Economics of Google Fiber and what it means for U.S. broadband | Hacker News Reader

Economics of Google Fiber and what it means for U.S. broadband

gigaom.com

163 pointsiProject64 comments

One aspect I've not seen discussed is the impact of a commercial fiber service on city- and county-owned networks.

In the past, when local governments have tried to roll out high-speed municipal internet access, they've faced bitter opposition from entrenched network providers (Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, etc). These companies refuse to roll out fiber, but also lobby for state laws against government-funded fiber[1]. The end result is that residents are left on decrepit old copper lines.

Now there's a large[2] company rolling out fiber, and they have shown explicit desire to work with local governments. Depending on how the laws are written, it might be possible to achieve something close to a municipal network by contracting out to Google. And the Google fiber seems to be cheaper -- I can't find any municipal fiber services offering gigabit for less than $120.

(bias disclaimer: I work for Google, but am not involved at all in fiber stuff)

[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/cable-backed-anti...

[2] Sonic.net deploys fiber, also priced at $70 a month, but they are a very small regional ISP. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/06/1gbps-fiber-for-7...

As I commented elsewhere, perhaps Google is the party with the deep pockets and legal expertise -- and lobbyists -- to take on and beat these entrenched monopolies/oligopolies.

When a community of some thousands goes up against a corporation of 10's of thousands and a largely captive customer base of millions, in e.g. lobbying the state legislature, well, the deck seems kind of stacked.

In Illinois, I recall specifically, SBC -- now AT&T -- received hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives, specifically with the agreement to promote and complete universal high speed access.

They then promptly set their lawyers and lobbyists to finding ways to break their side of that agreement -- while keeping the incentives, of course.

If Google wants unfettered access to unfettered customers (or eyeballs, if we're going to call the advertisers the customers... not to go there, at the moment), such partnerships might be a good way to identify and speed deployment.

And... plenty of publicity about what people in many other countries are paying. Little seems to motivate the American consumer -- and voter -- more than a bargain, or feeling they're getting ripped off.

And, since I'm typing away here, I hope Google will do it while treating their linepersons (technicians, etc.) decently. As a recent story here, with its high rating, pointed out, people are tired of seeing the line workers being abused.

I'm not familiar with sonic.net in detail, but its CEO, Dane, seems a decent sort, and I bet they're not the worst employer -- whether direct or contract. (And since Google's already talking to him, maybe you all can pick his brains in this specific area.)

Google still does some things that piss me off. [1] But I support this initiative -- I'll sign up as soon as I can, if and when -- unless Dane beats you to it.

[1] Mentioning just one item: Give it up, already, with the "true names" initiative. Anonymity has its value and place within the online domain. Not just one of convenience, but one of necessity, for many people and contexts.

P.S. I'm pretty tired, and I'm probably being to optimistic/idealistic, here. OTOH, having directly observed the crap dished out by AT&T, Comcast, and the like, I can readily believe there is plenty of room for improvement.

Some of what you're describing sounds similar to "The Great FiOS rip-off": http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-great-veriz... .

Imagine for a moment, if they fudged the numbers a bit on the storage capacity of every box going into your home. They advertise the usable capacity of 1 or 2TB. In reality, it has 30-200% more storage that is not usable by the customer.

They just made a very fast, low latency, distributed mesh CDN that the customer pays Google for the connectivity AND electrical bill.

Isn't the point of a CDN to push content out close to consumers because the last mile "pipe" is significantly slower than a content-provider's network? If the consumer is already on the content-provider's network, and operating at the same speed as the backbone, you don't need a CDN.

The point of a CDN, at least a significant one, is to reduce latency. To put your content closer to your customers. It also lets you handle larger load, is more resilient to DDOS, etc, but, at least in my view, those are often secondary... the main issue is latency, and perhaps capacity.

Gigabit to your house won't remove latency, other than perhaps to apps hosted by google (including google, obviously)

A CDN also provides reduced latency and massive load balancing.

they don't really save anything on the connectivity, as everything would still be routed through Google, thus it would use exactly the same amount of bandwidth as if the storage was sitting inside a data center.

As for electricity, the cost of packaging up and sending drive units to the customer + upkeep would dwarf the costs of electricity for the total lifetime of the drives.

I don't think this really makes sense.

The idea of a CDN is that you don't route everything through Google's data centers, you just pretend to and fetch from a nearby mirror. This really does save you bandwidth - a lot of bandwidth.

Having some of the mirrors you use for this be in people's homes is an interesting twist that I had not thought of.

Why stick the mirror in the customer's home, though, where you have to mirror it once per customer? It basically becomes the same as a browser cache then. The logical place for it would be the local switching office (or whatever the equivalent is for fiber technology) - no idea if that's how it actually works, but that's where my naive knows-little-about-networking-besides-the-TCP/IP-stack mind would put it.

The idea is that one customer's request could be served off of a mirror sitting at another customer's home.

The saving compared with putting it at a local switching office is that you don't need to buy a set of special machines and hard drives that sit at that office. Instead you're leveraging underutilized machines that people have already paid you for that are sitting at their houses.

As far as the rest of the network is concerned, the traffic doesn't need to go to them so they are happy.

That seems highly inefficient, though. Now the request has to go up to the switching office and back down to another customer's home, instead of just up to the switching office. Why not just stick the cache at the switching office and eliminate one of those hops, cutting out some latency too? Disk and even memory are cheap...hell, as Patrick's preso pointed out, one of the main reasons for this project is that bandwidth performance is not increasing nearly as fast as CPU, disk, and memory.

It is less efficient on time. But the speed of light delays back and forth over your local network are still much better than the time it takes to go anywhere interesting - like a data center. So it is still a win for a consumer. (Albeit less of one than having a separate set of equipment in your office just for caching stuff.)

But that's not how fiber works. At some point, it still has to go back to a central office. You can't just connect to your neighbors directly, it all ultimately goes through a switch/router somewhere.

The point is it doesn't save overall bandwidth used, it saves bandwidth on shared/contended resources. If you have, eg a switch with 10 1Gb ports[1], and 1 1Gb uplink, and 4 of those are doing something intensive enough to saturate that uplink, someone who requests say, a full download of the gmail client, then it could go strictly across the switch to one of the other 6 local google boxes that has a cache of that, and at a lower latency and impact on other people than going to through the uplink to the nearest cache.

Now, this could also be done in the switch closet, you are right. However, since this would have to also go through either the uplink, or every switch would need a port dedicated to a cache network/box, it would start getting expensive at switching points. Each would start looking like a mini-data (micro? nano?) center. At that point, you could just eat that cost, or say "what are alternatives that cost the same or less in capex and opex?" Perhaps with Google's network-fu, they have solved similar problems in data centers already, and said "we can use our caching/routing stuff here, and put a small capex increase each customer box, which we also need no matter what, and decrease switching point capex, and since it is a simpler network, reduce opex too".

Essentially, it is a similar problem to the one bittorrent solves, just at a different scale/locality. It also starts to look like solutions some vendors/ISPs looked into at one point for bittorrent - instead of stopping bittorrent, keep a map of local people seeing segments and reroute requests for those segments to the local network rather than across the uplink.

[1] assume a decent switch with a full mesh backplane. Also assume real switches will be used with real numbers, not my exemplary ones - the analysis will be the same, but the numbers will of course be different.

And with an uplink speed that equals your downlink, this peer-to-peer CDN becomes even more practical.

the thing is the route to any "mirror" that sat in a persons home would be through Google's network. This wouldn't save them any money.

It does save them money, which is why every large ISP does it.

The fact that makes it work is that not all routes through Google's network are created equal.

Routes that go to and from data centers go a longer distance, through more pieces of equipment, and include busy backbones that you do not want to get overloaded. Routes that stay in a local neighborhood go a short distance and put load on one router which should be able to take it, and totally skip the critical backbone.

From the point of view of the network operator, going to a data center is slow and expensive. Keeping traffic inside a local neighborhood is fast and cheap. Thus they want as much traffic as possible to go the fast and cheap route.

CDNs cache data on local mirrors, and routes traffic to them whenever possible because that is faster and cheaper than going all the way to a data center. Every large ISP does this, and it would be shocking if Google didn't follow suit.

But actually caching data on hardware that is sitting at customer's houses is an interesting twist.

Yes, and putting a CDN node where the fiber terminates seems much much simpler (they might already do it for TV feeds anyway).

Also regarding the electricity, would that not be considered theft, if nothing else.

I really don't see how.

If they don't disclose that the box they gave you purportedly to record TV shows is actually also drawing power from your line and using it to run part of their datacenter? I would think that that could be considered theft by deception. It's certainly very shady.

I'll admit that the line is a bit blurry.

If they were to actually do this, they would of course disclose that fact. It would be written in small print, but still disclosed.

It's recording TV shows, it's just also serving them to your neighbors. It's the neighborly thing to do.

I don't think the fiber runs all the way to the TV box (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I have FiOS where I live and the way it works is Verizon installed an ONT (Optical Network Terminal) in my basement and then plugged the coax cabling into that box. It would be very expensive to rewire the home with fiber or even ethernet. Presumably if Google was building a CDN they wouldn't want to be reliant on standard wiring in their customers' homes. Also that sleek-looking TV box would probably have to be much larger if it doubled as an ONT (the one in my basement is huge). Seems a little impractical if my assumptions are correct.

Edit: I don't mean to dismiss your idea about the value of Google reserving some space on the disk for their own purposes. Cable & satellite operators already do that today. Technology exists for example that allows the operators to cache household-targeted TV ads on the disk. These deployments are still small scale but I think it's highly likely Google is thinking about such things as a way of monetizing their new network. If you're curious about this topic do a quick search on Google's investment in Invidi and on their partnership with Echostar.

That is an incredible idea.

that's a really interesting thought

Isn't the more obvious conclusion that Google Fiber is just a bargaining chip for Google to use against traditional ISPs and cell phone networks? It won't even serve all of Kansas City for the foreseeable future, much less the rest of the country. What it does do is demonstrate that Google has the will to play the carriers' game, without actually committing the capital necessary to build out a competitive network.

Remember how gung-ho Google was about network neutrality, before it became necessary to choose between net neutrality and Verizon's support with Android. I find it hard to believe that Google's shareholders would appreciate the company devoting the massive amounts of capital necessary to build out a fiber network across the US, unless it was an existential question. And even then it will only be built out to the degree necessary to punish the carriers.

Google already has a massive nationwide network to serve as a CDN for stuff like youtube. They are peered with every ISP of any significant size, and have data centers and points of presence in every major city. Not to mention they have bought up almost all the "dark fiber" they could get their hands on for the last 10 years. Their network already exists, and its everywhere, the only thing remaining is rolling it out to residential areas.

There is a large upfront free that customers have to pay for the installation. If the economics have been worked out correctly by Google, the customers themselves will pay almost all of the roll out costs.

Edit: I should clarify, a large upfront fee, or a reasonably large monthly fee.

What fee? The only requirements are a 2-year contract, or a $300 upfront fee for the free option. And they give you a free Nexus 7 tablet with the contract. At $70-120/month, the money they're collecting on a 2-year contract isn't remotely enough to cover construction of the network and the end-user electronics.

$120 a month for 2 years is $2880 guaranteed, not to mention it is unlikely customers will leave considering the competition comes nowhere even close to that kind of offer.

Some of that will be eaten up by fixed costs of providing the service (for stuff like bandwidth, Google can probably get better prices than almost anyone else in the world, due to extensive peering), and for the provided electronics (which Google can order in huge quantities and pay comparatively little for, or even build themselves, like they do with their own internal servers and networking equipment). Whats left over is still a very large chunk of change, especially when you consider the fact that Google wont roll out fiber till a decent percentage of a neighborhood is willing to sign on (their calculated numbers are almost certainly designed to cover roll out costs)

I think this will easily pay for their roll out costs. Remember, they don't need to build out a national network to serve tons of places, they already have one. YouTube itself already uses something like 40% of the internet traffic to residential connections.

The important thing to consider here, is as far as Google is concerned, they only need to break even, they arn't in the same game the other ISPs are where it is their only profit center.

One would imagine they were thinking long term and big - they didn't start laying the foundations for this 10 years ago for no reason.... and while they may have toyed with some "lab" projects that never took off... this one represents a hell of an investment - they're probably several moves ahead of everyone else already. Now imagine what they have up their sleeve that they aren't telling anyone about.

I think it's been demonstrated that the "bargaining chip" theory does not work very well; incumbent ISPs only increase service/reduce prices in cities where a competitor appears. But by the time Google Fiber is in a city, Google has already spent a lot of money. Maybe Google could perform some kind of franchise judo where they have the smallest possible buildout in each city, forcing incumbents to respond disproportionately...

As a layman, newb, wannabe hacker etc. this does nothing but excite me.

I long ago conceded the privacy vs convenience point regarding google. I've been a long time customer. I felt (read: convinced myself) then as I do now that the engineering backbone would stifle less than acceptable behavior by the company.

I live in the largest city of a northeastern us state. My options for acceptable Internet are nil. +$120/month for (possibly) 70 Mbps. Which, from experience, is heavily weighted on concurrent usage.

Everything else aside, I want so bad the option to have [insert company (google is winning the race)] to come in an offer me something better.

If nothing else, as has been stated in other threads, this will be an enormous boon for technological state of ISP's in the so far backward US.

> My options for acceptable Internet are nil

And it will remain that way for a long time. Google doesn't serve the whole metropolitan areas they are in and there is no known plan to expand beyond the two areas they are in. Google has stated they do not want to be an ISP so no plans to expand may not just be them being quiet.

So what does this mean for existing large ISP's? Nothing. The same nothing that every little regional ISP means to them.

So a key part of the "cost saving" is that AT&T gave them cheap access to poles. Doesn't that mean they are relying on one of the very competitors they will displace to collaborate with them in this? Seems to me that either AT&T was forced to do this by competition laws OR they indulged this little experiment as a one-off but the chance of them or any other telco letting Google scale this up to the point where it matters is zero.

Does anybody know which one it is?

I believe most of the poles are not AT&T's, but rather owned by the county and it's Board of public utilities. The combined power and communication poles have a standard fee for attachment. Google got a special deal to use the power area of the pole for free as part of their enticement. Labor cost is higher for the power area of the pole.

The AT&T deal is probably for just the odd pole where the communications approaches a building from a different path.

Kansas City is pretty close to the geographic center of the US.

... to reduce the cost of the actual last mile to users’ homes it’s telling people in Kansas City that if they want to be the first to get fiber, they’ll have to convince their neighbors to sign up. The goal is to get a critical mass of between 5 percent and 25 percent of the homes in a given neighborhood (Google calls it a fiberhood) committed to signing up for Google Fiber before ever sending out technicians.

Speaking of cost-per-mile as it relates to "the last mile", population-density surely has to factor into how cost-effectively this service can be unrolled. In a densely-populated area, less fiber can serve more people, and can probably greatly reduce the cost-per-household to install.

Seems like the Midwest would require more cost for fewer households able to benefit, at least in the beginning of this endeavor. Wouldn't it make more sense to start on both / either coast, and literally reduce the "cost" of unrolling it marginally to the less-dense areas of the country, proportional to physical distance?

You realize most of us in the midwest live in towns and cities too. We even have running water and electricity and computers! One time[1] I got into a town[2] and the neighborhoods/edge development/sprawl looked just like the real people in california and the I95 corridor have. We're still savages with trivial concerns about stuff like "can we feed everyone else this year", but I have great hopes for our people to be civilized someday in my lifetime!

Snark aside: look at population densities for metro areas for midwestern cities, they are pretty much the same as most costal cities. My particular town, which is pretty standard has a density greater than a lot of bay area towns. In last-mile installations, you can't pretend that a cookie cutter neighborhood isn't a cookie-cutter neighborhood. Further, in terms of overall connectivity, Kansas City has lots of fiber going into it - the place was a major rail hub, and fiber laying in the 90s was largely along rail tracks because of nice rightaways.

[1] actually every

[2] actually every one sized big-town and small - large cities (or their metro areas)

(ok, so that was a bit of a rant, but dismissing the midwest based largely on either ignorance or disingenuous bullshit really gets on my nerves.)

Kansas City's metro area is as population dense as any other developed urban core. It's not like they're starting out in a wheat field in Kansas.

This table seems to disagree: http://www.demographia.com/db-uscity98.htm . From the totals at the bottom, I found that the average population density for the 600 largest cities in the U.S. in 2000 was (total population)/(total land area) = 99,000,000 / 34,000 = 2911 people per square mile. Kansas City's density is 1100-1400 people per square mile, meaning that not only is it false that it's as "dense as any other developed urban core", but in fact it is not even half as dense as the average city (with population 50,000 or higher).

I think part of that is the way the city is laid out. I think Kansas City is more consistent than most cities in having major roads travelling about every five or six blocks. This probably helps when physically putting the fiber down.

Sounds like the KC municipal governments rolled out the subsidy trough for Google here, which I'm sure played a big part. Also, I would imagine the market for connectivity in KC is closer to the national average that it'd be in NYC or SF, so Google gets a better idea of how to sell their service.

To be clear, I welcome this development. I am skeptical of Google, but symmetrical 1Gb/s opens the door for actual technical solutions to the potential privacy nightmares, rather than relying on the utterly corrupt state machinery to provide anything like a remedy. All broadband providers are heavily subsidized, and while my preferred solution is pretty radically different than opening the market slightly wider for more regulated oligarchic giants, I'd rather Google get the subsidy than one of the unquestionably horrid cable/telco dinosaurs.

"From the infrastructure on the back end to the TV and Wi-Fi routers in the home, Google has built its own stuff. Most carriers rely on outside vendors to sell them networking gear and even set-top boxes."

If I were Comcast I would really be afraid at this point, because Google now has access to top-notch set-top-box, as well as other CATV equipment know-how through Motorola Mobility's Home division. If then can incorporate that knowledge into their system they would have an end-to-end entertainment delivery system.

I really hope they are. Comcast did some lobbying some time ago in Utah which prevented local fiber ISPs from being able to install new lines in many cities. It's very frustrating!

Does anyone in Australia want to take a stab at what this is likely to mean for the politics of the NBN?

I thought NBN already planned to do fiber to the door for most of the country.

So one side of politics will claim this proves that FTTP is the correct solution. The other side will claim that Private Investment is the way to build Fiber rollouts.

I'm not a big fan of my current provider, but I think I prefer them to the privacy concerns I'd have using Google.

Almost every existing Google service is based on snooping people's browsing and serving up ads. They've made billions and billions of dollars doing it, and as the ISP they'd be able to snoop on everything. I'm sure they promise not to, but I just don't trust them, and I think there's too much money to be made for them not to do it.

Google Fiber Privacy Notice

http://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html

The Google Privacy Policy applies to all of the services offered by Google Inc. and its affiliates, including Google Fiber Internet and Google Fiber TV, which are provided by Google Fiber, Inc.

This Google Fiber Privacy Notice explains some important additional things we’d like you to know about information we collect when you visit Fiber websites or regarding use of Google Fiber TV and Google Fiber Internet (we call these together “Fiber”), and how that information is used.

Additional information we collect

To sign up for Fiber, users will be asked to provide an existing Google Account or to create a new one. You may be asked to provide additional personal information, such as billing address, service address or location, or bank account information when you sign up for Fiber.

We may also obtain and use information about our Fiber users from outside sources for marketing purposes (such as commercially available demographic, geographic, or interest information).

We may have a record of whether third party permission was required to install Fiber equipment for a Fiber user, as well as the third party’s name and contact information. In order to carry out a request to watch a pay-per-view program or other on-demand content, we may collect certain personal information, such as account or billing information and information about the product or service purchased.

During the initial provisioning or installation of Fiber services, and during any subsequent changes, updates or attempts to resolve issues you bring to our attention, we may access, and collect technical information from or about, televisions, set-top boxes, computer and network hardware and software, modems, or other systems or devices used in connection with Fiber.

How we use information we collect

The Google Privacy Policy explains how we use information we collect.

All information we collect about the use of Google Fiber TV (including use of programs and applications available through Google Fiber TV) may be associated with the Google Account being used for Google Fiber TV.

Technical information collected from the use of Google Fiber Internet for network management, security or maintenance may be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, but such information associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber will not be used by other Google properties without your consent. Other information from the use of Google Fiber Internet (such as URLs of websites visited or content of communications) will not be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, except with your consent or to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.

This notice does not apply to the collection and use of information from other Google services (such as Gmail or Google Search) used while connected to Google Fiber Internet -- such information will be treated in accordance with applicable Google policies and terms of service.

Information we share

We do not share personal information with companies, organizations and individuals outside of Google except in the circumstances (such as with your consent, with domain administrators, for external processing and for legal reasons) as more fully set out in the Google Privacy Policy.

We may share non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners – like content providers, publishers, advertisers or connected sites.

what worries me about "will not be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, except with your consent" is that the word explicit is not used, i.e. you have already "consented" via the Google Privacy Policy.

If everyone has unmetered gigabit, technologies like Tor and Freenet become significantly more usable. Rather than trusting my ISP, I'd rather use technologies that make it impossible for my ISP to violate my privacy expectations. Which would you rather have, "we promise we won't" or "we couldn't if we wanted to"?

("like Tor", but not exactly Tor since pervasive fiber from one provider would break Tor's threat model by allowing traffic analysis.)

You trust your current ISP?

I've never understood these arguments. Google doesn't 'snoop' on your browsing—they anonymously track your habits to give you better ads as their business model.

You used to get terrible ads on the internet—flashy popups, tricky spam ads, etc. Google has changed this, since they realized that they could avoid needing to trick people into click on ads by delivering ads that are actually relevant.

Your current ISP can 'snoop' on everything you do too. Why don't you have this odd mistrust of them?

Your own comment explains why: Google has built an empire upon the ability to efficiently compile information about people.

I've worked for a small ISP. They are not nearly as competent in that regard. Most of the time, they're just hoping they can finish the day with fewer tech support tickets than they started the day with.

I trust Comcast / SBC / others less -- especially since they voluntarily opted to cooperate with the RIAA/MPAA against their users' interests (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ISP-Six-Strikes-Plan-Arri...) ... but I trust Google least of all, speaking just from a privacy standpoint.

I realize that it's a little irrational, especially since, as you pointed out, the information is anonymous. (We think.) However, it's not so much that I'm concerned with what Google is doing with that information now; I'm concerned with what they might do with it later. Once the data has been collected, it's impossible to ever know for certain that it's been removed. Data collected about customers will survive middle management and CEOs and entire company boards. It may be sold at any time to anyone for any reason -- or given away freely. It may be used for purposes which I am not imaginative enough to conjure up.

That probably sounds a little paranoid, but then again, when I was dialing in to eWorld in 1995, I could not have imagined that 17 years later the cable company would be my ISP and they'd be snitching on me if I downloaded unauthorized content. 17 years is not beyond the life time of current storage methods; who knows what will come next?

Finally, Google can't survive forever on advertising. I frankly expected the online advertising market to be having greater problems by now than it is. Still, AdBlock Plus is popular and I've seen a few articles recently that are tentatively suggesting that buying advertising on Facebook probably isn't worth it. Google's building some actual consumer hardware now, which is super neat, but their core competency is in data mining. I think it would be foolish to believe that if the online advertising market started to really struggle, Google would just drop the thing that they're best at and move on to something else.

So I don't think it's such a bad idea to treat Google with a little mistrust.

(But their fiber project is really damn cool.)

> You trust your current ISP?

I didn't really say that. I said I trust them more than I trust Google.

> they anonymously track your habits to give you better ads as their business model.

That's practically the definition of snooping. Making it anonymous doesn't make it not snooping, and it doesn't make it any less uncomfortable.

Also, unless you're a Google employee, you can't say for sure the tracking is done anonymously.

> You used to get terrible ads on the internet—flashy popups, tricky spam ads, etc. Google has changed this, since they realized that they could avoid needing to trick people into click on ads by delivering ads that are actually relevant.

FWIW, I don't get any ads on the internet, and haven't for a very long time. I guess that's another reason I object to Google's data collection. I'm not seeing their ads, so there's no reason for them to collect any info about my browsing.

> Your current ISP can 'snoop' on everything you do too. Why don't you have this odd mistrust of them?

True, but my current ISP doesn't have a multi-billion dollar business based on snooping browsing habits. If they ever start I'll probably switch ISPs.

I find that position overly paranoid.

You're already being snooped by your carrier provider, including your location and the online content you access.

You're watched by CCTV cameras as you walk across city.

You're car's registration is being automatically recognized by surveillance cameras as you drive on highways or if a police car happens to drive behind you.

The list goes on and on.

Welcome to life in the 21st century.

From all of the above I find Google most trustworthy believe it or not. Do your own research but Google tries really hard to protect your privacy from both internal and external "snoopers".

This is slightly different kind of monitoring. When you go out, everyone can see you and your car. Lots of people fight for their right to take photos of other people, places, etc. without being stopped by law enforcement. It's stuff that other people see whether they want to sloppy on you or don't.

Internet traffic is completely different. I expect it to stay private. There's no reason anyone should see my home browsing activity.

I don't buy this. Google would be offering you an internet service here. If you choose not to use their web services, great; you are free to not use them. If you're afraid Google are going to mine your traffic, use ssl, ssh, etc..

I don't see how this is any different with most of the ISPs monopolizing the market now.

google is no better or worse than your ISP. you think browsing & serving ads is more invasive than knowing every single thing you see on the internet?

Curious why they don't have another mid range offering, 5Mb/s free then 1000Mbs at $70 are the only options? I would love something in the $15-$25 range.

By making the low tier free, they avoid many costs. Billing. Tech support. Compared to their gigabit-chewing neighbors, the free tier isn't even using bandwidth of any significance.

Supporting a middle tier would cost as much as the high tier in everything except bandwidth. The one-time payment of the free tier helps pay for the infrastructure in the neighborhood, but doesn't incur any real costs after that. (I expect customer support for free will consist of a web form to report an outage, and a wiki.)

> customer support for free will consist of a web form to report an outage

And how do you get to the web form if there's an outage? :)

Cellphone? However, I suspect they could automatically detect outages based the in home battery backed up router not responding or losing contact with all other devices on the network.

I suspect offerings like that will be rolled out within the next year or two, if all goes well.

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