why it's so difficult to solve problems like Air Traffic Control systems being from the 1970s -- most people think, "I only fly once in a while, so why should I give up <insert preferred program here> in order to pay for upgrading the ATC system?" Sure, many people use the internet, but the average user doesn't think about how much better things could be.

I get it -- broadband would benefit everyone either directly or indirectly, but it's hard to sell those benefits to the general electorate because money for broadband would mean less money for some other, more politically "interesting" project.

I don't think anyone in America (Republican, Democrat, Independent) wants terrible infrastructure. The political hot potato is deciding how to pay for it. Regardless of tax or spending philosophies, it necessarily follows that spending on X takes money from Y. With money we spent for 1 year in Iraq, we could have paid for national broadband (among other things), however we also spend $80 billion per year on food stamps. Both of those priorities however, have some unexpected consequences. The defense contractors make money, but it also creates jobs and stimulates economic output (see WWII). Food stamps also create taxable events and drives economic activity, though both activities, when viewed in purely economic terms are net losses for the economy, the degree of which is outside of the scope of this discussion. Public broadband on the other hand would be a net gain for the economy because increased infrastructure efficiency greases the wheels of the entire economy. Better roads = lower trucking costs and more consumption and therefore more spending and jobs. However, it's hard to quantify those theoretical benefits to the electorate. Same goes for public broadband.

There are some tasks ideally suited for government and utilities, infrastructure, police/fire, defense are certainly among them. Public broadband is more relevant to governmental roles than subsidizing private business (i.e. GM, Fiskar, Solyndra, Bank of America, etc.) Our infrastructure should be "too big to fail," but alas..

/rant truncated

michaelfeathers• 14 years ago

The real question, and the one that the article doesn't answer is whether an advertising company is a better ISP than a telecom.

dholowiski• 14 years ago

I guess we'll find out.

mtgx2• 14 years ago

It's obviously much better from what they announced so far.

prodigal_erik• 14 years ago

It would be really hard to be worse than a telecom, whether we're judging on incompetence or malice.

Sunlis• 14 years ago

> It gets better: For people that don’t need a super-fast connection, Google is offering a 5Mbps connection for free — yes, free. If Google Fiber expands, there’s no guarantee that this will remain the case, but it could totally upset the market for entry-level broadband. Even the “catch” isn’t that much of a catch. Google is planning on charging a one-time $300 fee to run the fiber to each residence, but if you opt for a contract, the fee is waived. Free accounts will have to pay the installation fee, unfortunately.

Free for 7 years. I'm not saying that's bad, but it's still relevant.

taligent• 14 years ago

The antitrust implications for this are massive.

Google would clearly be subsiding the cost of the broadband with advertising/sales from their online properties. If you are someone like Vimeo, Hulu, Netflix etc then you would forever be at a disadvantage to Youtube due to bandwidth costs. Similarly the proven importance of speed in site popularity and conversions means that an entire raft of competitors would again be at a disadvantage. And finally Google would be in a position to wipe out hundreds/thousands of small mom+pop ISPs.

The Google Fiber on its own has competition issues but a free service could just about tip it over the line.

latch• 14 years ago

Are you a lawyer?

Antitrust law is complicated. Simply subsidizing or undercutting competitors isn't nearly enough; nor is having a monopoly. For example, it wasn't Microsoft's monopoly that got them in trouble, it's that it leveraged its monopoly on Windows to force a monopoly of the browser (special APIs and restrictive license agreements with OEMs)...not to mention the whole Java thing.

Anyways, if someone came out with free energy or free telephones, I doubt anyone would complain. These are utilities. The internet is the same. Last year the UN even declared that the internet is a fundamental basic human right

mtgx2• 14 years ago

If they can make the money from the other plans, why would it be an anti-trust issue? Isn't anti-trust about hurting the users, not the competition, anyway?

Tuna-Fish• 14 years ago

> If you are someone like Vimeo, Hulu, Netflix etc then you would forever be at a disadvantage to Youtube due to bandwidth costs.

No, you are not, because Google happily peers with (almost) everyone. So long as you can get the traffic to one of the 130+ places where google has set up shop, and from there, the traffic is free.

This is much, much better than what Comcast & friends are trying to do, by billing traffic twice (once from the consumers, once from the service providers).

http://www.peeringdb.com/view.php?asn=15169

RKearney• 14 years ago

How is this any different from Comcast buying NBC?

VikingCoder2• 14 years ago

On the Help page:

How long will the Free Internet service be free?

The Free Internet service will be free of a monthly service charge for at least seven years. At the end of seven years, we will begin charging the market price for comparable speeds—which, if Google Fiber is successful, will be $0.

pwny5• 14 years ago

Whether they succeed or not with Fiber, whether it expands to every American city or not and whether they get sued because of antitrust laws (which I don't believe they will), the fact is that they're changing the status quo. Even only scaring the telecom companies enough for them to offer decent plans is a win for Google AND for the customer.

Sure Google pursues its own commercial goals but in the end it benefits the customer as well. I personally think they will succeed, will sign up as soon as it's available in my city and believe what they're doing is great for the future of the 'net.

The biggest selling point here (in Canada) would probably not even be the speed (about 40 times faster than whatever else we can get) but the unlimited bandwidth. As opposed to the USA (I think) we have very aggressive bandwidth caps up here. Try consuming anything with a 30Gb/month limit, especially when your ISP charges a few cents per subsequent Mb without telling you until you get your bill. You'd be welcoming an alternative like Fiber as well.

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

Indeed. It's the same as their chrome gambit. Releasing chrome kicked the IE development team into gear and lit a fire under firefox's ass. Today if I launch any of the 3 most popular browsers on this machine each of them will score 100/100 on the acid 3 test and render it smoothly and seamlessly. That certainly wasn't the case when chrome 1.0 was released a bit more than 3 years ago. Now the installed base of folks who have truly modern browsers is vastly higher and the sort of browser-side capabilities one can safely assume when they build web apps is very much expanded.

ajross3• 14 years ago

It's a total digression, but this brings a tear to my eye too. Kids today will never know the suffering that was endured by their predecessors.

yannickt• 14 years ago

"The biggest selling point here (in Canada)"

I hope Fiber comes to Canada, but I fear protectionist legislation will get in the way.

pwny5• 14 years ago

You're absolutely right, that's one of my fears as well.

That's up for another debate, but there's a point where legislation shouldn't interfere. If we're stuck with awful service because of the law, it's time the law (which should be serving us citizens) got changed.

roc• 14 years ago

> "Sure Google pursues its own commercial goals but in the end it benefits the customer as well."

Sometimes. And with no guarantee that such interests will align in the future. Their flip on Net Neutrality is all the warning and reminder consumers should need, to temper their optimism with due caution.

pwny5• 14 years ago

Of course, but no other ISP is any better (at least that I know of) and THEY certainly don't offer gigabyte unlimited internet for 70$ a month.

Google being the lesser of all evils here, we can only hope that they will drive the market into a much better state and that if their priorities ever stop aligning with ours, something better will have emerged (just as Fiber is emerging to change the status quo now).

xutopia• 14 years ago

Teksavvy

RoryH• 14 years ago

They are perfect because they charge $70 for gigabit fiber. period. :-D

hythloday• 14 years ago

Sorry for the weak pun, but I really couldn't help myself: I wish the title had been "Why Google is an acceptable ISP".

Apropos of the article, I'm increasingly unconvinced that free markets work well enough when they're dealing with infrastructure--roads, train lines, phone lines--that have an expensive one-off set-up cost and then a larger cost of switching while the original provider attempts to recoup the set-up subsidy. Certainly Britain's experience with train lines, and the US's existing telco network, among others, seems to demonstrate that it doesn't tend towards a free market. (Compare, of all places, Somalia's mobile network, which is thriving--at least relatively, for a country that's been in a civil war for two decades-- in the absence of a set-up cost).

yock• 14 years ago

I'd probably argue that most private industry infrastructure efforts are decidedly not free markets. Given the politics involved in building out large utilities, governments tend to get heavily involved. Around the country this has resulted in some strange relationships between company and government, most involving some manner of limited monopoly in exchange for certain guarantees regarding types of service. Those agreements tend to be short-sighted and rarely updated, leaving us with aging infrastructure and legal impedements to competition.

pyoung• 14 years ago

There are some good and bad reasons for this. For example, the deregulation of electric utilities in California in 1996 was an epic failure. Part of that was due to the design of the deregulation scheme, but a lot of is was attributed to the perverse incentives of the free market.

zecho• 14 years ago

The first-mover advantage has resulted in telecoms capturing their markets in major cities. The question is just how free are these markets?

In my city, for example, the city has a contract with a cable operator that basically states that any competitor wishing to enter the city must provide services in all the areas the first-mover provides service. The argument is that this "levels the playing field" among competition while also forcing telecoms to cover areas of the city they may not otherwise lay fiber lines. But in practice it adds a huge barrier to entry for any subsequent companies.

Ultimately I think it comes down to governments making decisions in the best interests of their constituents and not creating these kinds of deals. Let customer demand dictate how much service will be provided in the various segments of the municipality.

kodablah• 14 years ago

If I were a potential customer, my biggest fear would be customer service. There is a track record of no-human-contact service disabling; especially with "free" products.

If Google shuts down an ad-sense account for perceived violation without good justification or interaction, how can I expect them not to do the same with my internet for an unjust DMCA complaint?

ajross3• 14 years ago

Indeed. There is much fear and uncertainty about Google's proposed service. You are right to doubt them.

jahmed• 14 years ago

Fear and uncertainty? The company that provides fairly clear blog posts, comments, changelogs and EOL guidance for its many of its products?

Goog has made a commitment for at least 7 years on this project which is great for a capital intensive project. This is a long term bet that has tons of potential for both the company and the ecosystem. Google has always been particularly good at building reference models that they are in many cases happy with everyone else copying. Look at Gmail, Chrome, Android, Maps and the features they helped create or popularize. Fiber is another example of what Google thinks is a good idea and one that they think you'll agree with.

In the end Google doesnt care who you get a gigabit connection from they just want everyone to have one. The KC network is just an example they want people to copy.

dannyr• 14 years ago

Look at the previous Google threads and those who have used its customer service recently were pretty happy with it.

Google's support was awful a few years but it looks like they improved with time.

tscrib• 14 years ago

Once this gets rolled out to more cities, this will certainly be looked back as a disruptive product in the home internet market. Google is well-placed to destroy the traditional ISPs.

Google Fiber: come to Canada please!

ArbitraryLimits2• 14 years ago

Let's take a poll: How many people here understand that Google is doing this because Internet connections are a complement of your personal data, which they would like to monetize, and not out of the goodness of their hearts?

zachrose• 14 years ago

Requisite HN contrarianism: IPs make money. What if Google wants a slice of that? What if Google wants to grow the pie of Internet usage? What if Google Search and related products make money from targeted advertising, but the company is thinking other ways to make money as well?

pwny5• 14 years ago

Let's take a poll: How many people here understand that Google is a corporation and therefore has making money as its primary goal?

Seriously, what would be wrong from a corporate standpoint would be for Google to be doing this out of the goodness of their heart, not the opposite. You don't like it, don't use it. I bet you'll have a real easy time finding someone to pull fiber to your house and provide you with gigabyte internet without trying to monetize it.

Welcome to capitalism, I'm personally quite happy with it.

ArbitraryLimits2• 14 years ago

I wasn't complaining that Google is a nameless, faceless, soulless corporation just like the ISPs, just trying to remind people.

eavc• 14 years ago

Both Android and this move are as much motivated by defensive interests as anything else.

yalogin• 14 years ago

I really hope they succeed or at least stay in the game long enough to make a difference. Remember the Verizon "open" ads a while ago when ATT was kicking their butt with the iPhone? Android came along and they quickly shoved the open thing under the rug. Nothing changed in the wireless world except for the visual voice mail aspect. The current players in the wired internet market do not have competition. All they are interested in is making commercials and getting more customers. Google would be a swift kick in the butt for comcast and others. They will be forced to improve.

rickmb• 14 years ago

Google's core business is advertising. Google likes to do stuff with the data that passes through its systems. Google has explicitly and pro-actively taken sides in fight against copyright violations instead of remaining a neutral party.

And they've been less than steadfast on Net Neutrality, which is a big red flag for a company that wants to be an ISP.

This is not about Google being "evil", but I do not want a company with that mindset and those interests to be my ISP. It's going to be very tough, if not impossible to separate those.

I know this is already common practice in the US, with many of the major (cable) ISP's being part of companies that having a direct stake in copyright exploitation, advertising etcetera.

So ask yourself: how's that working out for you so far? Would Google really be any better?

r00fus• 14 years ago

Aside from say, Sonic.net, I'd be hard pressed to find a less "evil" company (in terms of conflict of interest - most other major ISPs tend to be wireless carriers or in bed with the entertainment industry or both).

Google may not have it's interests aligned with us end users, but they're a nice contrast to the remainder, and might be forced to play a countering role on the copyright front to differentiate.

Ralith• 14 years ago

Would it be any worse? Because "Same deal, but faster and cheaper" sounds okay to me.

huggyface• 14 years ago

Google's core business is advertising

Google's core business is doing cool stuff with technology. While they often need to resort to advertising to monetize many of their cool products (see: search. What else could they do? The bar had already been set and a for-pay search vendor would be DOA), it does you no good to try to frame everything in the advertising picture.

Amazon's core business is selling books. It would be sophistry to argue that AWS is really a mechanism to try to get you to buy books.

funthree• 14 years ago

A company like Google could make a better ISP, but to cheer a growing internet monopoly just seems ridiculous.

> Free internet at today's average speeds

> $300 construction fee (one time or 12 monthly payments of $25) + taxes and fees

Google is going full circle. I wonder if the cost for Google to give internet to people who didn't otherwise have it (and at no charge to them) actually paid dividends very soon because that person is going to immediately generate new revenue for google from the inevitable use of Google/adwords. I think John D. Rockefeller would tip his hat, tbh.

nicholassmith• 14 years ago

You know what'll make google the best ISP? The fact is they only care about getting you online and keeping you there, which is much different to most ISPs who only care about you paying. As long as you've paid that month, why bother when you're offline for a day or two?

Plus I bet they'll have the best first line techs.

Why Google makes the perfect ISP

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