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Time for the other so-called broadband providers to shake in their boots. I like companies that have no respect for established business models. In this perspe
by swombat 17y ago
Time for the other so-called broadband providers to shake in their boots.
I like companies that have no respect for established business models. In this perspective, despite its size, I think it's fair to call Google a start-up.
- hypermatt 17y agoI think this is more around trying to force the broadband providers to get their act together. Scare them ;0)
- stingraycharles 17y agoRight. At Google's scale, it will even benefit them a lot if other broadband providers provide a better service, since it promotes more use of the internet, and thus more ad income for Google.
- waterlesscloud 17y agoOr will make video ads more practical. Uhm, yay?
- MikeCapone 17y agoI guess people said the same thing when pictures were first being used on the net. I'd say that it was still a net benefit not to be text only, wouldn't you agree? Ads can be annoying, but they also pay for a lot of what we're using online every day.
- bad_user 17y agoThe way Google throws products on the market to increase competition for the benefit of its core products ... it's genius. Are there any other companies that do this?
- emmett 17y agoYes, tons. See "commoditize your complements". Microsoft is a master of this as well. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html
- brianobush 17y agoI don't know of any real market changers from microsoft, save IE, which was an attempt to kill competition and preserve market. Maybe I am too far from the microsoft circle to know of any...
- mmphosis 17y agoWasn't the XBox hardware pretty much sold at cost to sell their games for their own platform? How many recent games does Microsoft have for the PS or Nintendo?
- danudey 17y agoAll consoles (at least at launch, and for years afterwards) are sold at a loss, with profits made up on the games. The difference for Microsoft is that the XBox division has never made a profit, unlike Sony's or Nintendo's. Note: the Wii is the only recent exception to this rule that I know of; the hardware has been sold at a profit since day one.
- Lazlo_Nibble 17y agoIf I recall correctly the GameCube, DS and GBA were all profitable from day one as well. It's possible this goes back as far as the NES.
- ximeng 17y agoThere is an important difference between compliments and complements.
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- fnid2 17y agoThey use the scare tactics a lot, but they didn't work in the wireless spectrum auction did they?
- Groxx 17y agoI forget where the link was (I think somewhere on yc), but it showed a chart of internet access speed through a few years, rated by countries. Most of the large-nation world had grown by 10%+, many over 50%, in a few years, while the US had dropped by a couple percent. This is in addition to most of those countries being higher already, so it's not merely a 5kbps -> 8kbps jump. My price for internet access not going down, and speed not going up (personal experience) in several years implies the ISPs are gouging because they can. Proper competition is essential in every industry. If Google can provide it, good for them. This is an area where only the big players can compete, but nobody's stepped forward to fix things. Maybe this will be it.
- recampbell 17y agoHere's a chart: http://lifehacker.com/5451127/seems-like-everyones-getting-faster-internet-but-the-us http://lifehacker.com/5451127/seems-like-everyones-getting-f...
- Groxx 17y agoYup, that's it. While clicking around something like that site, I also found one that covered a couple years, and the trend is roughly the same (with a couple more spikes). edit: another, related chart, from a quick Google: http://www.marketingcharts.com/?attachment_id=781 http://www.marketingcharts.com/?attachment_id=781 I'll grant that median is likely not a good measuring point, but it is still revealing. Hell, Canada is out-doing us, so you can hardly argue it's because we're more spread out.
- surfmike 17y agoJust as a side-point, although Canada has a large land area for a small population, it is actually much more urbanized than the US.
- dantheman 17y agoThe problem is that cable companies were given monopolies by the local governments when the setup.
- wmf 17y agoYeah, after Google starts selling broadband significantly below cost, no real ISP will be able to meet customers' inflated expectations.
- natrius 17y agoIt's not in Google's best interests to reduce competition in the telecommunications industry. If they offer bandwidth at such a low cost that it threatens the viability of existing providers, they have to commit to providing that bandwidth in perpetuity. Their current business model requires bandwidth, and replacing that by raising bandwidth prices in the future when competitors have been eliminated would be met with government opposition fairly quickly.
- wmf 17y agoI'm not worried about Google becoming a monopolist and raising prices; I'm concerned that they'll offer unsustainable (or even free) pricing in a small trial and many people will begin to expect other ISPs to match that pricing in nationwide deployments. Much like the complaints that US broadband sucks compared to South Korea, but worse.
- Retric 17y agoI don't think Google is going to sell at below cost, the limitation on large network's bandwidth is primarily routing technology which has continued to improve while US broadband has stagnated. It's not like other countries have not been rolling out low cost 1Gbit consumer connections for a while. PS: Despite all these talk of caps etc, upstream bandwidth is still a small chunk of a large ISP's budget.
- chronomex 17y agoAnecdotally: A friend of mine who lives in Sweden gets 100 megabits for about the equivalent of $25 per month. It's not a gigabit, but it's a lot closer to a gigabit than five megabits is.
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- aw3c2 17y agoIsn't the poor coverage of decent internet connections a much bigger issue? Highspeed internet in urban areas might be cool but what about the rest of the country.
- natrius 17y agoA bigger issue issue for who? Telecommunications companies have decided that it's not worth investing much in connections to low density areas. If there are enough people clicking on ads in those places to make it worthwhile, maybe Google will provide connections in those areas. If that doesn't happen, I don't see any justification for subsidizing people's connections above a level that is necessary for basic access of information to aid in making informed voting decisions since we share a government.
- ericd 17y agoThat's the thing, I think internet access is essential to being an educated citizen nowadays, and many websites are no longer viable for dialup users to visit. High speed internet for all should be placed on the same level of importance as education for all.
- natrius 17y agoSatellite internet speeds are acceptable for web browsing and is available everywhere. I'd consider subsiding the costs of such connections for those who can't afford it. My understanding is that things like Universal Service Fees subsidize even those who can afford it.
- nradov 17y agoHave you actually tried satellite service? Latency is worse than dial-up. We tried for a while to get some of our customers using satellite but that turned out to be a failure due to the miserable performance.
- 27182818284 17y ago
- gcheong 17y agoI've been wondering lately what would happen if someone like Google decided to build their own cellular network. Is there a way that someone could disrupt that industry?
- eli 17y agoRumor Mill: Google Acquiring Sprint http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/google/rumor-mill-google-acquiring-sprint.html http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/google/rumor-mill-g...
- shivam14 17y agoThats from 2007. Sprint and Clearwire merged last year and Google is significantly invested in Clearwire's 4G network build-out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearwire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearwire
- marltod 17y agoLike what Gmail did to all the e-mail provider/administrators who said anything over a 100MB Inbox was too expensive.
- gcb 17y agoThis has nothing to do with technology. It's all 70's as all the rest. it's all politics.
- jodrellblank 17y agoExpense isn't a problem when you have a multibillion dollar company who wrote their own filesystem to use custom designed free software on custom designed low power servers redundantly spanning over cheap disks in energy efficient custom datacenters and no uptime guarantees. For most companies a new Exchange cluster backed by RAID SCSI disks and a backup system upgrade isn't a trivial cost. Edit: yes, Google did it cheaper, but that's not because IT people were lying, misleading or dismissing - it really is expensive to do 'properly'.