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Comment by Androider | Hacker News Reader

Google should instead throw a couple more billions at the SpaceX mesh Internet satellite project, bypassing these asshats completely once and for all. I'd switch in a heartbeat, even if it was a bit more expensive.

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Satellite is nice, but it's not a solution for every use case. Specifically, it's not great for anything that requires low latency (like gaming).

The proposed SpaceX satellite network is in low earth orbit unlike traditional satellite Internet, so it should provide decent latencies (25ms vs 600+ms):

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/space...

surely once google runs the pipes they'll be incentivized to pay for netflix's traffic on both sides, or maybe we'll just be back to square 1..

Unlikely. Even if Google were to go hard into the video space (unlikely but not impossible), they still wouldn't benefit from throttling/capping. It would just give users a reason to go back to their original providers. Furthermore we've already seen the governmental backlash when facebook tried similar in developing nations.

*I should clarify when I say "the video space" I mean original AAA content like Netflix is doing. I could be underestimating them but that's a LONG way from their market sweet spot.

If only there were a legal solution for such problems, something that any sane person would consider obvious. We could solve it by tomorrow 6pm, without a single satellite launch.

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