On 11/12/05, Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> wrote:
Google is calling their offering "basic Internet access" and "premium service." Is "basic Internet access" different than "internet access?" Google doesn't really define what they mean by these terms.
The article in the Palo Alto Daily News had the amount of technical precision you'd expect from a non-technical free newspaper (:-) It said that for Google's proposed service in Mountain View, free service will be limited to 300 kilobytes/sec and you can get faster service for a fee, and if you want to use it inside your home you'll probably need a $100 exterior antenna. I'm guessing that the Google person actually said "kilobits", but I'd be pleasantly surprised if I'm incorrect. It also didn't say anything about terms and conditions (I'm guessing spamming isn't permitted) or how much privacy you'll get (vs. data-mining) or about whether it's real internet service or just the kind of couch-potato information-consumer imitation Internet service that most of the cable companies offer, which doesn't let you run servers or send email directly.