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So I'm all for getting better broadband in this country, and good on Google for trying to make it happen. But allow me to place devil's advocate for a minute. T

by dkasper 14y ago

So I'm all for getting better broadband in this country, and good on Google for trying to make it happen. But allow me to place devil's advocate for a minute. This is like AOL 2.0 right? Isn't it a really bad idea to have one of the largest sites on the internet also be your ISP?

wmf 14y ago
This may be a case where in theory openness and competition are better but in practice well-executed vertical integration is better.
- lsc 14y ago
  meh, the last mile buried fiber is a 'natural monopoly' - personally, I think that fiber to the home should be a municipal service, like power, and fiber to the business in santa clara. I mean, the majority of the value there is the public right of way; private companies simply can't do it without subsidies (in the form of right of ways granted by the municipality) But, see, that only gets you from your house to the CO. I think that going from the CO to the internet could be an active and healthy free market. Paul Vixie has advocated something similar... http://public.freemuni.net/sf-news/paul-vixie/Page-4 http://public.freemuni.net/sf-news/paul-vixie/Page-4
  - wmf 14y ago
    In theory open access is a great model, but we've seen some problems in practice. DSL had a lot of buck-passing where your DSL was down but the telco and the ISP would both blame each other. Also, it's possible that all the competing ISPs could end up offering the same prices and evil TOSes. The easier it is to switch ISPs the easier it is to get adverse selection problems, like if you offer policies that are friendly to heavy users then soon you will have all heavy users which may invalidate your business model.
    - lsc 14y ago
      > DSL had a lot of buck-passing where your DSL was down but the telco and the ISP would both blame each other. This is a huge problem, yes. It can be mitigated in general by having very clear lines between responsibility, and easy tests. Set the system up so you have one fiber strand from the house to the CO; at that point, well, if the light meters say it's okay, it's the fault of the ISP. (or the end user, in any case, it's not the fault of the owner of the fiber.) But yeah, every time you have a service that involves more than one person, you have that problem. Even when one company owns the whole thing, you often have people trying to point the finger at other departments; but yeah, this is worse when it's two different companies. >. Also, it's possible that all the competing ISPs could end up offering the same prices and evil TOSes. Possible, but unlikely. The capital to start an ISP at that level (e.g. selling connectivity within a datacenter) is way smaller than the capital required to, say, buy a house. (I mean, marketing that sort of thing is damn difficult, but re-selling bandwidth within a datacenter/co is not a capital intensive thing.) That's why I think that from the CO to the internet should be a free market; the barriers to entry are so low (except, maybe, marketing, but hell, I'll go knock on doors.) that if the existing players are doing something that irritates customers, there is a lot of incentive for new people to enter the market. >The easier it is to switch ISPs the easier it is to get adverse selection problems, like if you offer policies that are friendly to heavy users then soon you will have all heavy users which may invalidate your business model. I fail to see how that is a problem.
Laremere 14y ago
There is something that I call the paradox of Google. The only real content which Google makes that I can think of is their front page doodles. They are an entirely service focused company. For the most part google products fall into two categories: Services which serve advertisements, or services which feed into category one. Their entire strategy is to use content created by other people (websites in search, videos in youtube, etc.) to give a reason to provide content people pay them for you to see (ads.) Therefor the paradox lies in this: In order to grow and thrive as a company they must keep the internet free. If the web is monopolized by a small number of large corporations, the need for Google to facilitate access to a large number of small websites diminishes. Youtube is their most resilient platform to this notion, and even it requires companies to remain small enough where using Youtube's service still makes sense. Also, this is why I think their products are so good: Every last little bit of quality in a product allows that much larger of a company to still find it more useful to use Google as their gateway to the web. So all in all, having a major website be an isp may be dangerous, but powers which guide Google guide it to be an open portal to a free web, instead of being the one stop content shop. In fact, I think this is possibly their biggest driver for doing fiber: to ensure the later doesn't happen.
- bicknergseng 14y ago
  This was true until Google started making phones and tablets and opened the Google Play store and Google Apps for business and ... Actually wait.... Google has been "making [and selling] content] for a while. Their main business might still be search advertising, but that doesn't mean that rerouting the pipes won't benefit them and absolutely destroy others.
  - jaggederest 14y ago
    What about a phone is content? Content is something you spend time watching, or playing - nothing google sells is content, it's all service. All of their content is derived from other people, and they enable content creation on a grand scale. With the exception of a few google blogs and videos, it's all a way to get where you're going, not a thing in itself. The day there's a google studios, or google game production, or google music labels, they'll be creating content.

by dkasper 14y ago

wmf 14y ago

This may be a case where in theory openness and competition are better but in practice well-executed vertical integration is better.

lsc 14y ago
meh, the last mile buried fiber is a 'natural monopoly' - personally, I think that fiber to the home should be a municipal service, like power, and fiber to the business in santa clara. I mean, the majority of the value there is the public right of way; private companies simply can't do it without subsidies (in the form of right of ways granted by the municipality) But, see, that only gets you from your house to the CO. I think that going from the CO to the internet could be an active and healthy free market. Paul Vixie has advocated something similar... http://public.freemuni.net/sf-news/paul-vixie/Page-4 http://public.freemuni.net/sf-news/paul-vixie/Page-4
- wmf 14y ago
  In theory open access is a great model, but we've seen some problems in practice. DSL had a lot of buck-passing where your DSL was down but the telco and the ISP would both blame each other. Also, it's possible that all the competing ISPs could end up offering the same prices and evil TOSes. The easier it is to switch ISPs the easier it is to get adverse selection problems, like if you offer policies that are friendly to heavy users then soon you will have all heavy users which may invalidate your business model.
  - lsc 14y ago
    > DSL had a lot of buck-passing where your DSL was down but the telco and the ISP would both blame each other. This is a huge problem, yes. It can be mitigated in general by having very clear lines between responsibility, and easy tests. Set the system up so you have one fiber strand from the house to the CO; at that point, well, if the light meters say it's okay, it's the fault of the ISP. (or the end user, in any case, it's not the fault of the owner of the fiber.) But yeah, every time you have a service that involves more than one person, you have that problem. Even when one company owns the whole thing, you often have people trying to point the finger at other departments; but yeah, this is worse when it's two different companies. >. Also, it's possible that all the competing ISPs could end up offering the same prices and evil TOSes. Possible, but unlikely. The capital to start an ISP at that level (e.g. selling connectivity within a datacenter) is way smaller than the capital required to, say, buy a house. (I mean, marketing that sort of thing is damn difficult, but re-selling bandwidth within a datacenter/co is not a capital intensive thing.) That's why I think that from the CO to the internet should be a free market; the barriers to entry are so low (except, maybe, marketing, but hell, I'll go knock on doors.) that if the existing players are doing something that irritates customers, there is a lot of incentive for new people to enter the market. >The easier it is to switch ISPs the easier it is to get adverse selection problems, like if you offer policies that are friendly to heavy users then soon you will have all heavy users which may invalidate your business model. I fail to see how that is a problem.

Laremere 14y ago

There is something that I call the paradox of Google. The only real content which Google makes that I can think of is their front page doodles. They are an entirely service focused company. For the most part google products fall into two categories: Services which serve advertisements, or services which feed into category one. Their entire strategy is to use content created by other people (websites in search, videos in youtube, etc.) to give a reason to provide content people pay them for you to see (ads.) Therefor the paradox lies in this: In order to grow and thrive as a company they must keep the internet free. If the web is monopolized by a small number of large corporations, the need for Google to facilitate access to a large number of small websites diminishes. Youtube is their most resilient platform to this notion, and even it requires companies to remain small enough where using Youtube's service still makes sense. Also, this is why I think their products are so good: Every last little bit of quality in a product allows that much larger of a company to still find it more useful to use Google as their gateway to the web. So all in all, having a major website be an isp may be dangerous, but powers which guide Google guide it to be an open portal to a free web, instead of being the one stop content shop. In fact, I think this is possibly their biggest driver for doing fiber: to ensure the later doesn't happen.

bicknergseng 14y ago
This was true until Google started making phones and tablets and opened the Google Play store and Google Apps for business and ... Actually wait.... Google has been "making [and selling] content] for a while. Their main business might still be search advertising, but that doesn't mean that rerouting the pipes won't benefit them and absolutely destroy others.
- jaggederest 14y ago
  What about a phone is content? Content is something you spend time watching, or playing - nothing google sells is content, it's all service. All of their content is derived from other people, and they enable content creation on a grand scale. With the exception of a few google blogs and videos, it's all a way to get where you're going, not a thing in itself. The day there's a google studios, or google game production, or google music labels, they'll be creating content.