Google a Bandwidth Piggie or Player
December 9, 2008
A reader sent me a link to a 27 page report called “Estimating Google’s U.S. Consumer Internet Usage & Cost — 2007-2010” by Scott Cleland, president of Precursor. You can download the study here. The thesis of the report is that Google uses lots of bandwidth. Mr. Cleland makes a case for Google paying more money for its bandwidth usage. Mr. Cleland does a good job tracking Google, providing a link to the interesting FaberNovel analysis of Google’s business.
Google, however, has rousted its legal and communications wizards and responded to Mr. Cleland’s analysis of Google as a bandwidth piggie. You can read Sharon Gaudin’s “Google Fires Back at Analyst Claim It’s a Bandwidth Hog” here. The core of Google’s response is well stated by Ms. Gaudin:
“First and foremost, there’s a huge difference between your own home broadband connection, and the Internet as a whole. It’s the consumers voluntarily choosing to use our applications who are actually using their own broadband bandwidth — not Google. To say that Google somehow ‘uses’ consumers’ home broadband connections shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Internet actually works.”
In my opinion, one can shape bandwidth data in many ways. I am not sure I buy into Mr. Cleland’s analysis. I know that Google’s argument contains assertions, not substantive data. So, we have a bit of saber rattling from both camps.
What I find interesting is that this issue was sufficiently contentious that the first shots were fired late in the week of December 1, 2008. I expect the verbal sniping to continue. A full scale war between Google and some of the telcos is increasingly likely. These skirmishes are interesting. Bigger confrontations are almost sure to follow.
Stephen Arnold, December 9, 2008
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