What shape is our digital world?

I am in Helsinki today prepping for a few days of intensive action.

Currently I am working on developing a hybrid technology platform that has the words Engagement, Technology, Hybrid, Media and Advertising linked together.

It is truly an exciting time.

So sorry if we have been a bit tardy blogging this week.

In my recent journey, I have witnessed the grassroots of a new media ecology, one that will not wait for existing media platforms to "get their head around" the problem, or, indeed existing telecoms companies, to do the same.

Eat as much as you want, whilst the small print applies, is not going to turn me on.

So, what is going on. Well whislt some are in denial, some are busy building.

Witness this article from the John Naughton of the Observer

Psst ... want a $64 trillion question? Well, here it is: what is Google up to? I don't mean what is it doing in public; I mean what is the company really up to? The simple-minded answer is that it's going after Microsoft. After all, this week Google announced that it was bundling its 'data in the cloud' applications (email, instant messaging, calendar, word processing, spreadsheets) in a commercial package called 'Google Apps Premier Edition', which will sell for $50 per annum and comes with 10GB of storage per user, application programming interfaces to enable data migration, technical support and a guarantee of 99.9 per cent availability. It's basically an online Office suite and is targeted at small businesses, schools, universities, clubs and social groups.

It seems we are in a world of business play doh, you know like plasticine or even clay. Lets just agree its maleable. Its just up to your imagination really.

And that is exactly what google is up to. WPP and Martin Sorrell have a right to be deeply concerned about google. He may boast growth in revenues of over £1b, but for how long. And that goes for all other conventional media players too. So make to using your imagination.

As it happens, I suspect that Google's canny onslaught on Microsoft is just a diversionary sideshow. Something much bigger is afoot. It's about bandwidth, infrastructure and - ultimately - effective control of the net.

Here are two clues. First, Google is currentlya very profitable company. It has money to burn, and it's been burning it in some interesting ways. Chief among them is the purchase of colossal amounts of network bandwidth - the fibre-optic cabling that forms the backbone of the net.

PBS columnist Robert Cringely reports a recent conversation in which a bandwidth broker - someone who buys and sells bandwidth on fibre-optic networks around the world - told him that Google now controlled more network fibre than any other organisation on the planet.

Second, Google has been building large numbers of data centres - 'server farms' with tens of thousands of computers in each - and locating them all over the US and elsewhere in the world. The company is very secretive about this for reasons of security, which is fair enough. But people have begun to notice that some of these distributed data centres are situated near electrical power-generation plants.

So we have two curious facts: Google has acquired fabulous amounts of bandwidth capacity, for which it has no obvious use; and it's putting local data centres all over the place. Why would it be doing this? What's the factor that links these two observations?

So whats the BIG PLAY? - are you listening Mr Branson? We have already described the Sky vs. Virgin head to head as a distraction, even prior to this piece of information. We have opened Pandora's Box

Any company which had built such an infrastructure could effectively dictate its own terms, because only it could deliver what consumers had learned to crave. Such a company would, in effect, control the world.

If that comes about, we will have been well and truly Googled

Comments

[David Cushman]

Scott Monson at Orb drew my attention to this google strategy recently: http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2007/01/googles-grand-plan-to-take-over-phone.html
I understand there are some complex monopoly issues involved which explains the 'expensive' way google is going about this.
Maybe they see the writing on the wall.

Social search engines could eat google's lunch (google doesn't deliver your most relevant result, it delivers the most linked to, most viewed, most esteemed, most google x-factored).

Right now google = internet. The future; google = infrastructure.

Seems we can democratize the sourcing and publishing of information as much as we like - but who will democratize how it reaches people?

[Alan moore]

David,

That is truly a perspective worth considering. Thanks for that.

One of the battles for the future will be about search

Thanks for posting

Alan