Google working on 10 gigabit Internet speeds
Project to develop ‘next generation’ of the Internet is part of Google's broader obsession with speed, CFO says — SAN FRANCISCO - Google is working on technology that will provide data transfer speeds over the Internet that are many times faster …
Context & Ripple Effects
The 10-gigabit project is the endpoint of a four-year arc Google has built deliberately: ultra high-speed broadband at Stanford homes in 2010, the Kansas City trial that showed 151Mbps downloads in 2011, an exploration of fiber networks for Europe, and Fast Company's framing of a 'next Internet' running 250 times faster than today's. What was framed as a civic experiment in 2010 is now, by the CFO's own account, a product roadmap.
The story travelled unusually widely — USA Today's report was picked up the same week by the Los Angeles Times, ZDNet, Mashable, Gizmodo, BGR and others — which signals that the market reads it less as a lab curiosity than as pressure on incumbent broadband pricing tiers.
First-order effects
- Incumbent cable and telecom providers face a new reference point: Google's CFO publicly anchoring 'many times faster' speeds, making existing top-tier plans look like the slow option in markets where Google competes.
Second-order effects
- Rival ISPs will be pushed into speed-tier escalation and marketing responses of their own, since Google's stated ambition converts gigabit-class service from premium novelty into table stakes.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — campus pilots becoming consumer trials becoming a stated 10-gigabit goal — bandwidth stops being the constraint on what web applications are built to assume, shifting competitive advantage toward whoever owns both the pipe and the services riding on it.
The trend: Google is methodically converting its broadband pilots into a long-term infrastructure strategy in which network speed itself becomes a competitive weapon against incumbent ISPs.