Chicago and LA teased with promise of Google gigabit pipes

Google has added two of the largest cities in the US to its ranks of potential fiber markets. The Mountain View advertising giant and sometimes ISP said it would be adding Chicago and Los Angeles as "potential" markets for its gigabit broadband internet service. As potential cities, Google has given no commitment or expected …

[Anonymous Coward]

> ...with the company getting some criticism over its Internet Preferences ad tracking platform that charges customers extra cash to disable its monitoring features.

With the rollout of https to more and more websites by default, I wonder how this is going to sit in practice.

[Brad Ackerman]

HTTPS is great as far as it goes, but hostnames are still looked up over (unencrypted) DNS.

[zanshin]

But unless you MitM the certificates, you can't inject headers into the request such that websites can track page hits across domains.

[Mikel]

Darn it Google

You are supposed to bring ME Fiber. <- everybody else

[Bushwood Smithie]

Re: Darn it Google

Hell, I'm a mile down the street from AT&T world headquarters and they can't deliver over 3Mbps -- when it's working. Finally a local company strung fiber around the neighborhood, and I'm getting 90+Mbps for less money. Sayonara, AT&T!

[Anonymous Coward]

ATT Monopolist

ATT is not being shy about jumping into gatekeeping now that is is established in many communities as the only broadband ISP.

Data caps to gatekeep video, pay for privacy, they are just getting started.

[JaitcH]

These Fibre Optic 'advances' in the world's 'leading' technological country ...

(according to the US) are a source of humour in countries such as Korea and Japan as well as China.

Even here in VietNam it is impossible to get an ADSL InterNet connection from the government owned VNPT - all their technicians are carrying their ubiquitous orange Fibre Optic jointing kit boxes - with reels of overhead drop cable tucked under their arms.

The ADSL feed to an apartment over one of our workshops was damaged - and it was replaced by an optical feed that carries 50 Mbit InterNet, voice lines for our telephone switch as well as cable TV signals. Our service fees increased a little to the equivalent of USD$35/month for unlimited 50 Mbit InterNet, cable TV and three voice channels (usage metered).

By the way, it takes one whole day from placing the order for the installation to be completed.

How is BT doing these days with fibre service?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: These Fibre Optic 'advances' in the world's 'leading' technological country ...

"How is BT doing these days with fibre service?"

Vietnam population with Internet access - 43.9%

UK population with Internet access - 89.8%

Respective ranks globally - 14th vs 104th.

I guess in the UK the approach has been to deliver broadband to more people using a mix of technologies, versus delivering fibre only to a much smaller set of the population.