Stefan Mileschin

Google is considering buying its own cable across the Pacific Ocean which can connect to its US data centres.

Google already has taken a stake in a similar $300 million cable in 2010, and in this case the Internet search outfit would use the new subsea cable to connect data centers in Oregon and Japan.

Most of Google's bandwidth is reserved for its private 'B4' network, which transmits emails, YouTube videos among other data, the report said. The network carries more traffic than the public-facing one the company uses to transmit search results to the Internet.

The shift gives the companies more control over quality and prioritisation of their traffic before it reaches consumers. The search giant would control its own portion of the new subsea cable.

Part of Google's problem is that US telcos are uninterested in investing in backbone and are instead lobbying their tame politicans to let them get more money from internet companies like Google.

Google's answer to this might be to buy its own backbone so that it can stick two fingers at the US comms companies. While this is expensive it is a lot cheaper in the long term as the US comm companies are getting more greedy. Google's next stage would be to buy an undersea cable connecting to the EU.

http://news.techeye.net/business/goo...t-on-sea-cable