Google Fiber + Motorola Wifi - What is Google really up to?

[Green King]

anyone looked into the economics of the technology ? or know how to ?

or else none of the implication or scenarios are useless.

 

[compoundinglife]

Comcast has X1 which appears to be there new cloud based cable box. They basically want you to interact with an app that they host so they can deliver a great cable experience and update the app on the fly. As we know cable box UIs are horrible. Maybe Google want to pilot or build similar things? Much easier to test/pilot with a bunch of 1GB connected customers.

 

 

Just went and looked at the website for the first time, didn't realize they have a full HD channel line up as well. Wow.

[Guest valueInv]

Think about how much it will cost Netflix to provide the ability to stream at 100 Mbps to each customer .

 

Well if Google buys them then they would not have that issue anymore :) Otherwise yeah their AWS bill just went way up.

 

Because Netflix can't run an unprofitable business while google can mask it with search earnings? Kinda like MSFT and Bing?

[compoundinglife]

Think about how much it will cost Netflix to provide the ability to stream at 100 Mbps to each customer .

 

Well if Google buys them then they would not have that issue anymore :) Otherwise yeah their AWS bill just went way up.

 

Because Netflix can't run an unprofitable business while google can mask it with search earnings? Kinda like MSFT and Bing?

 

I was sort of jokingly implying that if Google launched nation wide Fiber to the home and owned Netflix then it would be much more economical for them to stream high bandwidth to each customer. But it was not mean to be a serious response more of a what if. Considering google fiber is in its infancy its much to early to know what will happen there.

[Guest valueInv]

Think about how much it will cost Netflix to provide the ability to stream at 100 Mbps to each customer .

 

Well if Google buys them then they would not have that issue anymore :) Otherwise yeah their AWS bill just went way up.

 

Because Netflix can't run an unprofitable business while google can mask it with search earnings? Kinda like MSFT and Bing?

 

I was sort of jokingly implying that if Google launched nation wide Fiber to the home and owned Netflix then it would be much more economical for them to stream high bandwidth to each customer. But it was not mean to be a serious response more of a what if. Considering google fiber is in its infancy its much to early to know what will happen there.

 

Imagine if they have about 10,000 concurrent users on average. Today they serve them at about 2 Mbps. How much do you think their CDN costs will go up if they were to serve them at 100 Mbps? How about their AWS resource costs? How much money will they make by charging  customers $7 / month after paying for content?

[Guest valueInv]

A couple of random thoughts, some of which may be repeats of other posts.

 

- Net Neutrality - Big ISPs like Comcast and Verizon want to charge google for access to their customers. It drives them crazy that essentially own all the customers who are going to Google, Facebook etc... Google is monetizing off of these people and they are constantly trying to reduce their rates or come up with more competitive offers. Even if google has mild success with this its a big middle finger to Comcast and Verizon and shows that there is some potential threat to their monopolies. Also my guess is that Google will be able to manage a large scale network like that way more efficiently than Comcast or VZ. I worked a major cell carrier for a while and let me tell you Telcos are not the fastest moving beasts, although they are getting more agile due to competition.

 

Another aspect of Net Neutrality is that the innovation on the Internet has been driven by its open model. Companies like Comcast and Verizon want to control and offer services based on the types of bits you send and receive and also based on whether they are ingress or egress. I can't fault them for it because they are just trying to make money but the fear is that Internet connectivity becomes more like TV, a one may street and people are not encouraged (or in fact discouraged) to create content. Someone with a cool idea for video/audio technology or some teenager experimenting with new software he/she has written might be able to innovate more if they had access to a very fast symmetric internet connection. One of the premises behind net neutrality is common carriage philosophy where you pay for X amount of bits and you get to use those for whatever you like.

 

This is inline with Google's ethos of being "not evil" and keeping the spirit of the Internet intact while also potentially furthering their other business efforts.

 

- Who needs 1G at home? Well at my office I have a 1G ethernet connection to all the servers in my office for access applications copying data I need etc... For the growing mobile work force 1G at home with a VPN to their office would be almost like being there, assuming the company has a beefy internet connection as well. Although I am guessing most companies today could not handle the onslaught of all their employees telecommuting on 1GB pipes. But the demand is there. Ever try to download that excel spreadsheet from your office file server over VPN at the airport? Windows spins and spins and eventually you hit cancel. Most file sharing protocols used in the corporate world would not designed to work over slow links. I would LOVE to have this service at my home.

 

- Other ideas? Well for one thing google gets great analytics on you when you use their applications like search, gmail, desktop search. What if they could gather analytics about all the 1s and 0s going over your internet connection? Has anyone read the EULA for Google Fiber? I haven't but wouldn't be surprised if there is something in there that allows them to non-identifying information. Google is at its heart a data company.

 

Comcast has X1 which appears to be there new cloud based cable box. They basically want you to interact with an app that they host so they can deliver a great cable experience and update the app on the fly. As we know cable box UIs are horrible. Maybe Google want to pilot or build similar things? Much easier to test/pilot with a bunch of 1GB connected customers.

 

Google also has a TON of connectivity but my guess is that most of it outbound serving ads and search requests, if these customers are on Google's fiber maybe Google is letting them use all of their potentially unused download bandwidth?? That would probably give them a big edge over Comcast since they are already paying for all this connectivity and the download portion probably goes unused, but thats just a guess, I have no data to back that up.

 

As others have mentioned having a 1GB connection to google drive basically removes the need to have an at home backup device like an apple time capsule or home NAS.

 

Just random thoughts here.

 

This is what you need:

 

http://www.riverbed.com/us/products/steelhead_appliance/

[compoundinglife]

Think about how much it will cost Netflix to provide the ability to stream at 100 Mbps to each customer .

 

Well if Google buys them then they would not have that issue anymore :) Otherwise yeah their AWS bill just went way up.

 

Because Netflix can't run an unprofitable business while google can mask it with search earnings? Kinda like MSFT and Bing?

 

I was sort of jokingly implying that if Google launched nation wide Fiber to the home and owned Netflix then it would be much more economical for them to stream high bandwidth to each customer. But it was not mean to be a serious response more of a what if. Considering google fiber is in its infancy its much to early to know what will happen there.

 

Imagine if they have about 10,000 concurrent users on average. Today they serve them at about 2 Mbps. How much do you think their CDN costs will go up if they were to serve them at 100 Mbps? How about their AWS resource costs? How much money will they make by charging  customers $7 / month after paying for content?

 

I don't know much about their CDN other than the fact that they built their own appliance for it. If they have these devices at all the right locations it might not go up as much you think.

 

But I am not arguing that the costs would not go up quite a bit, I was just implying that if they were owned by a company that had a nation wide fiber to the home rollout it could reduce those costs quite a bit if a decent chuck of their customers were on the same network. I realize google currently has one small test market for fiber, but I am guessing they will expand that quickly if it goes well. So yeah 100Mbps streams would be expensive, and they don't need to go that high. I think 10Mbps of actual throughput and a low latency path between the CDN will provide a very good experience. A lot of people are mislead about streaming bandwidth requirements because they buy a connection that is supposed to 20 or 30Mbps but they don't always get that much bandwidth to the server they are downloading from.

 

 

[compoundinglife]

 

This is what you need:

 

http://www.riverbed.com/us/products/steelhead_appliance/

 

Well thatd the thing, if I have a 1GB connection at home for $70-$100 a month then the performance for telecommuting would be more than acceptable. I also would not need a riverbed appliance at both ends of the connection, plus most of my file transfers are done using encrypted protocols that prevent devices like that from caching because the bits look different every time they cross the wire. Would probably get some benefits from the tcp tuning they can do, but honestly the fact these things exist kind of irks me because they mainly are making up for the fact that the protocols we use were not designed for the situations in which we use them.