claus - 11:58 pm on Jun 26, 2006 (gmt 0)

Well, Hobbs, feel free to call it conspiracy theory or whatever you like. In my definition a conspiracy requires more than one party. I'd call it Google speculation in stead, but that's just semantics.

Anyway, Google is already a heavy user of bandwith. Probably the heaviest bandwith user at all. As an aside: Do you think bots are likely to get first priority?

Second, Google is building up efforts to distribute many more types of content, from private homepages to video. That all requires more bandwith.

Google is the one company that will be affected most by price increases or regulation on bandwith. This is not about them being in favour of some free-as-in-libre internet, it's about them being grabbed by the balls. As in revenue-less-costs-equals-profits.

And Google is an ISP as well. They just don't provide ISP services out house (except for homepages), as they consume them in house (for their own products/services).