Internet, Isp | featured news

Google Fiber has a lot going for it, both as an ISP and a pay-TV platform. There was was one gaping hole in the service though: no HBO. Lets be honest with ourselves, its the big geeks that are looking to hop on that 1Gbps service first. And what do geeks love almost as much as blazing-fast Google-branded internet? Game of Thrones. Now Kansas City (and soon Austin) based nerds will be able to watch Joffrey become an even bigger monster live, rather than wait for some torrent site to get an illegal copy of it up (or, if they're smart, mooch off of someone's HBO GO account). Alongside HBO, Google Fiber has also added Cinemax: Home Box Office's less cool sibling. The branded families of channels are both available today for $20 a month or $10 a month respectively. Or, if you're a real premium TV fan, you can get both, plus STARZ and Showtime for $40 a month. Hit up the source for a few more details.

France's government says it has persuaded a leading Internet provider to stop blocking online advertisements — a controversial move that would have hit online search giants such as Google.

GoDaddy, the massive Web hosting company, went down on Monday, taking an untold number of websites with it. A person affiliated with the hacking collective Anonymous -- named @AnonymousOwn3r on Twitter -- claimed responsibility for the outage.

Google unveiled Fiber, its long-awaited Internet service that it says will operate at a speed 100 times faster than a typical broadband connection, in Kansas City. The company, which says it is trying to spur innovation, has put broadband providers on edge.

More than a year after the MPAA and RIAA announced their groundbreaking anti-piracy deal with U.S. Internet providers, the first warning letters are yet to be sent out. Previously, July 2012 was coined as the start date but the responsible parties are still not ready to launch. While TorrentFreak has learned that various ISPs will start the implementation at different times, it remains a mystery which company will be spying on filesharers.

Hours after "Internet doomsday" kicked in, major service providers say almost all customers have avoided the shut-off of their Internet service, although there are some who will not be able to read this story online, unless it's on their smartphones. "Less than 1 percent of Cox customers are infected with the virus," Todd C. Smith, Cox Communications director of media relations told msnbc.com. "Since midnight last night, when the FBI (via the Internet Services Coalition) disconnected the servers associated with this botnet, we've only received a miniscule number of calls, but our customer care and security assurance teams are standing by and are ready to help," Charlie Douglas, Comcast senior director of corporate communications, told msnbc.com.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was one of many law enforcement agencies nationwide warning Internet users about malware that threatened to knock about 64,000 Americans offline Monday.

The next time you find yourself pounding your keyboard in frustration because the domain name you want is already taken, direct your ire toward Mike Mann. Mann is one of the longest members of the clubby world of domain speculators, and he's buying up names in force these days. And not all on the aftermarket, as some others do. But new names. Dot-com names that aren't registered -- even though 100 million-plus already are -- that he then turns around and sells for a few hundred bucks, sometimes far more.

SOPA appears to be dead. But the battle over Internet piracy is not. In the wake of the debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act, supporters of that now-abandoned bill are looking to Internet service providers for help; they're also taking other tacks that Web-freedom advocates say could have much the same effect as SOPA would have had.