Ever dreamt of a fast internet? So fast that even modern network components
at home reach their capacity? Google plans just this. In Kansas, USA Google
plans to offer Gigabit(!) Internet for everybody. And with that, a price of US$ 79
seems just too good to be true. But what makes this the sweetest deal ever?

Not only that you have 1000 MBit/s downstream, no, even the upstream is rated 1000 MBit/s and that’s REAL fast. To bring you these numbers in an imaginable way:

Share your family video CD with your family overseas in approximately 7 seconds, because a CD has 650 MB of data. None less than 100 MB/s (with overhead already included) sould be transferable in that time. That’s extremely fast. and to share your data, Google throws in 1TB of online storage for you in a cloud environment.

If you compare Apple’s offer 50GB for 49USD/year, then Google will definitely outwit Apple in this (besides the fact that Apple doesn’t operate as ISP)

Google aims for the HDTV streaming business and with this offer, they may probably hit the pulse of time. Should this offer come online, then other ISPs may have severe problems and have to upgrade their plans in order to stay in competition.

If you look back the last 15 years of Internet (1997) then the speeds have dramatically increased:

1994: ISDN with 128 kbit/s (up and down)
1997: DSL with 768 kbit/s downstream and 128 kbit/s upstream
2000: DSL goes 6000 kbit/s downstream and 512 kbit/s upstream
2003 cable internet with 16 MBit/s downstream and 1MBit/s upstream
2006 cable internet goes 25 MBit/s down and 3 MBit/s upstream
2007 VDSL internet goes 50 MBit/s down and 5 MBit/s upstream
2009 VDSL reaches 100 MBit/s downstream and 5 MBit/s upstream
2010 first cable ISPs update their lines to 100 MBit/s downstream. the upstream stays put.
2013 Google could break the Gigabit barrier and offer Gigabit internet with a synchroneous line of 1000 MBit/s

How will network chip manufacturers act upon these speeds? maybe 10Gbit/s for home use will shortly come to reasonable prices and thus be integrated on actual mainboards.
Yet it’s doubtful that you’ll find 10GBit network chips in notebooks as they’re not yet capable to provide these speeds stable.