Google Fiber – Taking Advantage of Fiber Optic Networks
Six years ago, Google purchased 111 Eighth Avenue in New York City for nearly $2 billion. This enormous building is home to one of the largest colocation centers. Such telecom carrier hotels serve as data center cores for other companies and firms by storing their equipment and connecting them to services to improve telecommunication services and speed. In addition, this building sits atop the Hudson Street/Ninth Avenue fiber highway just before it makes a right turn up to the Upper West side. This is a critical point for improving network speed as fiber optic cables are gathered in large groups underground in New York City.
Since their purchase of this building above an important network node in the nation’s telecommunication grid, Google has also been actively buying large amounts of “dark fiber,” unused fiber optics, which exist in great quantities in underground networks that were well designed during the dot-com bubble. By taking over such systems and creating a huge network of broadband and fiber optics across the nation, Google introduced Google Fiber, a new project designed not to compete with other cable and telecom firms, but to shame them into improving the Internet performance of the United States.
This shows how Google is using the power of large networks to their advantage. By placing themselves strategically in the prime East Coast hub of information and controlling an enormous network of fiber optics across the nation, they optimize their services and advance towards their goal of building the speediest broadband network in this country. They are connecting edges between nodes that are connecting fiber optics to even more nodes, leading to a greater wealth of information traveling through more connections at improved Internet speeds of up to a hundred times faster than the average broadband connection. Why is this important? Because the more people use the Internet at faster speeds, the more searches will be made on Google, dramatically increasing the volume of their search index and leading to more money being made. Not only is Google embracing its label as the top search engine, it is also using Google Fiber to demonstrate that it is possible to take Internet performance to the next level.
Source: http://business.time.com/2012/09/14/with-google-fiber-search-giant-issues-public-challenge-get-up-to-speed/
-wha