Google Now Serves 25% of North American Internet Traffic 84
sturgeon writes "Wired Magazine claims today that Google is now 25% of the North American traffic with a mostly unreported (and rapidly expanding), massive deployment of edge caching servers in almost every Internet provider around the world. Whether users are directly using a Google service (i.e. search, YouTube) or the devices are automatically sending data (e.g. Google Analytics, updates), the majority of end devices around the world will now send traffic to Google server during the course of an average day. It looks like Wired based their story on a report from cloud analytics and network management company DeepField."
Re:Also... (Score:3, Insightful)
The NSA Now Spies on 25% of North American Internet Traffic
Lol, jk, it's more.
You have that backward, headline _should_ read "NSA now has ready access to 25% of North American internet traffic without even needing their own servers"
or maybe "Another win for the cloud"?
Don't forget CDN (Score:5, Insightful)
CDN (Content Distribution Networks) are even more "God-like". They serve most traffic for the biggest players, like Microsoft.
The stats, metadata, and content must be quite interesting.
Obviously Youtube (Score:5, Insightful)
Since they are including Youtube as part of this traffic, I can see why it would be such a high percentage. Nearly every other Google service is pretty low bandwidth, but many people, including myself, now use Youtube as a replacement for TV. So I'm not suprised by this statistic at all.
Today in the annals of unfortunate capitalization: (Score:4, Insightful)
Just to be clear: the title of this story should be interpreted "The combined traffic of Google's internet properties now account for 25% of all Internet traffic in North America."
Not, as I thought upon my first reading, "Google's mobile device software package, "Google Now [google.com]", accounts for 25% of all Internet traffic in North America." That made me do a spit-take.
Fact. (Score:4, Insightful)
Trying to block out google analytics using various add-ons has been an enlightening experience to say the least. The majority of websites out there have links to third party tracking sites, google analytics figuring highly among them. Trying to exist on the internet without revealing some aspect of one's identity, even for the most mundane thing -- a search for information, is becoming very difficult.
Even here on Slashdot, they've blocked Tor. Amusing -- they let anyone post "anonymously", and unless of course you actually try to post anonymously you might believe it. If a website that caters to those most likely to understand privacy on the internet can't get it right...