Here’s another email I got last week during the Blanidn Broadband conference… (Gotta love a snowy Sunday for catching up!)

A recent report says 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.

Specifically, the study estimated Google used 16.5% of all U.S. consumer Internet traffic in 2008; that share is estimated to grow to 25% in 2009 and 37% in 2010. Then 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.

The go on to talk about how Google hogs the traffic – mostly through search bots. Part of me says – well that’s like Orlando blaming Disneyworld for the road traffic. Part of me realizes that Disneyworld probably pays some hefty local taxes, whereas Google doesn’t.

The researchers obviously had some of this in mind as well. Here’s a quick blurb from the report:

This research study of Google’s usage vs. cost is relevant to the current broadband policy debate, because
Google is the driving force behind InternetForEveryone.org which is pushing “to adopt a national plan to bring open, high-speed Internet connections into every home, at a price all of us can afford.” Internet connections could be more affordable for everyone, if Google paid its fair share of the Internet’s cost. It is ironic that Google, the largest user of Internet capacity pays the least relatively to fund the Internet’s cost; it is even more ironic that the company poised to profit more than any other from more broadband deployment, expects the American taxpayer to pick up its skyrocketing bandwidth tab.

It’s an interesting counterpoint to the Net Neutrality folks. I think that the researchers might have benefited from a little neutrality in their tone – but it’s a good read.