Google To Offer Fiber Optic Broadband
I just read an article from Google which piqued my interest: Google has announced that they will be offering fiber optic broadband as part of an experiment they are running. This sparked one of those moments where a slow chuckle begins to turn into a rumbling thunder of laughter. You see, as a resident of the City of Mountain View (and I am not the only one), I do not trust that Google will get this experiment any more right than they did the wireless experiment here. I found great humor that this article would even mention the WIFI experiment because it has been a complete and utter failure. Furthermore, I would not trust the service level from a Google broadband connection farther than I can throw my Linksys 54G Wireless router.
As you can see, I have 18 access points within reach of my wireless card at this moment. I believe all of these are utilized, not so much because my neighbors are concerned with information security (which arguably they very much are), but from a complete failure of the Google WIFI experiment. I did not even think I had that many neighbors! I could perceive ditching my wireless internet if the Google WIFI were remotely reasonable. I do not stream video, download large amounts of data, host a site, or do anything thirsty for bandwidth. I imagine at least half my neighbors would probably be in a similar situation and could just as easy ditch their wireless internet were it not for the terrible (read: unavailable) Google WIFI service. All in all, Google fiber optic broadband will likely be no different.
UPDATE: There is an entirely different slant to this news article than I had written about above; namely that Google is becoming a pervasive end-to-end data collection behemoth. The article mentions “connecting remote hospitals” and “helping students” which are flowery ways of painting the fact that Google would like to gain access to a new demographic. For Google to fill in a bigger, and much more detailed, picture it must get its tentacles deeper in to these untapped regions of the country. Similarly, across the pond, in Britain, Google is looking to be a potential investor in giving a boost to Britain’s fiber network. Keeping pace a related slashdot post that asks is Google too big to fail? and raises concern over this same point: Google datasets are getting ever more massive and the potential amount of information gathered within is scary, even to those less paranoid about their online identity.
