This is why I think Google Fiber, or some other ISP offering by Google, is an important strategic component for Alphabet.
Because the only way to avoid ISPs monopol-ing their way into your ad business is to become an ISP?
Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business
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Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
The differences are: 1. If Google tracks me, they have maybe 50-70% coverage of my whereabouts. My ISP gets 100%. 2. I mistrust Telcos more than Google, based on historical example. Google hasn't quite remained true to "Don't Be Evil" (dollars are corrosive, billions of dollars doubly so), but at least they sorta try .
Is there a rational reason to distrust telcos more than Google? Verizon did supercookies once. Google evolved from a simple "show an ad for delivering a search result" to tracking you all over the Internet, embedding tracking in other websites, tracking you through the dominant browser and mobile platform, etc. One company in this story has the history of pushing the boundaries on pervasive invasion of privacy, and i…
Verizon Wireless literally has a tracking program (they call it "Precision Marketing Insights") that runs on their cell network for all devices unless you go to a hidden page and explicitly opt-out. And it tracks separate profiles per-phone-line.
They do more than supercookies.
Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
And you need to curate a fistful of routing rules to ensure your streaming traffic doesn't go down the VPN (no VPN provider wants your 20Mbit of Downton Abbey season 5 and you want that traffic to hit the CDN node down the street).
Or you could just disconnect the VPN while streaming. Or use different devices with and without VPN.
Yes, all that seems to indeed be exactly as easy as not changing the defaults my browser came with.
Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those poles, conduits, and other rights of way are regulated by the FCC (or a state agency under delegated powers). See: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/224 . Nothing is preventing another company from running fiber along those telephone poles, other than the fact that there isn't any money in it.
Is that really true in practice? I've been reading lots of stories like these: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160314/09374733901/isps-... that talk about how hard it is for any new player to get access to these last mile infrastructure bits. Even if the rules of renting pole space are "fair" maybe we should be encouraging competition in this space by changing them.
The existing pole attachment process is pretty comprehensive and effective, if a bit slow. It requires the pole owner to review the proposed attachment and do the "make ready" work of making space on the pole for the new wires. But there are legally enforceable deadlines for how quickly it has to do that: http://www.kelleydrye.com/getattachment/ea12262c-0564-45b2-9....
The fight described in the Tech Dirt article isn't about Google being denied access to existing poles. It's over a "one touch make ready" ordinance that speeds up the process (which currently can take months) by allowing the new ISP to move existing wires while hanging up their own. The ordinances were passed specifically to facilitate Google's fiber deployment. One touch should probably be part of the federal regulation. But without such an ordinance you can still get access to the poles, it just takes longer.
(There is a political dimension to the one touch fight that's probably not well known here. Currently, unionized telco and power company workers are guanranteed to get some work out of the process of a new ISP coming in. Under one touch, a new ISP could come in and hire a non-union contractor to do all the work: http://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2016/09/09/t-workers-f.... It's not a good reason for holding up fiber deployment, but it's why the opposition to one touch laws has more traction than you'd expect.)
Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business
#105Framing this as "who gets this pot of advertising money?" is the honest way to frame it. Privacy is just a proxy war between companies seeking advertising revenues. But who gets the advertising revenue isn't the relevant policy concern. The government shouldn't care whether Google gets that revenue or someone else. The relevant policy concerns are what level of privacy protections do people want, and what practical c…
The differences are: 1. If Google tracks me, they have maybe 50-70% coverage of my whereabouts. My ISP gets 100%. 2. I mistrust Telcos more than Google, based on historical example. Google hasn't quite remained true to "Don't Be Evil" (dollars are corrosive, billions of dollars doubly so), but at least they sorta try .
On the positive side, the corrosive powers of the dollar from your example appear to be only logarithmic.
Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business
#106This is what advanced capitalism looks like - companies that are successful use their money and lobbying power to block competition. It's sad for everyone, except them. Capitalism tends to undermine competition and turn into monopolies. But maybe now this will give a new reason to boost TOR-like anonymity tools. If millions of people participated in such networks, then they would be much faster. VPNs could suffer fro…
You're confusing capitalism, which is basically a set of inalienable right, with corporate cronyism.
Who would describe the US data provider industry as free market? Bureaucracy is bureaucracy, whether corporate or government.
Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business
#107This is what advanced capitalism looks like - companies that are successful use their money and lobbying power to block competition. It's sad for everyone, except them. Capitalism tends to undermine competition and turn into monopolies. But maybe now this will give a new reason to boost TOR-like anonymity tools. If millions of people participated in such networks, then they would be much faster. VPNs could suffer fro…
You're confusing capitalism, which is basically a set of inalienable right, with corporate cronyism.
Who would describe the US data provider industry as free market? Bureaucracy is bureaucracy, whether corporate or government.
Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Maybe someone can help me understand the distinction between these two. Verizon is the pipe we move data over - it's the road. "Google" is the service at the other end of the pipe - it's our destination. Verizon is unhappy with being the pipe, despite that literally being the business they signed up to be in. They have decided that the destinations make more money than they can ever squeeze out of being the road se…
Google also started as a search engine to help me find my way to my real destination. Instead it has snuck in and started tracking where I am going, what I am doing there, why I am there and what not. If Google is allowed to change business models radically (and very profitably), why not Verizon. To be clear, I am just pointing out that singling out Verizon/Comcast does not get to the root of the problem. We need bla…
i think Europe will have what you are looking for : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...
Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business
#109Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business
#110This is why I think Google Fiber, or some other ISP offering by Google, is an important strategic component for Alphabet.
Google Fiber is pretty much dead though, they've put all expansion plans on hold: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/googl...
They have around 1/2 million subscribers which is a rather large ISP to call it dead. While it is not growing fast that's not Googles goal.
Google fiber is still a useful stick as Google can just say paying you X billion for Y years before running you out of business is option A, option B is not paying you anything you chose. It's a large part of why YouTube has avoided many of Netflix's issues with ISP's.