Google Uses 21 Times More Bandwidth than it Pays For

[Steve K.]

According to Precursor LLC, they have just conducted the first-ever research study of U.S. consumer Internet bandwidth usage and costs with the objective of estimating how much bandwidth Google uses and pays for. The result?

"The data confirm the study’s core hypotheses, that: Google is by far the largest user of Internet bandwidth, Google’s share of bandwidth usage is rising rapidly, and that Google’s bandwidth use is orders of magnitude greater than its payment for its cost.

"The study estimated Google used 16.5% of all U.S. consumer Internet traffic in 2008, and that share is estimated to grow to 25% in 2009 and 37% in 2010. What drives this conspicuous bandwidth consumption is Google’s search bots regularly copy every page on the Internet, some as frequently as every few seconds, and Google’s YouTube streams almost half of all video streamed on the Internet. (emphasis in the original)

"The study estimated Google’s payment to fund just the U.S. consumer broadband Internet segment to be approximately $344 million in 2008 or 0.8% of U.S. consumer’s flat-rate monthly Internet access costs of $44.0 billion. Thus Google’s 16.5% share of all 2008 U.S. consumer bandwidth usage, is ~21 times greater than Google’s 0.8% share of U.S. consumer bandwidth costs — or an implicit ~$6.9 billion subsidy of Google by U.S. consumers." (emphasis added)

So is that "evil"?

Should Google have to pay more for the inequitable amount of bandwidth it uses?

Does Google "controlling" more than 1/3 of all Internet bandwidth by 2010 worry anyone?