[TriLUG] Google Fiber

[Igor Partola]

Let me offer my humble perspective on this, as someone living in an area
with 0 hope of ever getting Google Fiber.

Google is an advertising company. Everything they do serves that purpose.
They provide the Android OS so more people have smartphones. They provide
GMail for free because they want to read your email to know what you
buy/will buy. They (try to) map out every street and bike path in the world
to get you to use their maps when you search for location-based things you
can buy. They are building self-driving cars so that you can shop online
while commuting to work. Everything they do ultimately is geared at making
their ad business more profitable.

Side note: people often compare Android vs Apple phones and tablet OS's.
Unlike Google, Apple is not an ad company. They are a hardware company.
Their priorities are to sell you more hardware, and everything they do is
motivated by that. This is why I believe Apple when they say they don't
read iCloud email: they have no reason to (other than when the NSA compels
them to, but that's the same story for GMail and everyone else).

So, why does Google want to be your ISP? Is it because they want to monitor
all your traffic and somehow show you slightly more targeted ads? I don't
believe so. I think the answer is much simpler (and by Occam's razor, more
likely). Recently ISP's have squeezed Google's business. They threatened to
filter out Google's ads and substitute their own. Google didn't like that,
but couldn't do much about it at the time. They then figured out that they
don't need to control the ISP's or even any majority of the market. All
they have to do is put enough pressure on ISP's in some key regions. The
fact that the service they provide also gives you very fast access is
secondary, though important for Google in the long run: faster internet
means more people use it with less frustration, which leads to more ads, ad
clicks, and sales.

In other words, why would they go through all this trouble for some dubious
outcome of trying to monitor your traffic (which soon they won't be able to
do at all since everything is moving towards HTTPS-only), when they have
much bigger fish to fry in the form of ensuring ISP's never filter their
ads?

In the other corner you have TWC, AT&T, Comcast, etc. These guys, just like
Google, are motivated by profit. Yet, they go about getting it a different
way. They don't sell ads. They (re)sell content. They do this with TV, and
now want to do the same thing with the Internet. They don't want to be the
dumb, regulated utilities they ought to be. Instead they are stuck in the
mindset that AOL should have worked.

In the end it doesn't matter who you choose as your provider. If you stick
with TWC/AT&T/etc. you will soon get a huge speed boost, and possibly a
much lower price. If you go with Google, you will soon get a huge speed
boost and a much lower price. Both their motivations are clear and, while
profit driven, not inherently evil.

Igor