Rough Type notes that "the supply of quality data-center space is tightening, and prices are rising," and that "it's funny to think that real estate and electric power are what's scarce in computing today. For the would-be utility computing giants, like Google and Microsoft, they're particularly huge budget items. Call it the revenge of the old economy."

A commenter adds a point that applies to the whole free culture movement: "This is a salient reminder to the economics of abundancy crowd that if the lunch appears to be free, then you just don't know who is paying for it."

The situation also illustrates the problems with most arguments for some government-mandated net neutrality: if capacity becomes constrained, it is extremely important that the price mechanism be available as a rationing and priority-setting device, and as a signal to the market to produce more. If this mechanism is disrupted, as it surely would be by any government net-neutrality regulation, the most woeful plaints will come from such current net neutrality advocates as Microsoft and Google, which will find that they have given away control of their own destiny for a mess of potage.

posted by James DeLong @ 9:00 AM | Telecom

Link to this Entry | Printer-Friendly | Email a Comment | Post a Comment(0)