Google is about to cut a deal with Verizon that would end the Internet as we know it

[whitey]

Originally Posted by Simon

What could happen is that Google...in its constant quest to deliver the best and fastest websites to its searchers...will begin to display only the very fastest loading sites on the first few pages of search results. They're already using page loading speed as part of the AdWords Quality Score, and they did announce back in April that they're already using it for search rankings. So anyone who isn't paying the extra extortion rate for the higher-speed delivery of their content could just see their search rankings disappear from the first 30 pages of Google search results.

As a consumer, and heavy duty internet user, page load means alot to me. All Google is doing is responding to their customers' demands, like any good business should.

And, level of access (peer redundancy, connection bw) are only two variables in hundreds that impact page load speed. Coming from the old days of 28kbs connections, I can design good pages that load fast enough to not make a difference to Google that are served from a three peer, non-cloud, Apache server connected to a 10mbs line - and most of my sites continue to be served by a 10mbs line. Video sites, particularly ones that load videos and play upon page load, absolutely need 100 mbs lines or larger and more redundancies, which have become quite inexpensive to trade up to ($15 per month at my primary DC). That latter fact is due mostly to continuing huge investments in the backbone that have increased capacity (pricing being more a function of supply and demand - ergo capacity utilization - than some vast corporate conspiracy involving the complicity of hundreds of thousands of people).

Moving the business model of the last mile to the one on which the vast bulk of the internet operates and where continuing huge investments have resulted in falling capacity utilization and falling prices in general as well as significant bandwidth advances would likely be a positive for consumer access to quality video. And the likelihood that a small publisher could not pay the freight is very low unless some government regulates it (compare land line telecom to wireless for example) resulting in extortionate rates or the continuation of outdated regulated monopolies with monopolistic pricing signed off by the gov.