What's Google Doing With All That Dark Fiber?

The Official Story

Google head of special initiatives Eric Sacca has said the fiber helps Google avoid long-haul transport costs for traffic that needs to get to, say, peering points that connect to the AT&T network. Google also uses formerly dark fiber to interconnect its massive data centers and perform mundane tasks like replicating its search index to Google sites worldwide.

One Google observer who has also worked with the company thinks the Official Story is also the most likely, since Google historically tries to build and operate its own, self-contained infrastructure.

“The less external dependencies, the better. Fiber reduces some of the dependencies, but you still need peering, points of presence, etc. ... Google invests heavily in long-term capital expenditures ... [and] has a good record getting these things to pay off.”

But it can’t just want to make its own operations slightly cheaper and smoother, right? Hasn’t Google taken Microsoft’s place as the company that’s Trying to Take Over the World? It’s easy to find alternate theories about Mountain View’s intentions.

Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) Theory

First floated by Robert Cringely with a nod to Brewster Kahle, this theory works off the Official Story: Google has paid people to design the most powerful, robust data center that could fit into a standard shipping container—the plain steel boxes you see on oceangoing freighters or tractor-trailers. Google can then move these data centers next to the 300-odd peering points around the world. Creating and using these data-centers-in-a-box increases Google’s redundancy, reduces users’ latency, and generally makes the Google network less crashable, for $3 billion or perhaps less.

While one analyst called this scheme an over-romanticization by someone who had read too much Neal Stephenson, the resulting characteristics of such a system—fast, always-on IP performance—would also make the emerging Google Desktop behave as much like software residing on your PC as possible. It could herald the long-awaited arrival of software-as-a-service (SaaS), where most of your day-to-day software becomes a medium for displaying Mountain View’s ads (not just your Web browser).

SaaS Theory, World Domination Edition

Google using fiber to strengthen its grip on your desktop might not be enough for the more wide-eyed Google conspiracy theorists. Robert Cringely gave them welcome ammunition when he posited that Google also plans a “Google cube” that’s essentially a cheap, universal electronic connecting device: a simple box with jacks and connections for “USB, RJ-45, RJ-11, analog and digital video, S-video, analog and optical sound, etc. Additional [input/output includes] Wifi and Bluetooth.” Overnight, Google becomes “a major phone company, a major video entertainment provider, a major player in home automation and even medical telemetry.” For example, there’s a lot of video content lying around not making any money, and if Google can bring distribution costs down to a penny or two an hour, it can rule online video and even make money in the process . Excelling in these fields would require a lot of bandwidth, although it’s unlikely that Mountain View would enter any of them without its usual thorough planning and preparation.

A Google-Branded Telecom Network

A job posting on Google supports this theory . But some observers wonder whether Google wants to pay to light up all that dark fiber on the way to creating such a network; there’s supposedly plenty of wholesale, high-speed telecom capacity lying around that’s already “lit,” reducing the economic incentives for Google to enter what is already a highly competitive business. Besides, telecom is subject to regulation and taxation, which Google historically avoids where it can. One analyst sees a continuing need to increase U.S. broadband capacity, however, given that the country has fallen to number 37 in broadband deployment—behind Turkey. So perhaps a Google Bell isn’t as far-fetched as it seems.