Microsoft makes more money and Apple is worth more on the stock market but when it comes to Internet traffic only one name counts and that is Google.This is according to a new analysis by Arbor Networks using its Atlas system, following on from similiar repotrs of the search giant's growing domination of Internet traffic in the last year.
In June 2007, Google's share of global traffic was somewhere between 1 percent and 2.5 percent, which by last October had grown to around 5 percent with peaks of as much as 10 percent. Arbor's latest figures show that this has now risen to an average level of 6.4 percent, and as much as 12 percent of if Google Global Cache (GGC) is factored in.
"If Google were an ISP, as of this month it would rank as the second largest carrier on the planet," says a blog by Arbor's Craig labovitz of a company that is not even in the ISP business.
The engine for this growth is not only the success of Google's bandwidth-consuming consumer video sites such as YouTube, or its rising cloud presence, but the way it peers directly to traffic partners.
The company now peers its data centres 70 percent of all providerss around the globe, up by between 5 percent and 10 percent on last year
"In fact, the only remaining major group of ISPs without direct Google peering are saveral of the tieris and national PTTs"
"In fact, the only remaining major group of ISPs without direct Google peering are saveral of the tieris and national PTTs"many of whom will not settlement-free peer with Google due to regulatory prohibitions or commercial strategy" notes Labovitz.
Exactly what all this adds up to is as moot as it was when Arbor's 2009 figures focussed minds on Google's 'traffic-bending' power. There is a feeling that Google's influence must be shaping the core of what the Internet is not least because anyone without a direct peer to it is at some kind of disadvantage.