
Google Fiber - benackles
http://fiber.google.com/
======
kevinalexbrown
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-c...](http://scrawford.net/blog/comcastnbcu-will-raise-costs-for-
consumers/1414/)

~~~
w1ntermute
> 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.

~~~
ary
> Google has a proven track record of doing things in my favor.

The current, publicly acknowledged level of intercourse between Google and the
U.S. Federal Government is already worrisome. Perhaps your data has been a
part of those exchanges, perhaps it hasn't. _You and I don't know_.

Now, imagine that Google begins relaying traffic unrelated to their services
on behalf of internet users. It isn't hard to fathom that Google will come
under the same pressures to give the U.S. government access to user traffic as
have Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and others.

That could just be the tip of the iceberg though. How long before the company
caves in and decides to start including user internet traffic analysis into
the search engine's signaling and ranking? Would it still be doing you a
favor?

Edit: typo

~~~
freehunter
Yes, Google hands over some of your data to the government. But as far as I am
aware, Google tells you when requests have been made for your email account,
and when search results have been censored. If your account is accessed by
anyone but you, Google will notify you that you have been hacked.

Do I believe Google tells the _whole_ truth? I'm not 100% convinced, but I
can't know that. What I _do_ know is that even if they tell 5% of the truth
about government interaction with your data, this is several times more
information than AT&T, Comcast, or Verizon tell you. Most of the time your
data is simply handed over on a simple request. At least Google
attempts/pretends to put up a fight.

Is it worrisome that I would accept 5% of the truth? Yes. But that goes to
show how shady everyone else is. While immoral cooperation has no excuse, I
would still point more blame to the government that makes the requests in the
first place. Always assume your security is lost the minute the data touches a
public pipe unless you take deliberate attempts to secure it.

~~~
enneff
> But as far as I am aware, Google tells you when requests have been made for
> your email account

I could be mistaken, but I think the PATRIOT act permits the US government to
obtain your personal information without you being informed.

~~~
methodin
Does that mean they CANNOT notify you or its up to the discretion of the
entity handing over the data? If the latter it still makes a strong case that
a notification system would be used for such things if one exists for similar
circumstances.

~~~
revscat
If the government issues an NSL then you are prohibited from notifying anyone
of its existence, and they are not subject to judicial oversight. They are
issued solely at the discretion of the government, and if you receive one you
cannot talk about it.

------
nilsbunger
We have google fiber at home - Stanford faculty homes have had it the past
year, like Kansas City.

It's pretty cool. My record so far is to consume 400Mbps, using 4 computers
downloading from about 10 places, all wired through gigabit switches.

In practice, though, it doesn't make much difference compared to a 30Mbps
cable modem for most consumers:

most streaming video is < 10 Mbps;

large file downloads are generally limited by a server (or somewhere else in
the network?), so it's hard to exceed 30-40Mbps download speed;

web browsing feels about the same, because it's limited by round trips of DNS
and http requests, not by bandwidth (spdy will help here?);

many consumer-grade NAT boxes (linksys and friends) are capable of only
100-200 Mbps

The one place it's made a big difference so far is uploads. For example,
backup to a cloud backup service (backblaze) often goes 50Mbps or higher. But
I did have to try several backup services because some were limited on the
server side to a few Mbps.

Running services from home could be a use case too, but then you get into
reliability of power/etc, and the fact that so far you can't get a static IP
address through google fiber.

So for now google fiber is mostly a fast cable modem from a "don't be evil"
provider. I think the real disruption will come with new services that don't
really exist yet. What kind of new things can be built if there's enough
audience?

~~~
epikur
What cloud backup provider did you settle on? Dropbox has very slow uploads
for me, so I'm curious what else is out there that works.

~~~
msy
I'm finding spideroak superior to backblaze - it actually backs up my entire
system rather than skipping /Library & /opt and allows me to backup external
drives without needing to have them constantly plugged in. I think the pay-
for-what-you-use model allows them to be a lot more flexible.

------
revelation
There is not much difference in perception to a normal customer between 50Mbit
and 1Gb - the former manages two 1080p YouTube streams perfectly well with
quite some headroom for extra misc traffic. Torrenters will always crave more
bandwidth, but even there its going to be tough to fill 1Gb downstream.

But all of that is missing the point. The internet is not just a better TV
with cats - it has true full duplex communication!

It's hard to believe because the monopolies in control of the last mile will
generally offer you tons of downstream with little to no upstream. In some
cases, the upstream is merely enough to send TCP ACKs for when you use all of
your downstream. Its a natural move for these big old companies because
upstream traffic from customers is more expensive for them and they are still
stuck in the mindset of the "media consumption machine".

Google, of course, realizes that 1Mb of upstream is bad news for Google
Hangouts and terrible for uploading 1080p video to YouTube. And all kind of
distributed systems benefit tremendously from matching upload and download
bandwidth.

~~~
jsz0
For cable systems there have historically been some good technical reasons why
upstream speeds are much lower. DOCSIS3 solves most of those problems. If
there is a demand for it cable upload speeds can jump to 10-15Mbit/sec in the
near future without much trouble.

~~~
MrFoof
These speeds are already available. I've had 50Mbps/15Mbps from Comcast for
over a year, for about $100/month -- and I _actually_ get those speeds so long
as the server with the content is willing. Dual-stack support is soon as well,
so I'll have an IPv6 address.

In the next week or so, my downstream will be increasing to 105Mbps at no
additional charge[1]. In some markets (mine included) Comcast will be offering
305Mbps downstream service (granted at $300/mo), which is 90% of the bandwidth
the DOCSIS 3.0 specification would allow over 8 channels.

Granted, on the opposite end we have Verizon now trying to slowly kill their
DSL service and replace it with LTE. [2]

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2012/07/comcas...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2012/07/comcast-internet-to-hit-305mbps-5-megabits-faster-than-
verizon-fios/)

[2] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/op-ed-verizon-
wil...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/op-ed-verizon-willfully-
driving-dsl-users-into-the-arms-of-cable/)

~~~
Retric
Does that include cable? I pay 105$ a month for 75/35 + cable w/HD DVR from
Verizon FIOS which might make Comcast better after that upgrade.

Or, if it's just internet then 150/75 is 99$ and 300/65 Mbps is 200$/month
from FIOS which would make Comcast a little behind but still reasonable
alternative. Which is a lot better than the last time I compared them.

~~~
MrFoof
With the most basic of TV service, taxes, fees, etc. my total bill comes to
about $116.81/mo. If I punted the TV service, my savings would be about $4/mo.
I don't bother with TV service because to get the one channel I want, the
required pre-reqs and equipment would double my bill.

Regarding Verizon, I'd love to have FiOS, but they won't deploy in Boston
without major tax breaks, which Boston refuses to offer. FiOS is great if it's
available, but it's not in most markets. There aren't many other options in
the continental US where you can get 100Mbps service for ~$100/mo if FiOS is
unavailable (and for most of the US, that's the case).

------
antimatter15
Going to the 404 page reveals a menu which hints (well, it says that there's
going to be some plural number of cities, not too much else) at what is being
announced tomorrow: <http://fiber.google.com/savethedate/404>

The main menu has links to "About", "How to get it", "Plans & Pricing",
"Cities", "Help" and a button "Pre-Register"

Also, since that page doesn't seem to indicate the time, the Google fiber blog
(<http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/>) says it's at 11AM CDT. Also an
impressive stat is that they've apparently laid down over a hundred miles of
fiber.

~~~
thronemonkey
If this is in my city, I will be so upset. I just signed up for a year of
comcast :(

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Even if it is in your city, getting new fiber laid to you in a year is
optimistic.

------
robomartin
...until Google algos shut down your account; now you loose gmail, docs,
drive, etc., etc., etc., and fiber.

OK, I am kidding to some extent. Maybe not. I'd sure like to see them move in
a direction that assures users that all services will not be cutoff without
recourse for unknown algo violations.

~~~
jellicle
I don't know why this was modded down. Google Fiber customers will certainly
be required to use their Google Account to sign up.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
And that part scares me. That is a whole lot of my personal info to provide to
a company that is _really_ good at processing it.

Of course, I'm probably being stupid about that. My network data was probably
sold a long time ago. And they have also probably already correlated it with
my google account.

------
kennywinker
Background for those who aren't following this:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber>

~~~
Cogito
Thanks for the context, the page itself was quite devoid of information.

I would love to see how this service compares to the roll out of fibre we are
seeing in Australia at the moment. There is a lot of resistance from the
opposition as the government is largely funding our new network.

In particular, many commentators claim that rolling out wireless technology is
more financially viable then fibre to the home. In Australia we do have a
sparse consumer distribution, so the context is a little different, however if
google's model is viable (as you would assume) it might make a strong case
study for our situation.

Looking forward to seeing how it all progresses.

EDIT: spelling

~~~
jacques_chester
> In Australia we do have a sparse consumer distribution

Nonsense, Australia is one of the most urbanised countries on Earth. We are
_less_ dispersed than the USA.

> There is a lot of resistance from the opposition as the government is
> largely funding our new network.

The government is right that FTTP _is_ the most future-proof technology
choice. But the _way_ the project is being run is shameful -- they're
carefully hiding the costs and debts behind "commercial-in-confidence" for a
company wholly owned by the government.

And the dealing with Telstra, and creation of a new monopoly ... there's lots
not to like.

~~~
Cogito
EDIT: clarified in response to your edits :)

> Nonsense, Australia is one of the most urbanised countries on Earth. We are
> less dispersed than the USA.

That is a good point. To be fair, I am not fully aware of what our
distribution looks like.

Perhaps I should clarify the point I was trying to make.

Whilst it is true that a large proportion of our population reside in urban
environments, one of the aims of the fibre roll out here is to reach almost
all of the population with fibre to the home.

For those not in urban environments (which is still significant), the
geographic spacing is quite large, and I would imagine in that context we
_are_ sparsely distributed. Is running fibre to the home in that context a
viable option? Hard to say, and perhaps even the google roll out will not give
us much more information or real world example then we currently have.

> ... the way the project is being run is shameful

The thing I hope most to see out of the google roll out is how they handle it.
I don't know of many data points regarding nation-wide roll out of fibre
technology, or any similar infrastructure, in recent times, so the potential
to 'see it done right' is an exciting one.

~~~
emmelaich
We have to define dispersion I guess.

Australia is a bit odd. It is among the lower ones in terms of average density
but among the higher in median density. We're very clumped; 89% percent of the
population is in urban areas. Compare with densely populated Netherlands, with
only 61% percent in urban areas.

Sources: wikipedia, nationmaster.

------
minikomi
Snooping through the css I found this cute hyper-rabbit
<http://fiber.google.com/static/img/cities/rabbit.png>

Edit:

Other interesting sprites:

* <http://fiber.google.com/static/img/sprite-devices.png>

* <http://fiber.google.com/static/img/sprite-networks.png>

also, tooltip:

[http://fiber.google.com/static/img/cities/business_address_e...](http://fiber.google.com/static/img/cities/business_address_explanation_tooltip.png)

Last edit : curl > grep > sed > jsfiddle:

<http://jsfiddle.net/LyHbH/embedded/result/>

~~~
petitmiam
Did you save the rabbit? It's a 404 now.

~~~
minikomi
Found it:

<http://i.imgur.com/eXGWz.jpg>

Edit: This looks ominous:

    
    
        .fooled-image{position:absolute;top:55px;right:-30px;width:160px;height:243px;background:url(/static/img/you_have_been_fooled.png) no-repeat;}

~~~
rand_r
Where is that quoted css ("fooled...") from?

~~~
minikomi
The current css which is up on the fiber.google.com site:

    
    
        http://fiber.google.com/static/css/rel/portal.css?v=18c3b45c08597bad573f68d9f62a28cb

~~~
Gigablah
Maybe it has to do with their previous April Fool's joke? (you can see it on
the Google Fiber blog)

------
jtchang
I am absolutely ecstatic that Google is attempting to build the next
generation wired network.

Why does this matter? Well owning the pipe is always a good move especially in
the face of net neutrality. But there are all sorts of other tie ins. For one,
payments.

Our current payment infrastructure is based around private leased lines. If
you really wanted to take on the payments industry you have to start with the
infrastructure. Otherwise you are always at the mercy of a credit card
processor just shutting you off. When you own the network where the
transactions actually flow it is a different story.

~~~
damian2000
> owning the pipe is always a good move especially in the face of net
> neutrality

... so that Google can achieve further market domination in the search and
search advertising space?

~~~
Karunamon
Not sure how owning the pipe would help them there. Google's search domination
is (arguably) a result of them having a superior product, with advertising
being completely coupled to that.

------
bcherry
Unlikely to be any news about service beyond their long-planned Kansas City
project. The skyline in the teaser is a dead ringer for the Kansas City
skyline (for example, [http://4photos.net/blog/wp-
content/uploads/Kansas_City_Skyli...](http://4photos.net/blog/wp-
content/uploads/Kansas_City_Skyline-855x300.jpg))

~~~
FPSDavid
Great detective work!

------
Nrsolis
Honestly, the more network is out there, the better.

There is probably an upper limit on the number of networks any given city can
support, so it's going to be natural for some combination of content sources
to be partnered with fiber distribution networks to revenue share.

It's enormously costly to deliver "wireline" fiber to the home service. Most
of this is labor cost, but you also can't discount the impact of property
taxes and upkeep on infrastructure that is supposed to weather the elements
and wildlife (including human) for upwards of 30 years.

Fiber is a great solution but wireless is still the most economical way to
deliver access for the "last-mile". If we ever find a way to provide low-cost,
high bandwidth wireless service within a one mile radius that doesn't make the
NIMBY types have an aneurism, then fiber-to-the-home will seem as quaint as an
individual copper pair to every residence.

disclaimer: In 1997-1998 I worked at a municipally owned city utility that was
able to deliver 10mbps symmetric Internet access to a development of homes in
FL. Bellsouth subsequently had laws passed to prohibit political subdivisions
from engaging in the provisioning of telecommunication services.

~~~
jaggederest
Fiber is fundamentally no different than wireless. It's just at a high enough
frequency the light is visible. That means you get much higher bandwidth.
There's just no way around that.

If you could rig up visible-light laser communications, you wouldn't need the
fiber. Fiber's just a convenient container.

~~~
Cogito
Fundamentally, the two are very different.

Whilst the information carrier, photons, is identical in both cases, the
medium is extremely different.

In the case of fibre we have a highly controlled, flexible medium with
extremely good quality of service and very little attenuation. This comes at
the price of requiring relatively expensive infrastructure between network
nodes.

Wireless technology on the other hand travels through air as a medium. You
remove the end-to-end infrastructure requirement, but the trade off is much
higher attenuation and lower quality of service. Additionally, you require
some amount of 'direct line of sight' depending on frequency. Lower (and hence
slower) frequencies are able to refract around mountains and even off the
outer atmosphere, providing quite good coverage, but visible light has no such
capability. Repeater satellites or LOS base stations would be required to
effectively use such a frequency.

This is why HAM radios are great for talking to people kilometres away, but
can't be used for effective wireless internet, and why hotspots don't cover
more than a few hundred metres at most.

~~~
Nrsolis
Fiber is just a convenient waveguide for certain electromagnetic frequencies.
Bad for others.

That said, your understanding is a bit "off."

Amateur Radio (HAM) has microwave frequencies available for use that would be
VERY effective for point-to-point wireless internet. We even have frequencies
that are very close to the existing bands and there would be no problem
running LTE over those frequencies. The problems with amateur radio are
regulatory, not technical.

Generally speaking, the higher the frequency, the higher the attenuation. Of
course, the higher frequencies are better suited for the kinds of modulation
rates necessary for high bitrate communications. So there's that.

But all of this is besides the point. No technology exists in a vacuum and
must compete against others for particular applications and for particular
cost models. That's why telecommunications engineers have no hair and bad
tempers. This stuff is hard.

For "lower" bitrate communications, wireless is the hands-down winner. The
cost to deploy a network for a given level of service to a range of end-
stations is just so much easier and cheaper that lots of other nations skipped
over building a wireline network and just went straight to wireless. Mobility
of the stations is almost a secondary concern.

Once you get to the point where your communications are less intermittent and
higher bitrate, it's really a question of how far you need to go and how
much/how often you need to communicate.

Lots of LTE stations are connected to a central office (router) via fiber
(gigabit ethernet mostly). Lots more are connected via point to point
microwave. Backhaul of bandwidth is something you dont hear talked about a lot
but it's a big part of why it can be hard to get LTE/4G/WiMax into a
particular location. Economics are a big part of that equation.

SO, I wish the Google Fiber guys well and I hope they succeed, but the
telecommunications market is so broad and complicated that it would be foolish
to look at one company's efforts to shake up a single market and equate that
with a sea-change in how the broadband market works.

edit: I met Milo Medin (who is now running Google Fiber) and he offered me a
chance to work at @Home way back when. In retrospect, I probably should have
pursued it.

~~~
Cogito
Thanks for the in-depth reply. The example of HAM radio was a poor one, I was
associating it with Low Frequency [1] radio when it in fact covers a much
larger spectrum.

I agree that telecommunications is a hard subject, and even more so that
different technologies are useful for different purposes. That is why I think
the original comment was off:

> If you could rig up visible-light laser communications, you wouldn't need
> the fiber. Fiber's just a convenient container.

Something we haven't really talked about, and I'm not sure how relevant it is,
is the saturation of the wireless spectrum. Point to Point wireless is
obviously a different beast, but for broadcast wireless is there a saturation
point where we can't safely send more data over the airwaves?

I like that fibre is by construction point to point, not restricted by line of
sight, capable of very high bit-rates with relatively low energy (correct me
here if this is wrong), and excellent quality of service.

Wireless has a lot less infrastructure, particularly when used for the last
mile, and is definitely extremely convenient in many situations. I don't think
it is the solution for general purpose network infrastructure, though that may
change in the future (and is clearly the choice for some countries already).

I wonder what the replacement for fibre will be in 20-30 years time - is
wireless the only frontier at the moment?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_frequency#Propagation_of_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_frequency#Propagation_of_LF_signals)

~~~
Nrsolis
Well, at microwave frequencies (think anything at 10Ghz and up, really) you're
already talking about directional antennas. The RF engineers will call
anything above 1Ghz microwave, but that's really splitting hairs.

Fiber is a waveguide and not much different in that respect from coaxial cable
(or for that matter twister pair). What matters is what kinds of frequencies
the waveguide will accomodate and what kind of attenuation those frequencies
will experience. This matters for lots of important reasons.

As an example, take RG-6 coaxial cable (the kind you probably have in your
home):

At 100Mhz (VHF) the attenuation is about 2.0 dB/100ft.

At 700Mhz (UHF) the attenuation is about 6.0 dB/100ft.

Now, take a look at Corning SMF-28 singlemode fiber:

At 1310nm (229.644 THz) the attenuation is 0.35dB/kilometer.

At 1550nm (192.4 THz) the attenuation is 0.22dB/kilometer.

So, fiber is an exceptional waveguide at very high frequencies, which makes it
uniquely suitable for high-bandwidth communications. Compared to all of the
other waveguides, it's the most durable, most compact, and most future-proof
solution.

Except when you can't use it.

SO, what's left? Wireless probably. Well, there is free-space optical which
uses the same 1550nm frequency but has the problem of aligning the transmitter
and receiver to have a completely free line-of-sight. Then there is the fact
that attenuation through free space isn't the same as within a fiber.
Attenuation at 1550nm ranges from 0.2dB/km (clear) to 100dB/KM (foggy). So,
the atmosphere is a shitty waveguide for optical frequencies.

But there is still a chance with wireless, since we aren't restricted to the
propagation characteristics of optical frequencies or the directionality. With
advanced modulation techniques (CDMA/OFDM), it's actually pretty easy to fit
many more bits/hertz than you could with fiber transmission systems. It's just
that that sort of heroics is not needed for fiber systems since it's easy to
get extra bandwidth with another fiber.

Now, when you are talking about "last-mile" types of solutions, it really
depends on what the alternatives are and what the "load-factor" is for that
method. There is a big difference between phone calls and streaming audio for
example when it comes to wireless systems. All of those things need to be
taken into account.

IMHO, the end-game is probably going to be coax to a smaller set of homes
using whatever flavor of DOCSIS is available at that moment. Most CableCo
networks are mostly fiber anyhow. Once you get to a certain "cluster size" the
choice of fiber to the home versus fiber to the local node and then coax to
the house becomes an engineering question. For lower bandwidth or other
services, you'll see wireless broadband displace some take-up of coax-base
services. The only reason I think this will happen is because the coax is
already deployed (and so it will be used). If we didn't have almost universal
penetration of coax into the average home, there would be no question that
most broadband would be wireless to the home.

The FTTH systems now being deployed have lots more in common with cable
systems than is commonly understood. Your fiber doesn't actually go ALL the
way to the central office. Your fiber is split at some point in the
neighborhood (from 4-64 homes) and then is carried to the central office.

------
rachelbythebay
Honest question: what sort of support can you expect when something goes
wrong? Fiber attracts backhoes (buried routes) and bored hunters with shotguns
(aerial ones). It's a fact of life. Who's going to do customer service,
Google, or some other agency? What's their track record like?

(As the old gag goes, this is why you should carry a short piece with you, in
case you are stranded on a desert island. Bury it and when the backhoe shows
up, get a ride back to land with the driver).

~~~
jaggederest
Knowing google, they're just going to run 8 different routes to any given
place and leave cut cable in the ground, then replace the whole network in 10
years or so.

~~~
ajasmin
Right. Embrace failure.

------
dkasper
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?

~~~
Laremere
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
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
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.

~~~
bicknergseng
A phone is not a service, it's a good and a platform for serving more
goods/content in the form of the Google Play store.

What about YouTube or Maps or Apps? YouTube produces it's own content, as does
Google Maps.

Again, Google today is not Google c. 2002. They produce massive amounts of
content and goods, and being able to control the full distribution pipeline
for said content and goods could end up being a significant anti-trust issue.

------
sakopov
As a Kansas City resident, this is going to be inexplicably interesting. We
have a pretty decent tech scene here. I'm just wondering how this will impact
it, if it will at all.

------
csense
What does Google hopes to accomplish with making fiber available?

They want to enable entirely new applications.

For example, online video was an application enabled by the widespread
availability of broadband Internet. Before broadband, _downloading_ videos was
possible, but _streaming_ was not. Simply put, the (average) rate at which you
download frames of video has to be greater than the rate at which frames are
displayed for streaming to work.

The most interesting changes were not quantitative, but qualitative.

Google -- and most HN readers -- probably believe that higher broadband speeds
are an inevitability, although the process has been going much slower in the
US than most of us would like. And new ways of using the Internet will be
enabled as speeds get faster. And, if it offers fiber, Google will be at the
forefront of that wave, which will help Google by:

(1) Accelerating the change, pushing those new markets to be created sooner
than they would have been created without Google Fiber (2) Putting it in a
good position to capture the new markets -- i.e. if Application X is eating a
lot of bandwidth on Google Fiber, that might be an early signal that the
Application X space is a growth market and Google should find a way to get
involved.

------
dmishe
Any chance that in the future, this project will drive ISP prices down?
Internet in the US is ridiculously expensive compared to, say, Eastern Europe.

~~~
cloudwalking
That is the goal of the project.

------
corkill
In Turkey at the moment.

Just got a fibre plan 20mbps for $30 US per month, no contract, they also give
the router and modem. Although had to pay $70 or so upfront for the no
contract option.

They also have a 1000mbps plan. First world countries really dragging there
feet on fibre networks.

------
donbronson
Google will have to offer cable TV for this to work. I really hope they do.
The MSOs deserve some competition.

~~~
Zigurd
_"Google will have to offer cable TV for this to work."_

It isn't necessary to have separate bandwidth for TV. And any kind of bundling
with Google Play would make the product a lot less attractive.

------
ricardobeat
1gbps is not as impressive 2 years later... 100mbps broadband is already
becoming affordable here in Brazil, it's a given that 1gbps will be available
in large scale in 2-3 years.

~~~
sliverstorm
Internet speeds may improve by 10x every 2-3 years in Brazil, but that isn't
how it's been going in the USA.

If it was, the USA would already have 10Gbps for bargain-basement prices.

~~~
ricardobeat
Ha, that's funny now. You're almost there :)

------
Legion
Man, was I pissed when Austin lost out to Kansas City for the Google Fiber for
Communities pilot project. The lack of FIOS in a city like Austin is painful.
Austin is "AT&T territory" and AT&T's UVerse service isn't even worth talking
about.

I sure hope this announcement is, "Fiber is coming, and Austin's in the first
wave!"

~~~
astrojams
I've got Fiber through Time Warner Austin (Wideband) and it pulls at like
50Mbit down and 5Mb/sec up. Not too shabby.

~~~
lkbm
Isn't that $350/mo.? I'm hoping Google's fiber will be a little cheaper.

~~~
jrockway
No, it's not. TWC's TV/Phone/50Mbps Internet plan costs me $170 a month. (I
think I have HBO in there too.)

Now incidentally, a firmware update bricked my cable box and I haven't had the
desire to talk to anyone at Time Warner about it, but $170 is a fine price for
50Mbps Internet. (I don't use the phone either. Again, not wanting to talk to
anyone in a call center, this is the best I could do.)

Their DNS does lie about NXDOMAIN responses, however. If you try to resolve a
nonexistent domain name, it returns NOERROR and an A record pointing to their
servers. I run my own DNS server fed from the root servers, so I don't really
care, but I thought I'd mention it. The technician that did the install was
also not happy that I didn't have a Windows or Mac computer for him to insert
a shady-looking CD in. "What kind of router do you have." "It's an OpenBSD
box." "..."

(I had Speakeasy before and kind of miss them. 24 hour phone support, and they
were always extremely knowledgeable. Someone I talked to once also used
OpenBSD at home.)

~~~
dgudkov
I use 30Mbps cable internet and pay $12/mo (Eastern Europe).

------
jervisfm
The announcement is now streaming live at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uZVqPuq81c&feature=play...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uZVqPuq81c&feature=player_embedded)

------
snorkel
! Gbps upload and download speed. Wonderful. Unless you can give me an static
IP address and let me serve whatever I want from that IP than I'm not failling
out of my chair over this.

~~~
jmillikin
If you're just looking to run a server, a VPN service like Linode or bulk
hosting like S3 will be more effective and less expensive than residential
hosting.

------
DonnyV
I work for a GIS Services company and I know one of the major issues from us
not going full cloud is that we deal with really large data-sets. If we had
access to a large fiber pipe we could easily dump all our servers. I would
imagine any engineering, graphics or video production office runs across the
same problem. I see this as completing the cloud story and alleviating
business of having to run there own data centers.

------
salimmadjd
As google gets larger and larger the slower and less nimble it becomes.

But given the other competitors in this market, I'm glad google is making
their move, US is falling behind other countries when it comes to broadband
access and this will only open up so many new business opportunities in US.
However, as others said I'll be curious about neutrality of Google when it
comes to content. Will they block vimeo in favor of youtube?

------
jebblue
If Google doesn't do it who will? Who else has the vision? As long as they
keep not doing evil everything is cool. If they do start doing evil we are
screwed but we will have high bandwidth to get on the Internet and read about
how messed up we are.

------
spaghetti
What happens when a large company that Google deems a competitor tries to buy
bulk use of the fiber? I could see Facebook lobbying for government regulation
of Google's fiber in an attempt to secure competitive pricing.

------
vampirechicken
> hose who control or curate content (Google, NBC/Comcast, Facebook) should
> not control infrastructure.

And those who were granted a monopoly in order to build the infrastructure
should not control the content.

------
ww520
This is pretty amazing. It's a transformative move if Google can pull it off.
Google might be best served by being the wholesale pipe provider rather than
customer facing ISP.

------
andyjsong
How does Google fiber compare to other countries around the world like S.
Korea and Japan where their bandwidth is much higher. We're #1? USA?! USA?!
err Kansas City?!

------
allbombs
This confirms Google can't win the TV race without owning internet access

------
conradfr
I'm so dumb I thought for a moment that Google would announcing some kind of
new clothes fabric.

------
ebtalley
please santa, please oh please oh please.

------
lizzard
For about 3 seconds I thought maybe this was about yarn.

------
radarsat1
Google is coming out with a breakfast cereal?

------
suyash
how is it going to be useful for everyday developer?

~~~
cloudwalking
Once internet of this speed is ubiquitous, bandwidth is no longer a concern.
Imagine what you can do when bandwidth is out of the picture.

~~~
sliverstorm
You are far more optimistic than I. I expect developers will quickly find ways
to write software which consumes an entire 1Gbps link.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I expect that Google already has plenty of ways to consume an entire gigabit
link; eg, Google Play music/movies/tv, Google Drive, etc. I'm sure they'd be
more than happy for all of your data to be stored in the cloud, and have all
of your access streamed to you in realtime over that gigabit link.

Come to think of it, I would be more than happy for all of my data to be held
securely in the cloud so that I would never need to worry about backups or
syncing my data between multiple machines. Assuming reasonable privacy and
security practices, of course.

~~~
nitrogen
_Assuming reasonable privacy and security practices, of course._

How about an in-kernel or FUSE Tarsnap driver? Are you reading this,
cpercival?

