bbinnard wrote:
What's really interesting is the Verizon has given up on new FIOS buildouts presumably becuase it is too expensive to install fiber cable in neighborhoods. So why does Google think they can make a go of exactly the same thing? Do the Goodle guys think they are that much smarter than the Verizon guys?
I think the thing to keep in mind here is the sort of revenue Google has coming in. They are a very big company, and they are pretty much the largest Internet Advertiser around. It's easy for them to make money so even if the Fiber service is somewhat cost prohibitive, they've got that backing them, they've got their stocks backing them, and with the granting of a Free ASUS Nexus 7 tablet to anyone who gets the service, purchases of things through the Google Market. It's a pretty simple concept. They also aggregate enough data to easily outbeat Facebook for the amount of analytic data they can sell.
Also, let's not forget many machines will get ground to a halt with Gigabit speeds. You need a fast RAID array, a Velociraptor HDD or equivalent at 10,000RPM or an SSD to handle those speeds. Oh, let's not forget a good NIC (not some cheap chipset-based thing that makes the CPU do all the work) and some tweaks on TCP/IP to handle Gigabit. Meaning, a quality chip from Intel or Broadcom made for servers. Google can easily oversell the service in the short term if they wanted to with some key assumptions made for short term.
Verizon is nowhere close to there. 
