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from the non-soluble-fiber-is-good-for-digestion dept.
Fluffeh writes:
"Google has officially invited 34 cities in nine metro areas to become the next batch of the Google Fiber rollout.
Google said it 'genuinely would like to build in all of these cities,' but that the complexities of deploying networks may not allow it. 'During this process, we will work with each city to map out in detail what it would look like to build a new fiber-optic network there,' Google said. 'The most important part of this teamwork will be identifying what obstacles might pop up during network construction — and then working together to find the smoothest path around those obstacles. Some might be easy, some might take some creative thinking or a few months to iron out, and in some cases there might be such local complexities that we decide it's not the right time to build Google Fiber there.'"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by chebucto on Thursday February 20 2014, @01:46AM
Indeed. And the problem isn't limited to the question of privacy, there's the issue of net neutrality as well.
Privacy has been eroding for years; just by the nature of its business, Google knows far too much about nearly all web users. Letting Google become your ISP as well means turning over more data. And since Google's business model depends on building advertising profiles, they have even more incentive than your ISP to parse your personal data in ways which are open to abuse.
Then there is the question of net neutrality; it strains credulity to believe that Google would act like a common carrier, given the huge conflict of interest that arises from its investment in web apps (mail, office) and tv (youtube). If the Google ISP is given fast connections to their data centers, then they don't even need to give their services preferential treatment by QOS; their services will just be faster by virtue of how the network is setup.