Google Fiber is coming to town.

mostlyharmless · 03-27-2015, 02:16 PM

Quote:

Let's say girlfriend runs most of the mega cable companies out of town on a rail

Heh, heh, funny. Only if you spend too much time online and not enough with her.

vmccord · 03-27-2015, 02:41 PM

I am in the KCMO area, GF is far from running the other cable providers out of town. It has rolled out incredibly slowly so it's not available throughout the metro area. About a third of the metro area has current availability. GF doesn't have the bundles that include VOIP phone that makes traditional cable attractive to older people. GF is more expensive than the cable companies and GF plus TV is a one-size fits all package that's kind of expensive.

At the end of the day, I can't buy GF because it's not in my neighborhood and my neighborhood isn't even on the radar yet.

T3RM1NVT0R · 03-27-2015, 03:00 PM

Quote:

Quote:
Originally Posted by smeezekitty View Post
I parsed that as

" Let's say girlfriend runs most of the mega cable companies out of town on a rail. Then what? Google will then have a lot of power and control. Will it be used wisely and morally?"

Took me three reads to figure out GF = Google Fiber. I have been reading too much non-tech stuff lately
Me too (this would have got a like if it wasn't in 'general'), although I only took two-and-a-half reads to correct the parsing error, and thus claim the moral high ground!

i) The concern here is privacy; if Google have a shedload of data on you, what can they extract out of it, if they want to (and they don't have to get this right for it to be a concern)? The more Google products you have, the more they can cross-correlate from one against another.

ii) Nah, they ain't coming to my town any time soon. I'm not sure how I feel about this, given that the 'incumbents' can be pretty inept, at times. Inept incumbent vs panopticon Google? Not sure that's the choice I wanted.

iii) Has 'Google Earth' begun to sound worrying yet? You know, as in Google's Earth, a product that they might be offering to aliens, if they could find any (note to self: remember to start worrying if Google suddenly make moves into the interstellar exploration game. Not quite sure why...)

iv) Last time I knew anything about it, US Broadband access prices struck me as surprisingly high (and, ok, I suppose I can understand that in areas of low population density, but in the cities and the 'burbs?); I take it they haven't been dropping much over the last five years?

Bingo!! That's what I was talking about. Aggregation of so much information at one place is definitely alarming.

smeezekitty · 03-27-2015, 04:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by salasi

Me too (this would have got a like if it wasn't in 'general'), although I only took two-and-a-half reads to correct the parsing error, and thus claim the moral high ground!

i) The concern here is privacy; if Google have a shedload of data on you, what can they extract out of it, if they want to (and they don't have to get this right for it to be a concern)? The more Google products you have, the more they can cross-correlate from one against another.

ii) Nah, they ain't coming to my town any time soon. I'm not sure how I feel about this, given that the 'incumbents' can be pretty inept, at times. Inept incumbent vs panopticon Google? Not sure that's the choice I wanted.

iv) Last time I knew anything about it, US Broadband access prices struck me as surprisingly high (and, ok, I suppose I can understand that in areas of low population density, but in the cities and the 'burbs?); I take it they haven't been dropping much over the last five years?

I have to agree with you. While internet service here is terrible ($50/month for 5-6Mbp/s with a fair amount of downtime)
and I would normally welcome another ISP with open arms, I just don't feel comfortable with every byte of data
that I view or transmit on the internet passing through Google's network. Too much potential for
collection and abuse considering their reputation.

And I agree they are not coming here anytime soon either. Not enough population to justify it.

Quote:

iii) Has 'Google Earth' begun to sound worrying yet? You know, as in Google's Earth, a product that they might be offering to aliens, if they could find any (note to self: remember to start worrying if Google suddenly make moves into the interstellar exploration game. Not quite sure why...)

Huh?

Sefyir · 03-28-2015, 07:25 PM

You can always use a VPN and encrypt all your traffic.
Going to https sites will help too.
The latter will leak metadata to google though.

You don't have to use gmail, google docs, google search. If you're worried about too much information going to one company... use other ones that focus on privacy.

smeezekitty · 03-28-2015, 11:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sefyir

You can always use a VPN and encrypt all your traffic.
Going to https sites will help too.
The latter will leak metadata to google though.

You don't have to use gmail, google docs, google search. If you're worried about too much information going to one company... use other ones that focus on privacy.

Using a VPN has significant overhead and often has problems with spam bot protection systems.

Although I have a few gmail accounts, I don't use them for anything critical. I have another provider for that.
I don't use Google docs or Google drive or anything else. Unfortunately most other search engines suck (more than Google does)

Sefyir · 03-28-2015, 11:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smeezekitty

Using a VPN has significant overhead and often has problems with spam bot protection systems.

Yes, it has overhead. Using encryption and tunnelling will cause that. A reasonably fast computer with a decent network speed and paying for a VPN minimizes that.
Personally, I don't notice any difference and haven't had any issue with protection systems. Even networked fps games work fine. I won't claim my experience is the experience of course.

If there is concern about a company having too much info about you though, it will minimize them being to track you over the line and collecting your info. Concern for what the VPN provider is doing with that is another story.

sundialsvcs · 03-29-2015, 10:22 AM

If Google, Inc. sneezes, it would make a front-page headline in the tech press.

But it's one thing to come up with a cool idea of pure-software; quite another thing to profitably string up a million miles of fiber, especially on poles that you don't own.

Likewise, Amazon, Inc. can grab a headline by flying an overglorified R/C helicopter around town with a box strapped underneath it. But, that's basically the stuff of a science-fair project. Trying to actually turn that bright-idea into a new delivery system is never going to happen.

XenaneX · 03-30-2015, 04:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smeezekitty

I parsed that as

" Let's say girlfriend runs most of the mega cable companies out of town on a rail. Then what? Google will then have a lot of power and control. Will it be used wisely and morally?"

Took me three reads to figure out GF = Google Fiber. I have been reading too much non-tech stuff lately

Sorry about the confusion, however, from now on, my pet name for it will be GirlFriend, rofl.