When last we left the inestimable Robert X Cringely, he had announced the big shipping container slash portable data centers secreted away in Google’s parking garage; his newest column claims little cubes with lots of I/O ports and connectivity will connect those containers to Internet users.
In claiming the multitude of transportable data centers Google has in the wings will be the way Google delivers the Internet to homes, Cringely went into some more detail on how Google may get itself physically into those households.
But the most important reason for Google to distribute its data centers in this way is to work most efficiently with a hardware device the company is thinking of providing to customers. This embedded device, for which I am afraid I have no name, is a small box covered with many types of ports – USB, RJ-45, RJ-11, analog and digital video, S-video, analog and optical sound, etc. Additional I/O that can’t be seen is WiFi and Bluetooth. This little box is Google’s interface to every computer, TV, and stereo system in your home, as well as linking to home automation and climate control. The cubes are networked together wirelessly in a mesh network, so only one need be attached to your broadband modem or router. Like VoIP adapters (it does that too, through the RJ-11 connector) the little cubes will come in the mail and when plugged in will just plain work.
Instead of an onslaught of AOL CDs arriving in the mail all the time, people will receive Google Cubes instead. As the cubes get connected, they’ll interconnect with other cubes, forming a mesh network that anyone can access wirelessly. Cringely sees this as Google providing the universal broadband it wants to unleash.
And thus, the GoogleNet arrives, as a ubiquitous method to deliver a variety of text and rich media advertisements to each household that install a Google Cube, or at minimum connects to the mesh network it generates.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
