![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
Google to Launch It’s Own Internet?
This is just too crazy of a business rumor to ignore:
What if Google (GOOG) wanted to give Wi-Fi access to everyone in America? And what if it had technology capable of targeting advertising to a user’s precise location? The gatekeeper of the world’s information could become one of the globe’s biggest Internet providers and one of its most powerful ad sellers, basically supplanting telecoms in one fell swoop. Sounds crazy, but how might Google go about it?
Craziness. [via Mental Shed] Of course, rumors about Google come and go. The last one I heard that didn’t come true was that Google was poised to launch it’s own internet browser. Instead, they launched Gmail. While we’re on this topic, I once read something that was sort of sci-fi speculation about the “future” of search engines. The person was postulating that one day the “spiders” which Google and other companies use to crawl and index web pages might migrate offline into the real world. The author imagined small autonomous robotic devices which explored the face of the earth gathering and cataloguing information for addition to Google’s all-encompassing omniscient database. Sounds crazy now, but in ten years… who’s to say?
August 21st, 2005 at 10:29 pm
There’s also a persistent low-level rumor that the FBI is building a duplicate internet (under another name) that will record and give copies of everything posted on it to the federal government. How close are Google’s connections to the fed?
August 22nd, 2005 at 12:33 am
I’ve heard such things before. But here’s my question for you. Actually, there are two parts: (1) how do we know they haven’t been doing that from the start? And (2) more importantly, would that really even matter? What practical difference would it make for them to have every word every single person who ever used the internet (in the entire world) ever wrote or read?
Actually, it raises extremely complex technical issues as well. How would they pull something off like that without employing a simply IMMENSE team of computer experts to get the job done? Certainly it would not be a secret at all, and more than likely they would be the single-biggest technology employer in the world.
Even more problematic is navigating such a vast amount of data, assuming for a moment that they really were collecting it. If you’ve ever organized a website, or even simply done an internet search, you’ll understand how complicated it can be to navigate through a very small amount of information in a way that’s usable to people. Now multiple that by a trillion, and multiply that by a trillion again. Now factor in that you would need to correlate single internet users across multiple computers at many locations over many years. Now combine that with the fact that some computers have multiple users. Now create an algorithm which not only sorts out that horrible mess, but can actually take the hundreds of thousands of pages of raw text that each person looks at online over the course of their lifetime, and figure out meaningful patterns from that. Not just meaningful, but ones that could be used by law enforcement to actually predict behavior. (And now make the findings of such a program hold up in a court of law.)
If such a program existed, the government would probably be the last group to make effective use of it. There isn’t a lot of money to be made in stopping people from looking at activist websites. In fact, expenditures like that would more than likely be total losses financially. But if this program could track and predict behavior, then every business in the entire world would have and use it actively. Not only that, but they wouldn’t need advertising or certain aspects of broadcast media anymore, because everything would be targeted down to the individual level.
I’m not saying it couldn’t be done - theoretically. But having worked on very low-level internet technology for several years, I’m extremely confident such things are many years down the road. In fact, I think more than likely they would hinge on artificial intelligence to run. And if that’s the case, then we’ll have a lot more interesting questions on our hands than simply who looked at what web pages or said what in an email to their ex-girlfriend 8 years ago.
August 22nd, 2005 at 1:34 am
Google’s already on the way there. They have outpaced, technologically, even the military industrial complex when it comes to any useful data-mining. They have effectivley cornered the market on all meaningful information that pertains to online activity. The companies they have been snatching up since the infusion of massive amounts of capital are all geared toward “total information awareness.” Larry Page has even said before that their ultimate goal is to index the minds of every human.
The clusters of servers they have set up can be likened to the largest “artificial intelligence” project ever undertaken. There’s an interesting post from last year called “How many Google Machines.” Between 45,000 and 80,000 powerful machines are tasked for indexing purposes. When they are all linked together that is one hell of a whopping stab at becoming the all-seeing overlords of all of us. And with 5,062 Terabytes of space, that covers a lot of ground, and it’s plenty enough for a good start on projects like indexing much of the printed works in existence.
A not-so-funny “Master plan” was recently photographed in the Googleplex. It was probably put up as a joke (for potential employees), but somehow I think “the paln” - at least some of it - is not that far-fetched giving enough time, money, brains and manpower. Google’s Master Plan:
* Hire Network Engineers
* Hire Richard Branson
* Space travel
* Space station
* Reality Google
* Next Generation Web
* Hire rogue scientists
* Weather control
* Spy satellite
* Orbital mind control
* Portal
* Develop AI
* Keyhold
* Desktop I
* Wi Max
* Google OS
* Music
* Distribute Google-Branded Swag
* Dark Fiber
* Redesign TCP/IP
* Movies, XML, bulletin boards, local services, background checks, jobs, news, dictionary, translation, IM, shopping, email, finance, health, directory, check, advertising, feeds, maps, dating, photos, education, traffic, mortgages, diet, phone numbers, MP3, video, games, TV, and more
Detailed photos here at Flicker.
Here’s a link to some of Google’s major acquisitions: Who Will Google Buy Next? By owning Keyhole, Zipdash, Where2, Urcin and Dodgeball it is not hard to see the direction they are headed, and the power that the company now has at its disposal. It is only going to continue along these lines. The “Google Master Plan” looks very much real to me when everything is taken together.
Wth the most intelligent people in the universe being snatched up everyday, who knows how far they can take it. When I think about the Google of the future, I can’t help but think in terms of the computer in Terminator that becomes self-aware.
August 22nd, 2005 at 9:43 am
why would they need a duplicate? the original is open for all, including the fbi. the original reason that the internet was designed was to be able to give the military and government the ability to communicate if normal lines of communication were disabled. this hasn`t changed, other than the fact that architecture has been built onto the net for civilian use. my personal view regarding the internet is that it is a true evolution of conciousness. google is a collector of conscious habit, ostensibly for commerce, but that could transcend as the volume of useable data accumilates. a digital divinity. i have always wondered why civilians have been allowed to play with military equipment. usually there is a huge fence up around the perimeter. maybe there is a new consciousness emerging with us as helpers, like the oompa-loompas in willy wonka`s chocolate factory.
August 22nd, 2005 at 12:07 pm
there is already a separate internet: internet2!
http://www.internet2.org/
right now it’s mostly for researchers/educators, etc.
the interesting thing about google’s aims, imho, is whether they’re trying to make the map fit the territory. after all, ideally, they’d have a complete image of reality indexed in their systems. maybe this is the groundwork for the virtual world we’ll all be stuck in someday.
August 22nd, 2005 at 12:11 pm
That reminds me, there’s also that on-going defense initiative to make a global war-internet (ie, skynet)
August 22nd, 2005 at 3:08 pm
Google Desktop 2.0 beta was released today - pretty awesome too, as it adds RRS feeds based on what you visit - automatically! It’s called “Web Clips”.
Don’t know the computation used to add the information, but rss feeds keep getting easier and easier to use. Decent interface as well - in some cases I can read a whole post from the pop-out for that particular post.
Also, for Tim - how the heck do you post so many articles? Don’t you have a job??