Study: Google Talks With More Than Half Of All N.A. Devices Daily

by Laurie Sullivan, Wednesday, July 24, 2013 11:15 AM

Some 62.28% of all Internet-connected devices in North America send traffic through Google every day, according to a study by Deepfield that also finds Google analytics, cloud hosting, and advertising play a role in more than half of all large Web services or sites today.

The findings from Deepfield, a company that  tracks the structure of cloud-based services, estimates Google now accounts for nearly 25% of all Internet traffic, up from 6% in 2010. Only Netflix touches more bandwidth, but the company's total only peaks for a few hours each evening during prime time hours and during Netflix cache update periods in the early morning.

The bulk of total use for U.S. data traffic comes from streaming entertainment traffic, such as Netflix, according to findings from Sandvine, which offers network policy control services. The entertainment sector represents more than 68% of downstream bytes during peak period, compared with 65% six months ago. Web browsing follows with 12.2% of downstream bytes, and 19.4% for upstream; and file sharing comes ranks No. 3 at 6.4% and 39.6%, respectively.

YouTube downstream traffic took 17.1% of the streaming capacity in Q1 2013, up from 13.8% in the year-ago quarter. The Sandvine study attributes the increase to the use of smartphone and tablet in the home. In aggregate, HTTP traffic accounts for 10.66%; BitTorrent, 9.23%; SSL, 2.38%; MPEG, 2.30%; Hulu, 2.16%; and iTunes, 1.71%.

The study also estimates the amount of traffic mobile networks will use in the future. Mobile networks will not carry the vast majority of tablet traffic, which may lend insight into why Google unbundled tablet traffic from smartphones. The tablets will become part of home roaming, the concept of subscribers offloading mobile traffic to WiFi networks.

Video and audio streaming will account for more than 60% of use by 2018, according to Sandvine estimates, suggesting a higher use of mobile devices than first expected.  

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