Google to Acquire World
At least according to this article in the Times of London (which presumably is read by the Werewolves of London). — I don't even know where to start, so let's take this story paragraph by paragraph. — Google is working on a project to create its own global internet protocol (IP) network...
Context & Ripple Effects
This post is a paragraph-by-paragraph teardown of the Times of London report that Google may be building its own private global IP network, with commercial negotiations reportedly underway — the latest escalation in a run of stories asking who is afraid of Google, following Wired's November 2005 survey of universal Google anxiety and December's chatter about a possible Opera acquisition. The author's skepticism is the frame: he cannot find a credible starting point in the report.
Timing sharpens the skepticism. The rumor surfaces days after Google's confirmed earnings miss erased $15.3 billion in market value and raised disclosure questions, and the same week Google was flexing real power elsewhere — dropping BMW.de from its index to PageRank zero — so readers were weighing grandiose network rumors against a company suddenly under earnings pressure.
First-order effects
- If the Times-reported project is real, the carriers and operators Google now pays for bandwidth become simultaneously its suppliers and its competitors, and negotiations reportedly underway put their transit pricing leverage directly on the table.
- The rumor hands Google's critics fresh material at a vulnerable moment: a company that just missed profit expectations is being asked to be believed on a planet-scale infrastructure claim.
Second-order effects
- Yahoo and Microsoft face the mirrored version of the threat — marketers already tell surveys that Google search ads outperform theirs, and an owned transport layer would add a physical moat beneath that advertising advantage.
- Backbone operators must decide whether Google is their best customer or a bypass risk, a distinction that reshapes peering deals and transit contracts across the industry if the project advances past rumor.
Third-order effects
- The structural endpoint of the pattern Wired flagged in 2005 — everyone afraid of Google — is a company owning both audience and transport, a combination that dissolves the content-company/carrier boundary and invites regulatory scrutiny.
- Whether the Times report reflects a real build or rumor-cycle inflation, it shows how far expectations of Google had stretched: by early 2006 the plausible-sounding extreme was no longer acquiring a browser but replacing the public internet itself.
The trend: Mid-decade 'fear of Google' coverage is migrating up the stack from products to infrastructure, with the open question shifting from what Google might acquire to whether the web's biggest tenant builds its own pipes.