Google Wants To Speed Up The Internet, Making It 100x Faster With Google Fiber

Webmaster News


I hate to love Google, or is it I love to hate Google? Sigh, it's complicated. They scare me sometimes, they I have so many things going on and their hands are in everything that I can't even tell if it's a conflict of interest or not.
None the less my inner nerd can't help but be excited when they release something new and shinny.
The newest thing coming down the pipeline is Google Fiber, which now officially places them in the ISP (Internet Service Provider) space. Basically it's a broadband service that will allow you to experience internet at speeds of up to 100x faster than the average broadband service.

Bare With Me, I'm About To Go Into Geek Mode

Don't quote me on this but I think the highest broadband speed available for the home is 150Mbps (Megabit per second), which is what I have and it's pretty damn fast, to get more than that you'd have to upgrade to a Business ISP package which is not cheap. What Google Fiber will do is increase that 150Mbps to 1 GBps (Gigabit per second).
1024 Mbps equals 1 GBps, if this is total gibberish to you – here's a real world example.
Your at your home browsing YouTube (no loading), while someone else there is streaming a movie on Netflix (no freezes), you also happen to be listening to you favorite music service (Spotify, Pandora Songza etc.), at the same time downloading a HD movie 5GB (that's really big, that's what she said!) in size and having it take less than 5 minutes.
That's the level of speed we're talking about here.

Here's The Breakdown of Google Fiber

  • The Gigabit and Fiber TV service will cost $120 a month and will include 1 GBps up and down speeds without a data cap, as well as a terabyte of Google Drive cloud storage. You'll be able to watch all regular broadcast TV channels, hundreds of Google Fiber TV channels, thousands of TV shows on demand, and premium movie channels.
  • Package two is for broadband-only customers. It will cost $70 a month and offer 1Gbps downloads and uploads. It will also provide the 1 terabyte of data storage.
  • Package three is free internet. For the $300 fiber optics set-up fee, you will get 5MBps download speeds and 1MBps upload speeds for seven years. Google will offer this service for a limited time only. You can pay $25 a month for the first year, up to the $300.

Google will place it's Google Network box in your home, which will serve as the media hub and it doubles as a Wi-Fi router and has four Ethernet ports. Now this is where things really get interesting, you won't get a remote controller.
Oh Nah, that's too old school for Google, instead you'll control your hub through a Nexus 7 tablet. That Google will give you. For free.
What?!!! Madness!

Pushing a new service, and growing the Android market at the same time.
Google breaks down the plan, movies and channels here.

The Downside

Google Fiber is currently only available in Kansas Cities. That's Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri.

I'm certain the ISPs and Cable providers are not happy about this, as it is a direct threat to their current offerings. The ISP industry has long since been overdue for disruption, though I don't know if I want Google to be the one to do it, they're already in my life enough.
This is also a sign, of where the internet is going. Standard internet service will become free at some point.

So What Does This Mean For Webmasters?

At the moment not much, but just imagine in the future something like 1Gbps being the standard in every household. Doing something like hosting a website from home wouldn't be such a crazy idea.
The reason why most people don't do it now is because of bandwidth caps.
Just something to think about.