15 ms·

This move might be good for Google, but I find it somewhat alarming as a consumer. Those who control or curate content (Google, NBC/Comcast, Facebook) should no

This move might be good for Google, but I find it somewhat alarming as a consumer. Those who control or curate content (Google, NBC/Comcast, Facebook) should not control infrastructure. This was less of a concern when Google was acting as a conduit of information, but as Google moves to treat personal (if aggregate) data as property and profits from user-generated data like YouTube or Google+, the lines become significantly blurred. There may be nothing wrong intrinsically with controlling content and infrastructure, but it seems to be bad for consumers generally, as exhibited by Comcast[0]. And while a high-speed competitor to local cable monopolies is exciting, I worry about trading one dictator for another just because there's some competition in the transition period from the old guard to the new. Is there some safeguard in place Kansas City and other fiber recipients have arranged to prevent Google from having the power to exert cable-esque control? Not rhetorical, genuinely curious. EDIT: I'd like to make it clear that I'm not anti-Google, I don't think they're evil, or abuse consumer data, or are actively trying to become the next Comcast. I am, however, expressing concern over the position of power they will find themselves in if Fiber takes off. So far I've seen a lot of comments suggesting Google is not evil, to which I agree, but I haven't seen any indicating that there are adequate checks in place to (relatively easily) prevent the abuse of power. [0]http://scrawford.net/blog/comcastnbcu-will-raise-costs-for-consumers/1414/ http://scrawford.net/blog/comcastnbcu-will-raise-costs-for-c...

grandalf 14y ago
You're worried about Google censoring content or protocols?
- zmmmmm 14y ago
  I think it is more about anitcompetitive effects. Consider a service competing with Youtube; will they have the same streaming performance when delivered over Google's fiber as Youtube? It might even just be accidental (say, Google colocates it's services with its fiber infrastructure) - but it could easily give competitors a big disadvantage if they can't get access to the same performance as Youtube has.
  - cpunks 14y ago
    I would tend to agree. Google has been extremely monopolistic lately. The only reason for Google+'s and Google Chat's relative success is shoving it down the throats of users of GMail's throats. Google mission has moved from organizing to controlling the world's information. I really liked the former, and I'm pretty scared of the latter. I want fast fiber. I also want to avoid another evil monopoly from taking over the computing landscape. I miss the old, trustworthy, don't-be-evil Google.
    - grandalf 14y ago
      OK I guess I consider anticompetitive QOS to be a form of content censorship. It'll be interesting to see if the announcement addresses your concerns.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    say, Google colocates it's services with its fiber infrastructure This is actually the defense Comcast is using with their IPTV services. They don't have to pay anything to move that data over public lines, so they don't "charge" extra for it (by "charge", I mean putting it against the caps they recently removed). On the other hand, Netflix et al does go across public lines that Comcast does have to pay for, and they do "charge" for that because they themselves are being charged for it. Local CDNs are troublesome when it comes to the difference between WAN and last-mile prices for content providers/deliverers.
  - tonfa 14y ago
    ISPs can already directly peer and setup a local node for Google CDN.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
rashomon 14y ago
Google's corporate motto is "Don't be Evil" and the United States has the 16th fastest broadband speeds in the world, and we invented the damn thing. Comcast, I agree, is a terrible monopolistic crack-baby of the capitalist society but Google is genuinely improving things.
- taligent 14y ago
  Except Google has been acting pretty 'evil' recently. The disgraceful FRAND abuses, the privacy abuses, the anti-competitive expansion of Google Search. Hence why they are under multiple investigations by ITC, EU, US governments. So it is far better to assume NOBODY should be trusted.
  - bermanoid 14y ago
    Except again: In Google vs AT&T, Comcast et al, I'll take Google any day of the week. Their "evil" is a bunch of shit that nobody really cares about, whereas the others actively screw me, running fiber optic cables straight into my apartment and then making sure that even the priciest data plan I can buy is rate limited to the equivalent of mid-2000s DSL.
  - angryasian 14y ago
    the simple answer is don't use services if you don't trust them. If google provides cheaper fiber access in your area, and you'd trust verizon or comcast then use those providers.
  - zmmmmm 14y ago
    > The disgraceful FRAND abuses When has Google, in and of itself, abused FRAND? The only actions I know of happening on FRAND patents are things grandfathered in from motorola - are you blaming those on Google? I think it's far too early to judge Google's behavior wrt to patents. We have to see what they do in their own right.
    - wmf 14y ago
      Google has explicitly endorsed Moto's FRAND policy that many people consider abusive. http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/press/motorola/pdf/sso-letter.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...
sounds 14y ago
While your concerns are legitimate - content should not control infrastructure; look at cellular carriers for the case study - there are also wins that are worth thinking about. Not to be Pollyana; Google needs to be watched. So we all keep each other in check. The following disruptive moves benefit Google _and_ your average Joe: 1. Reduce bandwidth costs. Google pays to send data and we pay to receive it. This is just your classic elimination of the middleman, in this case the anti-competitive backbone and last-mile carriers. In theory the first to benefit from this are the startups with large bandwidth bills today. 2. Reduce delays associated with new tech. Google wants new tech like a larger TCP Initial Congestion Window [1], IPv6, SPDY / HTTP 2.0, or Strict Transport Security [2] to happen faster. As long as your average Joe has a fast enough pipe, these are a win-win. The lag in adoption comes from slow-moving risk-averse players, such as incumbent backbone providers. 3. Reduce mobile bandwidth costs. Google is already heavily invested in mobile broadband clients. In especially congested areas like New York, anything to reduce mobile broadband costs benefits Android first: the top tier of customers who don't feel the costs are probably using iOS. There are more win-win situations but those are my top 3. [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tcpm-initcwnd-00 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tcpm-initcwnd-00 [2] http://dev.chromium.org/sts http://dev.chromium.org/sts
jjcm 14y ago
While true, I trust Google more than I trust AT&T/Comcast/etc. The major ISPs need some competition. Google will provide it.
kunle 14y ago
> Those who control or curate content (Google, NBC/Comcast, Facebook) should not control infrastructure. Why not? > while a high-speed competitor to local cable monopolies is exciting, It's not just exciting, it's everything. Comcast, TW et al, can get away with being massively valuable enterprises even though they provide the absolute worst service on earth. Any kind of competition for them, can only be a good thing, even if its from another company that controls both content and infrastructure.
- chaostheory 14y ago
  > Why not? Because they will favor transmission of their own content over competing content. See Net Neutrality. This being said, Comcast is already doing this and I trust Google more than the big 3 internet providers.
austenallred 14y ago
In general I would agree, however I feel that this is more of a reaction to poor infrastructure than a land grab "let's control everything" move.
Zigurd 14y ago
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Of course it would be preferable to have true structural separation in service providers, having a competitor that has interests that are not aligned with most content publishers is a pretty good consolation prize. While Google has products that overlap with legacy content publishers, that doesn't appear to have made Google enthusiastic about keeping bandwidth prices up, and content under tight control.
w1ntermute 14y ago
> This move might be good for Google, but I find it somewhat alarming as a consumer. Those who control or curate content (Google, NBC/Comcast, Facebook) should not control infrastructure. I don't know about you, but I'll take Google over Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, etc. any day of the week, regardless of their conflicts of interest. Google has a proven track record of doing things in my favor.
- incongruity 14y ago
  > Google has a proven track record of doing things in my favor. Thus far. The point still stands, as a principle – that sort of combination of function/power and interests has, historically, not been one that has resulted in good things for consumers, in the long run.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    I don't dispute that. But the other option are the companies I listed, which also have conflicts of interest and have repeatedly abused their control of telecommunications to favor the other branches of their businesses in the past. So I'd rather go with Google, which doesn't have a history of abuse.
- antidoh 14y ago
  Wasn't ATT before the divestiture their day's equivalent of an owner of infrastructure and a controller, if not owner, of "content?" You got good, reliable service. What was more reliable than the phone?
  - nl 14y ago
    You got good, reliable service until anything went wrong or you tried to change anything or you tried to get a less nosey line to use a modem on or you wanted to use a different style of phone. etc.
    - antidoh 14y ago
      And that's my point. That's Google's equivalent future.
jamesaguilar 14y ago
Meh, people said the same thing about Chrome but I know of almost no one who thinks that has been bad either for the market or any individual segment of the market.
- Retric 14y ago
  I know plenty of people that blame Google's interests for Chrome's add block technology lagging significantly behind what was available on Firefox.
  - shock3naw 14y ago
    Huh? What chrome extension are these people using? Adblock Plus (Beta) blocks pretty much everything.
    - freehunter 14y ago
      If previous versions of Adblock are still the base code for the new versions, it doesn't block the ad. It merely hides it. The ad is still loaded, you just don't see it. This limitation is/was because Chrome didn't allow extensions to have the access they would need to actually keep an ad from loading. I haven't used Chrome with AdBlock in maybe a year or two, so this might be out of date. But that's what it used to be like, and that's where the perception is coming from.
      - pyre 14y ago
        Then what is the point of Ghostery, if it can't keep tracking JavaScript from loading?
      - madrona 14y ago
        Sounds like a load of FUD to me. DOM elements are DOM elements, aren't they? How would Chrome's JS interpreter be able to discriminate ad content from anything else?
      - yohui 14y ago
ralfn 14y ago
You are completely right, but its just a piece of the puzzle. The whole market is becoming vertical. There is a war going on who gets to extort content providers, by controlling the access to consumers. The hardware vendors can control access and demand a slice (apple, amazon). The operating system vendors can control access and demand a slice (microsoft, google). The connection providers can control access and demand a slice (phone/cable companies). Here in Holland, we now have net neutrality. But maybe thats not enough. Maybe we need app/media store neutrality as well, by requiring OS vendors to allow side-loading. Maybe we need OS neutrality as well, by demanding HW vendors to offer their machienes "rooted". For now, Google is pro net neutrality, and has not abused their position. Maybe this is just a defensive step. Neverthless, google, like any other ISP should be forced to treat packets neutrally. But that really should be a law, not a contract.
- Ralith 14y ago
  > Maybe we need app/media store neutrality as well, by requiring OS vendors to allow side-loading. Maybe we need OS neutrality as well, by demanding HW vendors to offer their machienes "rooted". Maybe? There's no question. Manufacturers are already abusing these holes.
zanny 14y ago
I don't get why anyone thinks any company should control infrastructure. We don't have private electric lines, or private roads that are corporate funded. We don't expect train tracks to be privately laid. Our entire phone and cable infrastructure were built by private companies (mainly AT&T) by getting tremendous government subsidies and being effectively publicly funded for private enterprise. There is absolutely no reason that any local government in the US worth its weight in salt couldn't start a fiber to the home initiative where they take a tax hike for a few years to pay off laying fiber to everyone in the district. They could contract with neighbor regions, or with private long line services like Level3 to provide internet access, and then nobody gets ripped off when they get a telecom monopoly in their area, because it is a publicly owned utility. It is getting to the point where internet access is so ubiquitous and essential that we need to see the rise of public fiber and wifi to enable competition in an area where for the last 30 years there has only been collusion and monopoly abuse. I consider myself a social libertarian but we have proven time and time again in history you can not effectively privatize infrastructure and expect long term benefits to society from that.
- csense 14y ago
  "There is absolutely no reason that any local government in the US worth its weight in salt couldn't start a fiber to the home initiative where they take a tax hike for a few years to pay off laying fiber to everyone in the district." We. Can. Not. Afford. It. In case you haven't been paying attention: Unemployment is high, so new taxes are tougher to sell than usual, and income tax revenue is declining. Home values have just taken a big hit, so property tax revenue is declining. The housing market is having a difficult time clearing in many areas; i.e. prices are still too high and there's a surplus of homes, which sit abandoned. This stretches local services (fires, copper theft, copper theft of e.g. gas lines which causes fires, homeless, drug activity, etc.). Expensive pensions, healthcare, etc. cause costs for government employees to keep going up. In short, state and local governments are overextended and are feeling a need to cut services, not expand them. The federal government is too, to some extent, but they can essentially print money. Of course, these are generalizations; they obviously won't apply to every locality.
  - 14y ago
ori_b 14y ago
> This move might be good for Google, but I find it somewhat alarming as a consumer. Those who control or curate content (Google, NBC/Comcast, Facebook) should not control infrastructure. I agree. I hope this spurs competition, more than anything else.
bertomartin 14y ago
Your phone company is the same. They store trove of data about you, you'd be surprised.
donniezazen 14y ago
I am more concerned about current internet providers blocking technology for sake of their vested interest in old ways of business. Unlimited and unrestrained internet access is something so important and one of the basic needs. This morning I heard that ATT requires you to buy additional plans for Facetime. After data caps by all vendors, this is heights of absurdity.
donniezazen 14y ago
I am more concerned about current internet providers blocking technology for sake of their vested interest in old ways of business. Unlimited and unrestrained internet access is something so important and one of the basic needs. This morning I heard that ATT requires you to buy additional plans for Facetime. After data caps by all vendors, this is heights of absurdity.
MikeCapone 14y ago
Ideally, the goal is to be like Tesla Motors, a catalyst for the industry.

grandalf 14y ago

You're worried about Google censoring content or protocols?

zmmmmm 14y ago
I think it is more about anitcompetitive effects. Consider a service competing with Youtube; will they have the same streaming performance when delivered over Google's fiber as Youtube? It might even just be accidental (say, Google colocates it's services with its fiber infrastructure) - but it could easily give competitors a big disadvantage if they can't get access to the same performance as Youtube has.
- cpunks 14y ago
  I would tend to agree. Google has been extremely monopolistic lately. The only reason for Google+'s and Google Chat's relative success is shoving it down the throats of users of GMail's throats. Google mission has moved from organizing to controlling the world's information. I really liked the former, and I'm pretty scared of the latter. I want fast fiber. I also want to avoid another evil monopoly from taking over the computing landscape. I miss the old, trustworthy, don't-be-evil Google.
  - grandalf 14y ago
    OK I guess I consider anticompetitive QOS to be a form of content censorship. It'll be interesting to see if the announcement addresses your concerns.
- freehunter 14y ago
  say, Google colocates it's services with its fiber infrastructure This is actually the defense Comcast is using with their IPTV services. They don't have to pay anything to move that data over public lines, so they don't "charge" extra for it (by "charge", I mean putting it against the caps they recently removed). On the other hand, Netflix et al does go across public lines that Comcast does have to pay for, and they do "charge" for that because they themselves are being charged for it. Local CDNs are troublesome when it comes to the difference between WAN and last-mile prices for content providers/deliverers.
- tonfa 14y ago
  ISPs can already directly peer and setup a local node for Google CDN.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

rashomon 14y ago

Google's corporate motto is "Don't be Evil" and the United States has the 16th fastest broadband speeds in the world, and we invented the damn thing. Comcast, I agree, is a terrible monopolistic crack-baby of the capitalist society but Google is genuinely improving things.

taligent 14y ago
Except Google has been acting pretty 'evil' recently. The disgraceful FRAND abuses, the privacy abuses, the anti-competitive expansion of Google Search. Hence why they are under multiple investigations by ITC, EU, US governments. So it is far better to assume NOBODY should be trusted.
- bermanoid 14y ago
  Except again: In Google vs AT&T, Comcast et al, I'll take Google any day of the week. Their "evil" is a bunch of shit that nobody really cares about, whereas the others actively screw me, running fiber optic cables straight into my apartment and then making sure that even the priciest data plan I can buy is rate limited to the equivalent of mid-2000s DSL.
- angryasian 14y ago
  the simple answer is don't use services if you don't trust them. If google provides cheaper fiber access in your area, and you'd trust verizon or comcast then use those providers.
- zmmmmm 14y ago
  > The disgraceful FRAND abuses When has Google, in and of itself, abused FRAND? The only actions I know of happening on FRAND patents are things grandfathered in from motorola - are you blaming those on Google? I think it's far too early to judge Google's behavior wrt to patents. We have to see what they do in their own right.
  - wmf 14y ago
    Google has explicitly endorsed Moto's FRAND policy that many people consider abusive. http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/press/motorola/pdf/sso-letter.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...

sounds 14y ago

While your concerns are legitimate - content should not control infrastructure; look at cellular carriers for the case study - there are also wins that are worth thinking about. Not to be Pollyana; Google needs to be watched. So we all keep each other in check. The following disruptive moves benefit Google _and_ your average Joe: 1. Reduce bandwidth costs. Google pays to send data and we pay to receive it. This is just your classic elimination of the middleman, in this case the anti-competitive backbone and last-mile carriers. In theory the first to benefit from this are the startups with large bandwidth bills today. 2. Reduce delays associated with new tech. Google wants new tech like a larger TCP Initial Congestion Window [1], IPv6, SPDY / HTTP 2.0, or Strict Transport Security [2] to happen faster. As long as your average Joe has a fast enough pipe, these are a win-win. The lag in adoption comes from slow-moving risk-averse players, such as incumbent backbone providers. 3. Reduce mobile bandwidth costs. Google is already heavily invested in mobile broadband clients. In especially congested areas like New York, anything to reduce mobile broadband costs benefits Android first: the top tier of customers who don't feel the costs are probably using iOS. There are more win-win situations but those are my top 3. [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tcpm-initcwnd-00 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tcpm-initcwnd-00 [2] http://dev.chromium.org/sts http://dev.chromium.org/sts

jjcm 14y ago

While true, I trust Google more than I trust AT&T/Comcast/etc. The major ISPs need some competition. Google will provide it.

kunle 14y ago

> Those who control or curate content (Google, NBC/Comcast, Facebook) should not control infrastructure. Why not? > while a high-speed competitor to local cable monopolies is exciting, It's not just exciting, it's everything. Comcast, TW et al, can get away with being massively valuable enterprises even though they provide the absolute worst service on earth. Any kind of competition for them, can only be a good thing, even if its from another company that controls both content and infrastructure.

chaostheory 14y ago
> Why not? Because they will favor transmission of their own content over competing content. See Net Neutrality. This being said, Comcast is already doing this and I trust Google more than the big 3 internet providers.

austenallred 14y ago

In general I would agree, however I feel that this is more of a reaction to poor infrastructure than a land grab "let's control everything" move.

Zigurd 14y ago

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Of course it would be preferable to have true structural separation in service providers, having a competitor that has interests that are not aligned with most content publishers is a pretty good consolation prize. While Google has products that overlap with legacy content publishers, that doesn't appear to have made Google enthusiastic about keeping bandwidth prices up, and content under tight control.

w1ntermute 14y ago

> This move might be good for Google, but I find it somewhat alarming as a consumer. Those who control or curate content (Google, NBC/Comcast, Facebook) should not control infrastructure. I don't know about you, but I'll take Google over Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, etc. any day of the week, regardless of their conflicts of interest. Google has a proven track record of doing things in my favor.

incongruity 14y ago
> Google has a proven track record of doing things in my favor. Thus far. The point still stands, as a principle – that sort of combination of function/power and interests has, historically, not been one that has resulted in good things for consumers, in the long run.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  I don't dispute that. But the other option are the companies I listed, which also have conflicts of interest and have repeatedly abused their control of telecommunications to favor the other branches of their businesses in the past. So I'd rather go with Google, which doesn't have a history of abuse.
antidoh 14y ago
Wasn't ATT before the divestiture their day's equivalent of an owner of infrastructure and a controller, if not owner, of "content?" You got good, reliable service. What was more reliable than the phone?
- nl 14y ago
  You got good, reliable service until anything went wrong or you tried to change anything or you tried to get a less nosey line to use a modem on or you wanted to use a different style of phone. etc.
  - antidoh 14y ago
    And that's my point. That's Google's equivalent future.

jamesaguilar 14y ago

Meh, people said the same thing about Chrome but I know of almost no one who thinks that has been bad either for the market or any individual segment of the market.

Retric 14y ago
I know plenty of people that blame Google's interests for Chrome's add block technology lagging significantly behind what was available on Firefox.
- shock3naw 14y ago
  Huh? What chrome extension are these people using? Adblock Plus (Beta) blocks pretty much everything.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    If previous versions of Adblock are still the base code for the new versions, it doesn't block the ad. It merely hides it. The ad is still loaded, you just don't see it. This limitation is/was because Chrome didn't allow extensions to have the access they would need to actually keep an ad from loading. I haven't used Chrome with AdBlock in maybe a year or two, so this might be out of date. But that's what it used to be like, and that's where the perception is coming from.
    - pyre 14y ago
      Then what is the point of Ghostery, if it can't keep tracking JavaScript from loading?
    - madrona 14y ago
      Sounds like a load of FUD to me. DOM elements are DOM elements, aren't they? How would Chrome's JS interpreter be able to discriminate ad content from anything else?
    - yohui 14y ago

ralfn 14y ago

You are completely right, but its just a piece of the puzzle. The whole market is becoming vertical. There is a war going on who gets to extort content providers, by controlling the access to consumers. The hardware vendors can control access and demand a slice (apple, amazon). The operating system vendors can control access and demand a slice (microsoft, google). The connection providers can control access and demand a slice (phone/cable companies). Here in Holland, we now have net neutrality. But maybe thats not enough. Maybe we need app/media store neutrality as well, by requiring OS vendors to allow side-loading. Maybe we need OS neutrality as well, by demanding HW vendors to offer their machienes "rooted". For now, Google is pro net neutrality, and has not abused their position. Maybe this is just a defensive step. Neverthless, google, like any other ISP should be forced to treat packets neutrally. But that really should be a law, not a contract.

Ralith 14y ago
> Maybe we need app/media store neutrality as well, by requiring OS vendors to allow side-loading. Maybe we need OS neutrality as well, by demanding HW vendors to offer their machienes "rooted". Maybe? There's no question. Manufacturers are already abusing these holes.

zanny 14y ago

I don't get why anyone thinks any company should control infrastructure. We don't have private electric lines, or private roads that are corporate funded. We don't expect train tracks to be privately laid. Our entire phone and cable infrastructure were built by private companies (mainly AT&T) by getting tremendous government subsidies and being effectively publicly funded for private enterprise. There is absolutely no reason that any local government in the US worth its weight in salt couldn't start a fiber to the home initiative where they take a tax hike for a few years to pay off laying fiber to everyone in the district. They could contract with neighbor regions, or with private long line services like Level3 to provide internet access, and then nobody gets ripped off when they get a telecom monopoly in their area, because it is a publicly owned utility. It is getting to the point where internet access is so ubiquitous and essential that we need to see the rise of public fiber and wifi to enable competition in an area where for the last 30 years there has only been collusion and monopoly abuse. I consider myself a social libertarian but we have proven time and time again in history you can not effectively privatize infrastructure and expect long term benefits to society from that.

csense 14y ago
"There is absolutely no reason that any local government in the US worth its weight in salt couldn't start a fiber to the home initiative where they take a tax hike for a few years to pay off laying fiber to everyone in the district." We. Can. Not. Afford. It. In case you haven't been paying attention: Unemployment is high, so new taxes are tougher to sell than usual, and income tax revenue is declining. Home values have just taken a big hit, so property tax revenue is declining. The housing market is having a difficult time clearing in many areas; i.e. prices are still too high and there's a surplus of homes, which sit abandoned. This stretches local services (fires, copper theft, copper theft of e.g. gas lines which causes fires, homeless, drug activity, etc.). Expensive pensions, healthcare, etc. cause costs for government employees to keep going up. In short, state and local governments are overextended and are feeling a need to cut services, not expand them. The federal government is too, to some extent, but they can essentially print money. Of course, these are generalizations; they obviously won't apply to every locality.
- 14y ago

ori_b 14y ago

bertomartin 14y ago

Your phone company is the same. They store trove of data about you, you'd be surprised.

donniezazen 14y ago

I am more concerned about current internet providers blocking technology for sake of their vested interest in old ways of business. Unlimited and unrestrained internet access is something so important and one of the basic needs. This morning I heard that ATT requires you to buy additional plans for Facetime. After data caps by all vendors, this is heights of absurdity.

donniezazen 14y ago

MikeCapone 14y ago

Ideally, the goal is to be like Tesla Motors, a catalyst for the industry.