Google and Others to Be Giant ISP

Bruce Perens

Tue Sep 09 16:57:16 -0700 2008

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Why don't they just buy Iridium?

Google and Others to Be Giant ISP

Uncle Entity

Tue Sep 09 17:27:29 -0700 2008

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Haven't those satelites been up something like 20 years?

And never turned a profit?

Google can become the new NASA...plus imagine what all those rocket scientists could come up with on their 'private time'.

Star Trek got it wrong, the big city on the moon in the future is New Cupertino and not New Berlin.

Google and Others to Be Giant ISP

Bruce Perens

Tue Sep 09 19:27:27 -0700 2008

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There's not much chance of google being a "new NASA" just by doing commercial communication satellites. Not much rocket science left in that. They'd probably build neither the satellite nor the rocket.

With only 16, they'd have to be either geostationary or very high-orbit.

Google and Others to Be Giant ISP

JoshH

Tue Sep 09 23:40:14 -0700 2008

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At the south pole as of 2007...

"we're using the Iridium satellite network. We have 12 modems mulitiplexed together and have a total of 28.8K connectivity 24 x 7." " Now that's our last resort. When our broadband satellites are down we switch to the Iridium system automatically."

(And as far as the Iridium network goes, the south pole isnt the boonies, they blanketed everything) Otherwise they use their much faster satelites. "We only have it only 12 hours a day at anywhere from T-1 (1.54 Mbit/sec) to 3 Mbit/sec speed [...] We have three different satellites we use to provide our Internet. All of those are pretty ancient. We have a weather satellite, an old maritime communications satellite and an old NASA satellite, the first one that was launched back in 1981. The others were launched in 1976 or 1977. [...] we can only see each satellite for 3 to 4 hours a day."

Google and Others to Be Giant ISP

Uncle Entity

Tue Sep 09 17:42:35 -0700 2008

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ed.z.: Ha! Guys in the Kalahari desert will get broadband before I do!

Why don't you get a cell phone to tether to your computer? Quick google search turned up an unlimited data only plan for $29.99 and that was just a quick search.

Mine goes faster than a cheap DSL from what I can tell and a sample size of one. Well, when it's not all wonky.

Can this make financial sense?

JoshH

Tue Sep 09 23:28:08 -0700 2008

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Google is an advertising company, And while I'm sure the do no evil outlook on this is that internet access will improve the quality of life in the developing world and eventualy (very very very eventualy) create a new valuable customer base which they will have already cornered the market on.

In the short (this half century) term, how valuable is advertising service to the third world? Most of these people live on less than our starbucks allowance*, couldn't this have the effect of devaluing adwords. Or is this really just a very expensive charity project?

 

* Figuritive Hyperbole, I don't patronize starbucks.

Can this make financial sense?

zogger

Wed Sep 10 07:06:26 -0700 2008

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I doubt it is charity. The developing world is ..developing and getting more wealthy daily because they are focused on tangibles being the source of wealth production, raw materials exploitation and manufacturing. This is the big 21st century shift, as the already developed world has tried to do away with that and somehow still keep functional. I think that is silly, but this is what has happened. All those folks in the developing world (a lot, some large number) are leapfrogging technology, going to wireless communications to a large extent and a lot of de centralized electricity because it is cheaper to get up and running. Mobile phones are the way they will be accessing the internet at first. Google sees all those eyeballs out there and for what they have into it compared to how much cash they make now, it seems rather a smooth move. I expect them now to really put more effort into making their browser function well on those mobile phones, probably to the extent that web masters will start to take that more seriously.

A company can be ahead of the curve, in the curve, or behind it. We'll have to see how google and those others do now, but my guess is they are *constructing the curve*. Ya, they throw a lot of pasta at the wall to see what sticks, but so far they seem to be doing OK with what they do. They are already in the computer and internet business big time, and that takes two things, electricity and the net and some device to access it. Google is big on de centralized alternative energy, because they know that is a big part of the future, especially in these nations. They are also developing fast deployment data centers, on the land in containers and in the ocean on ships or barges apparently according to recent news. That makes sense to have instant expansion capabilities all over that don't necessarily need to be tied to a developed world styled infrastructure. The wireless net infrastructure they are investing in now matches that investment for the other half of what they need to push to keep being successful in new markets.

These guys at da goog are chess players, way beyond most regular US business, say for example detroit and the big 3, who are text book examples of short attention span theater, or even Microsoft, which seems rather lacking in any longer range vision once they hit total domination size many years back. Google apparently thinks many steps ahead and looks at angles, they don't seem to be quite as fixated on just "this quarter" results.