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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.'"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by dmc on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:10AM
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In a word, no.
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You are entitled to your opinion. And I'll be happy to elaborate on my counter-opinion.
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And I say this as someone who owns a hosting business, and would love nothing more than to move out of the (expensive) datacenter and into nice, cheap Google Fiber-powered digs. But, as someone who makes a living managing bandwidth, I can understand why they might not want to underwrite my business,
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I don't understand how being allowed to run a commercial server, using the same bandwidth as my neighbors non-commercial server, can be considered having Google "underwrite your business". Yes, I know some of your immediate counterarguments already, I'll get to those.
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especially as they're not throttling or otherwise limiting bandwidth based on usage.
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But they effectively are, in precisely one, important way. They are saying that, for hypothetical example, if there are 2 customers of "internet service", call them A and B, have servers with precisely the same bandwidth requirements, they will block B if B is making a profit from that bandwidth, but they will not block A so long as A makes no profit from that bandwidth.
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As for the rest of the AUP, it looks a lot like mine (no spam, no viruses or bots, etc).
It might be good to mention here the difference between a "no-server" policy and a "no-commercial-server" policy. They're perfectly willing to let you host your personal blog, or host an online game for you and your friends.
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They were *only* willing to go this far, within 48 hours of pictures of small children holding protest signs in Utah appeared on the internet. But that is water under the bridge, accepted.
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What they don't want is someone like me using their uber-cheap bandwidth to make money.
Fair enough.
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No, it's really not fair enough. If a grocery store sells a pound of sugar, it is *none of their business* whether or not that pound of sugar goes into the customers stomach generating no profit, or whether that pound of sugar is used to bake a creative cake that is sold for profit by the customer. Trying to get more money for the same product being sold, based _solely_ on the profit the customer is able to make from it, is not only wrong, but based on my reading today, a section 1 sherman act violation (if the cake could be sold by mail to another state).
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As far as being a contributor -- well, I never did feel like I was a contributor to my current ISP, or even an audience. I always sort of thought I was a customer.
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+1
" /. Beta debacle. At /., we provided most, if not all, of the value to the site, and so felt we had a stake in it, whereas Google is providing a service, and a damn good one at that.
A customer-is-always-right customer, maybe, but still a customer. I really can't see any parallel to the
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I would consider it good if I were free to use it without arbitrary restrictions that I considered tantamount to taxation.
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Google's not taking away anything from me -- my servers are in a datacenter because there's no way you can run a hosting business over a 768Kbit DSL uplink.
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Here is where you've struck my nerve. You are right- there is no way _you_ could run _your_ hosting business. This is because your hosting business is based around a very specific set of requirements. I am arguing that I see potential innovative hosting businesses that I could run myself that have no requirements beyond what my neighbor hosting their non-commercial blog, and using youtube and netflix are getting from their "non-commercial" internet connection.
Now- you may be right, my hosting business may fail. But I'm pretty upset if I'm not even allowed to _try_ (again, in such a way as I am using no more resources than my neighbor's non-commercial usage).
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In fact, they're giving something I've never had before -- a choice of providers. I have my current ISP (Frontier), because Verizon sold me to them like cattle. I could go to Time Warner, but I've had cable from them for years, and I know I won't be treated any better there. They've both also been sponsoring bills at the state legislature to ban municpal broadband (which several local cities have implemented).
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no disagreement with any of that. In other words, no, I'm not saying every aspect of Google is evil. There are some business practices they engage in that I find beneficial and valuable as you do. I'm merely discussing a very, very narrow subset of their business practices. I believe that is in the best spirit of our society.
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As far as I'm concerned, if the only thing I get out of this is the chance to thumb my nose at the whole crooked lot of them, then I'll be more than happy.
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Yes, it is possible that even with particular restriction I find objectionable, I may agree with you that the endeavor as a whole is a net positive thing. But this does not negate my right to pursue my specific legal (well, perhaps before the verizon ruling and until the FCC's 'retry' of NN) complaint.