The Three Horsemen of the Modern Net: GOOG, FB, AMZN

Public infrastructural projects often begin at the state level and extend through the private sector by way of calls for tender, and intervention proposals.[1] Concerning digital infrastructures, state proposals are answered primarily by CSPs who have their own network of investors and contractors behind them. However, we are beginning to see what happens when the private sector takes control of formerly public efforts with recent actions from Google, Facebook, and Amazon. These three internet giants have recently taken production and maintenance of hardware networks into their own hands for the equal benefit of profit and user satisfaction, and while the threat of a more controlled internet looms in the distance, there are actually economic and user-centric benefits to these seeming monopolies.

Towards the end of 2017 Google announced their plans for investment in three new undersea fiber-optic cables that will improve their cloud capabilities, one of which will be entirely owned and maintained by Google itself. The cables will connect from Chile to Los Angeles (privately owned by Google and its parent company, Alphabet), the US east coast with Denmark and Ireland (in collaboration with Facebook), and Guam with Hong Kong (in partnership with a US telecommunications company). The project is slated for completion by early 2019 making them the first non-telecommunications company to entirely own and operate an inter-continental cable.[2] Their propriety over the Chile-L.A. cable gives the company a unique opportunity to control all technical specifications, routing decisions, and deliver the deployment to its end-users much faster.[3]

Ben Treynor Sloss, vice president of Google Cloud Platform, is heading up the project, as the effort is directly tied to the cloud. He states in an interview with Popular Mechanics[4] that he initially did not want to concern Google, an internet company, with cable building, an activity for CSPs, but that there were not many viable options for cloud expansion otherwise. These cables will expand Google’s cloud based offers in North Atlantic, Australian and South Pacific, and South American regions. To this date, Google has their hands in 13 undersea cable investments.[5] Accounting for over 90% of search engine traffic[6] and 25% of global internet traffic,[7] these investments are powering not only the company’s market share and profits, but also placing them into the hardware side of the digital infrastructure ecosystem. In turn, this also provides more people around the world with more reliable access to their cloud computing services and capabilities, that we all know quite well such as Gmail, Google Drive, Maps, and their Chrome browser, as well as a myriad of cloud platform tools and services for developers and consumers.

Amazon has also been working on expanding their networks both in the virtual and physical world. What began as an ecommerce platform (now accounting for 49.1% of US Ecommerce market share), is now a top down logistics specialist. Amazon in the last few years has invested in over 300 warehouses and sorting centers with their own dedicated semi-trucks, an air cargo hub with 35 cargo planes, over 400 brick-and-mortar stores supporting their “Amazon Fresh” initiative, last mile delivery infrastructures like “Amazon Key” and “Amazon Locker,” and today accounts for 34% of the global cloud market share with “Amazon Web Services (AWS)” a service which also handles data storage and processing.[8] This self-built and maintained ecosystem handles every part of the Amazon offer from the web-based interface, to the physical routing and delivery logistics. Taking the next step into their investment in global networks, Amazon is currently invested in a consortium with Facebook, Softbank, and a handful of private CSPs on the “Jupiter” Pacific submarine cable stretching over 9,000 miles between the US, Japan and the Philippines.[9] The inclusion of non-telecom companies, Facebook, Amazon and Softbank, indicates a changing tide in the hardware market of digital infrastructures. Much the same as in the case of Google, Amazon is investing in submarine cables to improve its AWS offer as well as the reliability of its communication lines with a great deal of personal oversight.

Lastly, Facebook has been making similar strides in its investments into global digital infrastructure. Now invested in 3 submarine cables of their own with partners like Google, Amazon, GlobeNet, SoftBank, and other CSPs, they are able to deliver their messaging, video, call, advertising, connecting, and sharing services with higher speed and quality, on their own terms.[10]

Already invested in several data centers around the western world, these last two years mark the first efforts of many that Facebook is taking in the direction of becoming not just a social network, but a full service internet company. As previously mentioned, Internet.org is a strong initiative Facebook launched to help connect people around the world, through a partnership with six other international communications entities.[11] What was seemingly a purely humanitarian effort from the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, almost ended a few years after its conception when local communities and countries decided that connecting their citizens was an effort better suited to the local government. Facebook tried to take control of a global effort to connect people to the internet without consulting on a meaningful level with local municipalities. Eventually Zuckerberg came to even give presentations to the UN saying internet and data are human rights like food and water. He pressed onward with the effort. Additionally, critics of the project stated bluntly that it seemed too good to be true, that Facebook had too much to gain through a centralized form of internet on their own platform, a notion that very well may be true.[12] Nonetheless, now five years past the launch of this initiative, it seems as though the research arm of Facebook’s Internet.org is separating from the central project into more unexplored connectivity territory, and in the 5 years since project launch, over 600 million people have gained access to internet services.[13]

The heavy involvement of Google, Facebook, and Amazon in the development of the physical infrastructures of the digital world allows them to better deliver their services, improving not only their customers’ experiences, but also the economic interests of the companies. In this case, “profit” is not a dirty word — Privatization often indicates a higher degree of competition which is better for consumers. Fundamental worries surrounding these kinds of efforts reside in the fear of total privatization in which there is no connection in any meaningful way to a governing body responsible for social welfare. Furthermore, as critics to Facebook’s efforts stated, each new investment to the infrastructure brings the world closer and closer to the possibility of a centralized internet, harping against the core interests of net neutrality.[14]

Net neutrality is one of the central fears and pillars of the argument against the privatization of digital infrastructures. Following the reasoning that access to internet means access to innovation, open access to the internet is also open access to innovation. We’ve observed through mutually beneficial efforts like the investment in physical infrastructures, major internet companies like Google are able to improve their offers and services from both internal and consumer perspectives without needing to limit or censor data streams. However this is an idealist’s argument. The issue of net neutrality and ISPs in the US is far from over, as even now the FCC has petitioned the US Supreme court to review its earlier ruling on open internet policies. It is through lobbying and purely economic decision making that brings these topics to the floor of the supreme court, and it is (as proven) the role of the country’s judicial system to uphold the social interest in cases such as this.

In light of the possible censorship of access from ISPs, perhaps it is a good thing that internet actors the likes of GAFA[15] are getting involved in the development game. However their involvement, which could potentially remain one sided, may be better realized with a certain degree of public oversight. The moment any one entity has all the decision making power, is the moment consumers and actors in the ecosystem will lose the ability to make direct change, or make choices about their consumption/production.

Thank you for reading, and please let me know what you think of all this in the comments!

References / footnotes:

[1] — with many exceptions, including Germany’s latest initiative to open the federal government to private investment.

[2] Grossman, David January 2018

[3] Ibidem

[4] Grossman, David, January 2018

[5] Dziri, Mehdi et al. 2018

[6] Ibidem

[7] Grossman, David, January 2018

[8] Dziri, Mehdi et al. 2018

[9] Submarine Networks.com 2018

[10] Sawers, Paul 2018

[11] Internet.org 2018

[12] Hemple, Jessi 2018

[13] Ibidem

[14] Net Neutrality: the principle that everyone should have unregulated access to websites and apps, uncensored by ISPs and CSPs. The term was made famous when Comcast was found to be slowing down access speed to certain websites. The general fear is that major ISPs can charge premiums for access to certain websites, restricting one’s access to the full internet. — https://www.battleforthenet.com/ accessed November 6, 2018

[15] GAFA: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon