Google's Fiber Plans
I capped off a long day at Fall VON by appearing on the bloggers panel (the play by play is provided here
by Alec Saunders) and a dinner with many of the folks who write blogs
about the industry. Aside from finally putting faces to names, there
was some great conversations about what's happening. With Google
unveiling more details about its WiFi plans yesterday, there was plenty of talk about where the company is going with its quiet dark fiber purchases. David Beckemeyer,
PhoneGnome's inventor, thinks Google is clearly looking at much more
than reducing its carriage fees. He believes the search engine giant is
probably looking to deliver rich services such as video. The big
question is how does Google deliver its services to the “last mile”?
WiFi is in the spotlight but Russell Shaw believes Wi-Max could come
into play what with Clearwire's plans. Motley Fool's Seth Jayson
says there is reason to fear Google's server access plans given traffic
will flow through Google's servers and be encrypted. While this could
let Google deliver very targeted advertising and services to consumers,
it also opens the door to some serious privacy issues despite Google's
“don't be evil” mantra.
