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Almost everything they're done is centered around ads and getting more data on their users to sell more ads. Even this project, in the end it's about getting mo

Almost everything they're done is centered around ads and getting more data on their users to sell more ads. Even this project, in the end it's about getting more people online to look at their ads. (not sure how much ad revenue you can get from poor places, but whatever) EDIT: To those saying they're playing the long game; Playing the long game doesn't make sense. The long game is being fully wired. By the time poor areas become economically important enough to be advertised to, they will have traditional telecoms servicing them.

HaloZero 13y ago
Even if its true, it's still a great win-win for everybody then.
redthrowaway 13y ago
>not sure how much ad revenue you can get from poor places, but whatever They're playing the long game. They see the third world as a market in the making, and they want to be entrenched when it develops.
ngoldbaum 13y ago
They're thinking long term. If you provide cheap (free?) balloon-based internet access, you will open opportunities for people who have little access to the outside world.
eaurouge 13y ago
The long game is being fully wired. No, the long game is wireless communications (and renewable energy). One of the reasons for fast growth in some developing countries is the fact that they don't have to make the same investments in infrastructure that developed countries made in the past.
- vinceguidry 13y ago
  Wireless is a hack, it will never replace wired. Sure, in Africa they get online with mobile phones, but that's only because it's not profitable _yet_ to run landlines. Even 56K would be better than mobile, but since it's Africa they don't even have that. Give it a few more decades and they'll be wired just like everyone else.
  - gaadd33 13y ago
    How is 56K better than 4G or at least 3G?
  - ghshephard 13y ago
    Particularly over long, sparse networks, wired connectivity is not as cost effective as wireless connectivity, even including the cost of pole assets and antenna mounts. And data rates of > 1 Gigabit for wireless connections are readily achievable these days. [1] [1] http://www.bridgewave.com/solutions/whitepapers.cfm http://www.bridgewave.com/solutions/whitepapers.cfm
    - vinceguidry 13y ago
      The United States is a long, sparse country, one of the longest, sparsest countries on the globe. We are wired because running backbones over 3G blows. People say infrastructure is too expensive to build, it's not. When you have a discerning customer base with the purchasing power to demand it, infrastructure is the only way to serve it. Wireless cannot support that. As soon as the developing world stops being developing, in will come the telcos to build real kit.
      - ghshephard 13y ago
        So, a couple things here. #1 - The United States is wired for legacy reasons, our infrastructure was built 50+ years ago when wireless voice and data for the most part did not exist. #2 - When I say "sparse" I'm referring to density of the target population, as in, the number of households per square mile. It does make sense to run wired connections to dense urban populations, the cost-per-connection, particularly measured on a bandwidth-per-drop-per-dollar basis is great. Also, if you already have cable (either pairs of copper, or coax-for-TV) running to those people's homes, you've got a foundation for delivering data. For most of the developing world in the next century (excluding the cities), communications, data, and entertainment will be in the form of wireless (Satellite, 3G, or directional 50 GHz+ data drops for backbones). We won't be running cables to supply communities in the African countryside with high speed Internet. (We also won't be running it over 3G/LTE - which wouldn't be most people's choice for a wireless data backbone these days)
tuananh 13y ago
True. They aims to make Chrome OS more popular. It only makes sense if Internet access is available everywhere.
bdcravens 13y ago
It's not like in mid-90's the Internet started getting big and the telecoms started running wires because it was the best option. They based the new network offerings on the infrastructure that had been in place for decades. Developing areas don't have that existing infrastructure. Perhaps setting up a wired infrastructure will make the most financial sense. However, I don't think that's a foregone conclusion, and a pure wireless infrastructure may be far cheaper and more profitable.
- invisible 13y ago
  I think the key is that wired networks were ideal in the situation where customers would pay off the investment. Wireless is way cheaper - one station could be 20+ people and take far less investment upfront.
  - XorNot 13y ago
    This is not really borne out in the economics. Wireless is only cheaper if you have a big wired trunk line somewhere you can drop a tower on. It's not cheaper if you have to build that trunk line, and the latency and equipment start getting costly when you're looking at going tower-to-tower over a long distance, since with a single fiber you can run over 100km before you need another relay (and carry a lot more data). Where this initiative by Google works is getting the rest of the world onto the internet somehow, and profiting off being the base-level service provider. Which would be quite a thing - a world where everyone could send some packet data at any time, would be very different to today where even leaving my house raises serious questions about how online I maybe over the next 48 hours.
dannyr 13y ago
I feel bad for people like you. I fee bad that you can't believe that some people or company with money just wants to make the world a better place. You said it yourself. Google probably won't make money. Maybe, just maybe, they just want to do something good.
- mh- 13y ago
  without addressing the remainder of your comment.. > I feel bad that you can't believe [..] the same could be said for naiveté.
  - Sven7 13y ago
    Contrast their behavior, with other companies sitting on mountains of cash. They don't need to do this. Yet they do. That's good enough for me. Though opening up their index and creating a search marketplace might seal the deal.
    - goldfeld 13y ago
      Whoa, they'd rather do a thousand as many baloons as whatever amount they're doing now, than that last part of your post. That's, you know, core business.
      - Sven7 13y ago
        :) But think about it...right now they have a random bunch of 10 or so tabs (flights, recipes, patents etc) above the search box. Is that it? To expand search to its full potential that list has to expand. What better way to do it than create a marketplace? It would be a good experiment to run a pilot in some small country or city and see what happens. Unlimited API access to google search...any app built on top of that platform that gets X number of hits becomes another tab above your search bar...for a price...or advertisers could make it free cause domain based search can get them better targeting.
  - munificent 13y ago
    There's cynicism on one end and naivety on the other, but there's a whole spread in between. Despite what the cynic thinks, reality is almost always somewhere in the middle there.
ekr 13y ago
Joke: Maybe they have some incentive from NSA or whatever to get and store information from everyone on this planet.
- personlurking 13y ago
  considering the news, makes sense they'd do this
fossuser 13y ago
The goal is to make the world a better place, advertising is just the means to do so.
galactus 13y ago
> The long game is being fully wired. By the time poor > areas become economically important enough to be > advertised to, they will have traditional telecoms > servicing them. ... And by that time, they will all be users of the google ecosystem thanks to this.

HaloZero 13y ago

Even if its true, it's still a great win-win for everybody then.

redthrowaway 13y ago

>not sure how much ad revenue you can get from poor places, but whatever They're playing the long game. They see the third world as a market in the making, and they want to be entrenched when it develops.

ngoldbaum 13y ago

They're thinking long term. If you provide cheap (free?) balloon-based internet access, you will open opportunities for people who have little access to the outside world.

eaurouge 13y ago

The long game is being fully wired. No, the long game is wireless communications (and renewable energy). One of the reasons for fast growth in some developing countries is the fact that they don't have to make the same investments in infrastructure that developed countries made in the past.

vinceguidry 13y ago
Wireless is a hack, it will never replace wired. Sure, in Africa they get online with mobile phones, but that's only because it's not profitable _yet_ to run landlines. Even 56K would be better than mobile, but since it's Africa they don't even have that. Give it a few more decades and they'll be wired just like everyone else.
- gaadd33 13y ago
  How is 56K better than 4G or at least 3G?
- ghshephard 13y ago
  Particularly over long, sparse networks, wired connectivity is not as cost effective as wireless connectivity, even including the cost of pole assets and antenna mounts. And data rates of > 1 Gigabit for wireless connections are readily achievable these days. [1] [1] http://www.bridgewave.com/solutions/whitepapers.cfm http://www.bridgewave.com/solutions/whitepapers.cfm
  - vinceguidry 13y ago
    The United States is a long, sparse country, one of the longest, sparsest countries on the globe. We are wired because running backbones over 3G blows. People say infrastructure is too expensive to build, it's not. When you have a discerning customer base with the purchasing power to demand it, infrastructure is the only way to serve it. Wireless cannot support that. As soon as the developing world stops being developing, in will come the telcos to build real kit.
    - ghshephard 13y ago
      So, a couple things here. #1 - The United States is wired for legacy reasons, our infrastructure was built 50+ years ago when wireless voice and data for the most part did not exist. #2 - When I say "sparse" I'm referring to density of the target population, as in, the number of households per square mile. It does make sense to run wired connections to dense urban populations, the cost-per-connection, particularly measured on a bandwidth-per-drop-per-dollar basis is great. Also, if you already have cable (either pairs of copper, or coax-for-TV) running to those people's homes, you've got a foundation for delivering data. For most of the developing world in the next century (excluding the cities), communications, data, and entertainment will be in the form of wireless (Satellite, 3G, or directional 50 GHz+ data drops for backbones). We won't be running cables to supply communities in the African countryside with high speed Internet. (We also won't be running it over 3G/LTE - which wouldn't be most people's choice for a wireless data backbone these days)

tuananh 13y ago

True. They aims to make Chrome OS more popular. It only makes sense if Internet access is available everywhere.

bdcravens 13y ago

It's not like in mid-90's the Internet started getting big and the telecoms started running wires because it was the best option. They based the new network offerings on the infrastructure that had been in place for decades. Developing areas don't have that existing infrastructure. Perhaps setting up a wired infrastructure will make the most financial sense. However, I don't think that's a foregone conclusion, and a pure wireless infrastructure may be far cheaper and more profitable.

invisible 13y ago
I think the key is that wired networks were ideal in the situation where customers would pay off the investment. Wireless is way cheaper - one station could be 20+ people and take far less investment upfront.
- XorNot 13y ago
  This is not really borne out in the economics. Wireless is only cheaper if you have a big wired trunk line somewhere you can drop a tower on. It's not cheaper if you have to build that trunk line, and the latency and equipment start getting costly when you're looking at going tower-to-tower over a long distance, since with a single fiber you can run over 100km before you need another relay (and carry a lot more data). Where this initiative by Google works is getting the rest of the world onto the internet somehow, and profiting off being the base-level service provider. Which would be quite a thing - a world where everyone could send some packet data at any time, would be very different to today where even leaving my house raises serious questions about how online I maybe over the next 48 hours.

dannyr 13y ago

I feel bad for people like you. I fee bad that you can't believe that some people or company with money just wants to make the world a better place. You said it yourself. Google probably won't make money. Maybe, just maybe, they just want to do something good.

mh- 13y ago
without addressing the remainder of your comment.. > I feel bad that you can't believe [..] the same could be said for naiveté.
- Sven7 13y ago
  Contrast their behavior, with other companies sitting on mountains of cash. They don't need to do this. Yet they do. That's good enough for me. Though opening up their index and creating a search marketplace might seal the deal.
  - goldfeld 13y ago
    Whoa, they'd rather do a thousand as many baloons as whatever amount they're doing now, than that last part of your post. That's, you know, core business.
    - Sven7 13y ago
      :) But think about it...right now they have a random bunch of 10 or so tabs (flights, recipes, patents etc) above the search box. Is that it? To expand search to its full potential that list has to expand. What better way to do it than create a marketplace? It would be a good experiment to run a pilot in some small country or city and see what happens. Unlimited API access to google search...any app built on top of that platform that gets X number of hits becomes another tab above your search bar...for a price...or advertisers could make it free cause domain based search can get them better targeting.
- munificent 13y ago
  There's cynicism on one end and naivety on the other, but there's a whole spread in between. Despite what the cynic thinks, reality is almost always somewhere in the middle there.

ekr 13y ago

Joke: Maybe they have some incentive from NSA or whatever to get and store information from everyone on this planet.

personlurking 13y ago
considering the news, makes sense they'd do this

fossuser 13y ago

The goal is to make the world a better place, advertising is just the means to do so.

galactus 13y ago

> The long game is being fully wired. By the time poor > areas become economically important enough to be > advertised to, they will have traditional telecoms > servicing them. ... And by that time, they will all be users of the google ecosystem thanks to this.