Google Goes ‘Big With A Gig’

This article was originally written for The Hartford Informer on February 18th, 2010.
In a huge announcement this week, Google announced last Thursday the development of a gigabit internet service provider (ISP). The California company and internet search giant is going to places it has never reached. Google provided more than 65 percent of the searches in the United States in 2009 and in recent years Google has moved from its Web based origins in the form of Gmail, Google Maps and Google Docs and has begun developing an operating system. Android, the company’s phone OS, was released in late 2008. Google also plans to release a computer OS, named Chrome later this year. This latest announcement is a clean departure from online and personal computing.
The idea is to gain the support of whole communities and provide this lightening fast Internet to them. In total, Google ISP looks to reach between 50,000 and 500,000 people in its first test run.
The real importance of this announcement is not that Google is now going to compete with the likes of Comcast, AT&T, Cablevision and Verizon but that Google will be providing a service capable of being 100 times faster than any single one of those companies can provide.
In recent years current ISP’s have been trying to boost their speed. Comcast announced it will rebrand its Internet service as Xfinity this week, but really this is still the slow network they’ve been running for years. Verizon is laying fiber optic lines around New York and New Jersey bringing FiOS to their consumers. Both services only provide up to 50 Mbps, and their only main motive is profit.
Google is not different and could technically charge anything for their new fiber optic service, given that companies like Comcast charge over $50 for under 20Mbps, Google’s gigabit would provide 50 times that. But Google’s mantra is “don’t be evil,” and (whether you believe it or not) this test isn’t about making money. This test is really about the physicality of providing 1Gbps to large numbers of people. The average internet speed for the United States is just 4.8Mbps, in Japan it’s 61Mbps. The kicker is that they both cost the same, around $15 a month for the average speed.
Seattle, Ontario County NY, Washington DC and the entire state of Hawaii have already expressed interest in “going big with a gig” with Google’s new service.
Google’s idea is to see the reality of providing amazing speeds at a low cost. With real-world cost analysis and implementation of the technology we can see just how viable high speed internet is.
It remains to be seen whether this will be a game changer or a massive failure. But with initial costs that could be in the billions, this is an experiment Google must be invested in for the long term.

So Long Geocities…and Good Riddance

Today marked the end of an incredibly long era. Yahoo Geocities, the original free hosting site has finally been taken down. It was just 10 years ago that Geocities was the 3rd most visited site of the web (behind AOL and YAHOO!) and with it came a whole host of intolerable things that the web has since grown up from. Looking back at any geocities site (Before they all got erased) it was like looking into another time, one that the world has moved far on from This is a dedication to some of those things that we can blame on Geocities.

Under Construction Banners
It seemed like every page was under construction for eternity. It didn’t matter whether your site had been edited yesterday or hasn’t been edited in 3 years, the banner still remained—hinting at something better to come, but then never delivering. My personal favorite was the animated under construction gifs. In fact you can probably lump all dancing baloney in this category.

The Webmaster
Aka the term I will never forgive Geocities for. The popularization of it can be inextricably linked to the existence of geocities. At its beginning everyone and they’re mothers were webmasters. And thanks to them that name has stuck. So the first word that comes to mind whenever they come to ask me or my contemporaries about their email or about a computer issue is webmaster. Unfortunately nowadays webmaster sounds like someone who rules dungeons in WOW and id like to stay as far away from that stereotype as possible. If you haven’t figured I despise this name

Freedom on the Internet
Perhaps the one good thing that did come out of Geocities was the simple fact that everyone could do it. Everyone was a webmaster. It popularized the notion that everyone had a place, space and purpose on the web. There is no doubt helped the Internet accelerate to its position in society today. So for that Geocities I thank you, because without you I wouldn’t have a career.