Web 2.0 / Internet 2.0 IS google?

"Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure outhow to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory andpower support into a 20- or 40-foot box....that can be dropped-offovernight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of thesepuppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber..."

Play to your strengths. That's the key to success in any industry.This is the week I promised to explain where I think Google is headed,and playing to the company's strengths is key if they are going to dowhat I think, which is effectively take over the Internet. Oh theywon't steal it or strong-arm us. They'll seduce us into giving it tothem. And I am not at all sure that's a bad thing.
Google's strengths are searching, development of Open SourceInternet services, and running clusters of tens of thousands ofservers. Notice on this list there is nothing about operating systems.There are many rumors about Google doing an operating system to competewith Microsoft. I'm not saying they aren't doing that (I simply don'tknow), but I AM saying it would not be a good idea, because it doesn'tplay to any of the company's traditional strengths.
The same follows for the rumor that Google, as a dark fiber buyer,will turn itself into some kind of super ISP. Won't happen. And WHY itwon't happen is because ISPs are lousy businesses and building one asanything more than an experiment (as they are doing in San Franciscowith wireless) would only hurt Google's earnings.
So why buy-up all that fiber, then?
The probable answer lies in one of Google's underground parkinggarages in Mountain View. There, in a secret area off-limits even toregular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just anyshipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center.Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure outhow to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory andpower support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can bedropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plantone of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basicallyturning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.
While Google could put these containers anywhere, it makes the mostsense to place them at Internet peering points, of which there areabout 300 worldwide.
Two years ago Google had one data center. Today they are reported tohave 64. Two years from now, they will have 300-plus. The advantage tohaving so many data centers goes beyond simple redundancy and faulttolerance. They get Google closer to users, reducing latency. Theyoffer inter-datacenter communication and load-balancing using thatno-longer-dark fiber Google owns. But most especially, they offersuper-high bandwidth connections at all peering ISPs at little or noincremental cost to Google.
Where some other outfit might put a router, Google is putting anentire data center, and the results are profound. Take Internet TV asan example. Replicating that Victoria's Secret lingerie show that tookdown Broadcast.com years ago would be a non-event for Google. The videofeed would be multicast over the private fiber network to 300+ datacenters, where it would be injected at gigabit speeds into each peeringISP. Viewers watching later would be reading from a locally cachedcopy. Yeah, but would it be Windows Media, Real, or QuickTime? Itdoesn't matter. To Google's local data center, bits are bits and thesystem is immune to protocols or codecs. For the first time, InternetTV will scale to the same level as broadcast and cable TV, yet stilloffer soemthing different for every viewer if they want it.
As for the coming AJAX Office and other productivity apps, they'llsit locally, too. Two or three hops away from every user, they'll alsobe completely backed-up by two to three data centers down the line.Your data never goes away unless you erase it. Your latency and systemresponse are as low as they can possibly be made for a network app.
And remember the Google Web Accelerator that came and disappeared?It's back! Only this time the Web Accelerator will have the properhardware and network infrastructure to make it worth using.
This is more than another Akamai or even an Akamai on steroids. Thisis a dynamically-driven, intelligent, thermonuclear Akamai with adedicated back-channel and application-specific hardware.
There will be the Internet, and then there will be the GoogleInternet, superimposed on top. We'll use it without even knowing. TheGoogle Internet will be faster, safer, and cheaper. With the advent ofwidespread GoogleBase (again a bit-schlepping app that can be used in athousand ways -- most of them not even envisioned by Google) there'ssuddenly a new kind of marketplace for data with everything atransaction in the most literal sense as Google takes over the role oftrusted third-party info-escrow agent for all world business. That'sthe goal.
All this is based, of course, on Google's proven network andhardware expertise. Have you seen Google's Search Appliance? They shipyou a 1U prebuilt server. You connect it to your network, fill out asimple configuration screen, and it scans and indexes your web site (orsites) for you. Google monitors and manages it remotely, and sucks upthe data and adds it to theirs. You just plug the thing in and turn iton. It just works. You need do nothing else to keep it running. Googleunderstands how to do this stuff. Microsoft definitely does not.
And there lies the differences between the two companies. Last week,I wrote about Windows Live and Office Live as Microsoft's best attemptsat pretending to be Google. And Google will do those kinds ofapplications, too. But they'll build them atop a network infrastructurethat Microsoft can't match.
But that doesn't mean Microsoft customers will be denied access tothe Google Internet. Quite the contrary. Google would be insane toexclude Microsoft customers, which will be as welcome as any other.Only Google will be benefiting far more than Microsoft from that usage.
Google has the reach and the resources to make this work. There areonly so many fiber networks and they'll be BUYING service from thoseoutfits -- many of which are in or near bankruptcy. Say the containerscost $500,000 each in volume and $500,000 per year to run. That's $300million to essentially co-opt the Internet. And you know whose strategythis is? Wal-Mart's. And unless Google comes up with an ecosystem toallow their survival, that means all the other web services companieswill be marginalized. There will be startups and little guys, but nomedium-sized companies. ISPs, which we've thought of as a threatenedspecies, won't be touched, but then their profit margins are so lowthey aren't worth touching. After all, Wal-Mart doesn't try to own theroads its goods are carried over. And the final result is that Web 2.0IS Google.
Microsoft can't compete. Yahoo probably can't compete. Sun and IBMare like remora, along for the ride. And what does it all cost, maybe$1 billion? That's less than Microsoft spends on legal settlements eachyear.
Game over.
And yet next week I'll take it one more step.