Submitted by johnh on February 4, 2006 - 20:09.
Attention: speculation alert!
What if all this 'darknet' stuff and the wanton hiring in London and the blah blah blah was far, far more interesting than some pissant spat about Baby Bells in the US?
Here's a wild theory:
- They're actually building a modified content delivery network.
- Like other CDNs, it will try to move the delivery of live audio and video as close to the end user as possible.
- Entirely unlike all other CDNs, it will allow those users to publish streams into it.
- Streaming into the Google network will be free for publishers
- Because Google is an advertising company, they'll push radio and TV Adsense Ads in to pay for it. Using this free publishing method they'll be creating a spectacular boom in content by removing the cost barrier to entry.
- A suitably-equipped encoder for producers will of course allow Google to keep track of what was played, and how often, and to whom. This lets them get a handle on a metrric fuckton of data, and lets producers (or themselves) provide legally-mandated reporting data.
- Publishers get the a large share of revenue through their new publisher programme.
- Hey, didn't they just buy something which lets them target radio ads? That'd work for TV as well, wouldn't it?
Like I said, it's wild speculation (and to be honest no small amount of wishful thinking), but think on this:
How many webcasters would hand over control of their ad inventory if it provided a revenue stream and wiped out their delivery costs? Pretty much all of them.
How much damage would this do to Real, Akamai, the media bits of Microsoft? Lots. (Although using Helix servers and open codecs may be a smart way to implement so there might be cash in it for Glaser & co.)
What size of secondary market would open for devices, broadcasters and toolmakers?
I still have a notion of Google as one of those entities which is capable of thinking in a totally-disruptive way about broken processes. And if there was ever a field where a) the processes are so utterly broken that the only smart thing to do is put a bomb under the whole thing and start again, and b) there was an incredibly large amount of money to be made, well -- this would be top of the list.