Little snippets have been slipping out over the past 18 months that Google is buying it’s own telecommunications backbone. You can see these snippets here, here and here. While the telecommunciations backbone piece has been somewhat in the shadow of Web/Tech world, Google’s desire to push WiMAX to users has been very visible, and you can see plenty of info on that at the links here, here and here.
Why would Google do this? What do they have to gain? Because controlling the distribution network (the means of getting content to you or having you physically access the Internet) may end up being a cost game more than anything else. Surely, Google’s being able to use their almost unparalleled ability to target advertising to users will be improved by controlling the network. But, when companies like AT&T, who now own most of the on/off ramps to the network start setting up toll booths to get on or direct traffic (see article AT&T Sets up Internet Toll Booths here) then perhaps Google’s other reason is simply cost. Why pay or be beholden to a toll booth operator to run traffic on their monopoly when you can build your own road and control it and your costs yourself.
This may end up being one of the new AT&T’s biggest blunders. Certainly, they own the pipes and can do what they will with them, but, but charging rather than partnering (and with excess dark fiber still out there and enabling technologies coming online such as WiFi and WiMAX) AT&T may inadvertently be pushing greater competition against themselves, rather than drawing them to themselves. The end result? It gives users such as you and I more choice, and lower costs. It costs AT&T business, possibly subverting their network hold and causing long term losses in the long term. Is this the kind of thing we can expect from the resurgance of Ma Bell? If so, I think the Web/Tech world will be rife with innovative new approaches to getting on and off the net to skirt AT&T’s potential for too much control.
3 comments
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March 9, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Anonymous
Google always asks the “life” question; where do we want go?
AT&T always asks the “short” question; how quickly can we make the money?
One is qualitative (process) and the other quantitative (end amount). I will pick the process orientation everytime. It is about being yourself for the long haul.
Now why has this become of interest to you?
March 9, 2006 at 9:59 pm
Rebecca
Thank you for leaving the insightful post
I think I’m interested in so far as major disruptive changes in technology like this are just plain fascinating. Also, I’ve find it fascinating how companies make strategic or seemingly strategtic decisions that lead to responsive decisions on the parts of other companies that cause whole industries to change or be created. That’s what’s happening in telecom, IMHO.
I liked your conclusion “It is about being yourself for the long haul”. I hadn’t thought of companies as having a personal identity in some time and your post reminded me of that actually. But then again, your conclusion is a good life lesson for anyone really (be the a legal or a s a person).
March 10, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Anonymous
Rebecca,
Your the one who is being insightful. Yes, it is all about an identity.
This thought in passing from your response…
Identity draws from the thinking of how things might have been to setting the direction of the way things need to become. In that process of looking back and looking forward, comes the “life experience”; with its attending bundles of successes and setbacks all contributing and reinforcing identity.
Now that’s “about being yourself for the long haul”.