[CAnet - news] The Google Scenario

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[A good column by David Isenberg from his recent SMART Letter -- BSA]


              SMART Letter #98 -- March 1, 2006
      Some Rights Reserved by Creative Commons License
                isen.com -- "Uncommon Carrier"
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*F2C: Freedom to Connect, Apr 3 & 4, http://pulver.com/f2c*
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The Internet is now under attack like never before.  The 
U.S. Supreme Court's Brand X Decision, the FCC DSL ruling that 
came immediately after Brand X, and FCC decisions deregulating 
fiber to the home have cast an unprecedented and dark storm 
cloud over Internet Freedom.  

So I have organized the second F2C: Freedom to Connect 
meeting, to be held April 3 & 4 in Washington, DC, details at 
http://pulver.com/f2c

Register with Priority Code SMART for special $395 rate.
This special code expires at midnight on March 15.
The list price is $1195 after March 31.  Please come.

***** IMPORTANT: Come to F2C: Freedom to Connect *****
            If for the 'net you deeply care, 
*********** 'tis your calling to be there! ***********
I am co-producing this with pulver.com and partnering with Tim 
O'Reilly, Free Press, and numerous others because this year it 
is critical that we bring all the voices that care about 
Internet Freedom together to understand our common interest in 
the surrounding issues.
F2C: Freedom to Connect speakers include:
Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA)
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps
Level3 CEO James Q. Crowe
Former FCC Chair Reed Hundt
Google Biz-Dev Leader Chris Sacca
More details at http://pulver.com/f2c


THE GOOGLE SCENARIO
David S. Isenberg's "Edge-Centric" Column in VON Magazine, 
December 2005

Column Name: The Edge-Centric

Footnote blurb: David S. Isenberg is author of "The Rise of 
the Stupid Network" and founder of isen.com, LLC, a decidedly 
independent telecom analysis firm.

Column Title: The Google Scenario

Author: David S. Isenberg

The future could belong to Google, so long as it sticks to its 
motto, "Don't be evil."

I worked at Mattel in 1983 when it fielded a PC based on its 
Intellivision video game platform.  Its design price was 
$1800.  Eighteen months later it hit the stores at $1800.  
Meanwhile Coleco fielded a similar PC for $900.  Whoops!

We had all heard of Moore's Law, but this was the first time 
its consequences actually touched our lives.  As we digested 
the bad news, somebody said, "Holy smoke, if this continues, 
hardware will be more or less free!"  

A second holy-smoke moment followed close on the first one's 
heels. "How does anybody make money on software?" we asked.  
Arguably, only one guy figured out the answer to that.

Today's evident technology trends indicate that the price for 
raw Internet connectivity might be more or less free.  Who 
will be today's Microsoft?  Perhaps Google.  

Subhead: Five Alternate Scenarios

Unlike computers, networks are regulated; regulatory 
initiatives shape the marketplace.  There are three usefully 
distinct regulatory scenarios for Internet connectivity. In 
one, "Telco-topia," market entry is limited to duopoly, 
perhaps augmented by network access technologies so crippled 
that they'll always be also-rans, such as Broadband over 
Powerline and today's wireless options.  In a second scenario, 
"New Entry," regulation supports new entrants and holds 
established companies in check; this is the thrust of Rick 
Whitt and Vint Cerf's proposed Horizontal Leap Forward model 
legislation based on layers, and it underlies the Powell FCC's 
focus on multi-modal competition.  A third scenario, 
"Structural Separation," is approached in countries where 
broadband is densest and fastest; here the low layers of the 
network are heavily regulated to be open and inexpensive, 
while brutal competition rages in the network's upper layers.

There's a fourth scenario, "Customer Owned Networks," where 
technology advances so far so fast that it end-runs all 
attempts at regulation.  Technology improvements make it so 
easy to set up networks that customers do it themselves.  

Subhead: Google World

The fifth scenario is a free market scenario in which some 
company figures out how to make money running a network 
business despite (or maybe because of) the fact that raw IP 
connectivity is becoming free.  Google is my candidate.

Google has apps like its search engine that we can't live 
without.  Others, like Blogger, Gmail, Google News and Google 
Maps, we simply use frequently.  All of them are free.  Each 
of them informs its personalized advertising business, its 
money machine.  Google Internet service could also be free.  
It, too, would pay its own way by informing G-Ads.  G-Net 
could tell G-Ads about things only an ISP would know, like 
where you are and what you do on the Internet beyond the 
Google family.  To get good data, Google would have to run an 
open, application-neutral network.  G-Net would have an added 
benefit -- it would be a pre-emptive defense against other 
Internet operators who might try to charge Google for use of 
their network (see my VON Magazine column Disconnectivity, 
April 2005, for more on this).

It would not be the first time a company offered a freebie to 
get customers.  Grocery stores don't charge for parking.  Gas 
stations don't charge for bathroom use.  Telcos don't charge 
for directories.

Google's size scares some people.  The information it collects 
scares others.  I think these fears are unwarranted as long as 
Google makes good on its public pledge, "Don't Be Evil."  To 
Google CEO Eric Schmidt the pledge means that Google should 
follow newspaper ethics by maintaining a clear prohibition 
against its advertising side interfering with its 
applications.  Schmidt explains, just as a reporter should 
ideally write fearlessly about a bad-acting business even if 
that business advertises in the reporter's paper, so should 
the Google applications themselves never discriminate on the 
basis of what the advertising side of Google "knows."  

Like all scenarios, the Google scenario may never happen.  
Blogger Doc Searls points out that Google is now a 
monoculture, thus a single failure could bring it down.  Or 
perhaps its size will make it hard to manage well.  Or maybe a 
high-visibility subpoena will blow the public's faith in 
"Don't Be Evil."  But the Google scenario is at least as 
plausible as the other four.
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[...]
CREATIVE COMMONS NOTICE

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following three lines:
Copyright 2006 by David S. Isenberg 
Some Rights Reserved under Creative Commons License [email protected] --
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