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posted by mattie_p on Thursday February 20 2014, @04:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the non-soluble-fiber-is-good-for-digestion dept.

Fluffeh writes:

"Google has officially invited 34 cities in nine metro areas to become the next batch of the Google Fiber rollout.

Google said it 'genuinely would like to build in all of these cities,' but that the complexities of deploying networks may not allow it. 'During this process, we will work with each city to map out in detail what it would look like to build a new fiber-optic network there,' Google said. 'The most important part of this teamwork will be identifying what obstacles might pop up during network construction — and then working together to find the smoothest path around those obstacles. Some might be easy, some might take some creative thinking or a few months to iron out, and in some cases there might be such local complexities that we decide it's not the right time to build Google Fiber there.'"

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Thursday February 20 2014, @04:43AM

    by TrumpetPower! (590) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Thursday February 20 2014, @04:43AM (#3170) Homepage

    ...the news that Google was bringing fiber to my city (which they are) would have gotten me pretty excited.

    But Google has since turned evil in so many ways, and I wouldn't even think to trust them with any data of any consequence -- let alone my entire bitstream.

    I also would have been excited that, perhaps, this would have meant that their competitors would feel compelled to offer fiber as well. Maybe that'll happen, but somehow I'm not all that optimistic any more.

    <sigh />

    b&

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by chebucto on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:46AM

    by chebucto (36) on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:46AM (#3207) Journal

    Indeed. And the problem isn't limited to the question of privacy, there's the issue of net neutrality as well.

    Privacy has been eroding for years; just by the nature of its business, Google knows far too much about nearly all web users. Letting Google become your ISP as well means turning over more data. And since Google's business model depends on building advertising profiles, they have even more incentive than your ISP to parse your personal data in ways which are open to abuse.

    Then there is the question of net neutrality; it strains credulity to believe that Google would act like a common carrier, given the huge conflict of interest that arises from its investment in web apps (mail, office) and tv (youtube). If the Google ISP is given fast connections to their data centers, then they don't even need to give their services preferential treatment by QOS; their services will just be faster by virtue of how the network is setup.