Today, Google announced that they are working to roll out a 1 Gb fiber network to select areas, with the hopes of making it a ubiquitous connection. They claim, the idea is so that next generation apps can be made, without having to worry about bandwidth concerns. Despite my initial misgivings about running all of our apps in an extremely fast cloud, this seems incredibly cool.
Usually, this is the point where I get up on my soapbox, and complain about how much control Google is having, even though I love it. This time, I must state how happy I am. Despite the fact that Google will now have complete control, and can soon be part of every aspect of the internet, this really is a benefit. First of all, this will provide competition. The main reason why I support the FCC’s lock down of the internet, is due to a lack of competition between ISPs. On the other hand, if Google is able to roll out world wide fiber, despite the brevity of that statement, all ISPs would have a large competitor, meaning that current ethical issues with ISPs would be lowered. Not to mention the speed. If this is a success, not only will Google have yet another market share, but they will have one of the fastest connections in the continental USA, and possible the world.
On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, Google is getting quite big. They now have a hand in everything from your hardware, to your software, to your web searching, to even a large chunk of your content. If Google pulls this off, they will have a hand in every single level of accessing the internet. And because they’re currently not a telecommunications company, they could abandon the ideas of net neutrality, and speed up their websites, however, to be fair, with the current leadership of Google, I think they would rather speed up their websites by making them better, not by slowing everyone else down. To be honest, I think that may be a little much for one company to have, even if it is a company that I love, and would like to work for in the future.
What do you think?
You can read more about this at GoogleBlog.
