
Google ditches its free WiFi service in South Africa, three months after launch - infodocket
https://www.businessinsider.co.za/google-backs-out-free-wifi-google-station-partnership-with-think-wifi-in-south-africa-2020-2
======
reaperducer
I still remember when Google promised to bring free wifi to all of the poor
neighborhoods in Chicago. Amid a big frenzy of local media and politician
hoopla it said was going to put access points on every streetlight.

Then Google found out that when the street lights turn off, there's no power
to run the access points. So it just walked away.

~~~
numlock86
> Then Google found out that when the street lights turn off, there's no power
> to run the access points.

Uh? Duh! What did they expect? A switch in every street light? (Which also
would need to be controlled in some way ...)

~~~
_-___________-_
In my experience a fully-centralised switch is actually quite uncommon.

In many locations they use light sensors, and if you live above a street
oriented the right way you can see quite a cool effect of the lights going off
sequentially down the street as the light goes below the threshold.

In other locations that I'm familiar with, they use a ripple relay, where a
particular signal is transmitted over the power lines (a "ripple") in a way
that doesn't affect unaware equipment, but signals the target equipment
(relays on the supply to the streetlights) to switch. Similar technology is
used to provide day/night rates where one circuit is only energised during
off-peak hours.

I don't see any reason the ripple relay couldn't be bypassed to provide a
second always-on feed for the Wi-Fi gear, but it might be that the ripple
relays are not at every lamp post but instead at the substations or roadside
cabinets, in which case there would indeed be some cost to run the extra
circuits.

~~~
kylegordon
> In my experience a fully-centralised switch is actually quite uncommon.

Just to offer a counter-point, in my experience it's often that they are
managed in big groups, and individual control is uncommon.

Quite often at the right time you'll see big swathes of lights turning off,
sections of neighbourhoods, as far as you can see down a reasonably straight
road, etc.

From what I understand, it's usually just a timeswitch in the circuit breaker
box at the side of the road.

~~~
_-___________-_
Hard to say; it could be time control or ripple control of relays at
substations, which would explain neighbourhoods turning on/off at the same
time. It's still not fully centralised, and the more "decentralised" (I cringe
when I write that word these days) it gets, the cheaper it gets to provide an
always-on supply to the lamp post.

------
chilldsgn
I suspect they're withdrawing due to infrastructure issues. We also have
frequent power cuts (in my area it's up to 4 hours a day with no electricity)
and loads of cable theft. Some of the cell towers even get shut down because
people steal the hardware, the batteries that keep them operational. Heck,
we've even had cases of people stealing fibre cables, because they thought
they were worth more than copper.

*I am a South African living in South Africa.

~~~
pixelpoet
Eish, that's still going on? I'm half South African and grew up in SA but left
in 2007, mainly because of the crime, but also the Telkom monopoly and rolling
blackouts ("load shedding") were not so conducive to starting an internet
business.

It's kinda amazing to me that any techies stay there. Cape Town is beautiful
yes, but so is New Zealand (where many Saffers such as my family emigrated
to).

~~~
chilldsgn
It's worse than ever. I am having a lot of trouble keeping to my deadlines for
work and have to work around all the blackouts which frustratingly disrupts my
life and thousands of other businesses. Just a couple more years until my
degree is done, then I am GTFO of here.

~~~
Aeolun
Can’t you get a UPS? Or do they last too long to make that an option?

~~~
dade_
Load shedding lasts for hours. Generators are a big business, but they are
expensive to buy and run. Keeping a good battery in your laptop is great, but
the power to the wired internet infrastructure, the cell towers, etc are also
cut. You could drive to the office, but the traffic lights have no power
either.

So it is nightmare.

The real reason you can't operate in ZA is Empowerment, and what Google
probably ran into. They can only own 49% of the business the start. They must
find an empowerment partner (which means some black people, but they have no
money so you have to give them their controlling 51% share) that happens to be
a friend of the ANC (not a documented requirement, but I did mention
corruption). So they will siphon funds out of the company, but if you have the
right ones, you can win big government contracts such with the bailout money
they keep getting.

The place is a banana republic - Live there, enjoy you cheap labour, great
food, amazing geography, the wildlife, your personal security guards and
inexpensive servants, but don't reside there and keep everything in another
currency.

~~~
happypants23
> The real reason you can't operate in ZA is Empowerment, and what Google
> probably ran into. They can only own 49% of the business the start.

There's no evidence that Google ran into empowerment (BBBEE) roadblocks here.
And that assertion about 49% ownership is quite incorrect. BBBEE doesn't
actually work like that (1). A lot of factors go into scoring a company's
empowerment rating.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad-
Based_Black_Economic_Emp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad-
Based_Black_Economic_Empowerment)

~~~
dade_
'Companies in South Africa that deal with the government or parastatals must
be empowered as required by the Preferential Procurement Act.'

$3M USD / year turnover is a low bar these days and must apply all seven
pillars of BBBEE to calculate their score as per the Generic Scorecard. \-
Black Ownership - 25 points \- Black Management control - 15 points \- Black
Skills development – 20 points \- Black Enterprise & Supplier development – 40
points \- Black Socio-economic (SED) development 5 pts

So yeah, I need 51% Black ownership to get full points and again for
management control points.

This is so racist my brain is bleeding, but it could be republished as a book
on how to make a corrupt government.

From the Wikipedia article, "A general criticism can be made that wealthy and
politically connected black individuals have been the real beneficiaries of
BEE and not those still living in poverty. In fact, unemployment and
inequality have both increased since the introduction of BBBEE policies.

In 2018 a surfacing argument is that BBBEE should be changed from a race-based
policy to a policy that favours poverty regardless of skin colour. Apartheid
was criticised exactly because of race-based legislation that favoured a
minority based on skin colour and BBBEE once again has introduced race-based
policies diverting South Africa's problems from endemic poverty to race. "

------
alexmingoia
I’m surprised none of the comments mention widespread increases in 4G coverage
and decreased cellular broadband costs as a factor in shutting down the
program worldwide.

At least here in Myanmar free WiFi is no longer needed at cafes and the like
as most people now have access to affordable cellular broadband at 4G speeds.
I know it’s a similar situation in India where Google was operating the
program.

------
roseway4
A huge pity. Langa, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Delft, Elsies River, and Philippi
are poor, underserviced areas. It’s unlikely they benefit from the fiber to
the home that the rest of Cape Town has (nor could many of their residents
afford it).

What they do have are cellphones and a free wireless service would likely
benefit many.

I can’t see any commercial value from continuing the service in these areas:
Exactly why a wealthy tech company /should/ be considering this service. It’s
quite possible the new operators will retreat to the formerly white (and rich)
suburbs and center of Cape Town.

* I’m a South Africa ex-pat living in the U.S.

------
wyxuan
I don't really know why Google, a company, is doing what should be done by the
government with no clear benefit to the bottom line. This is not to say they
shouldn’t do this, but if you look at it that way, it shouldn't be surprising
at all.

If they really wanted to help they probably should have teamed up with the
government to ensure that there is government buy in to the program.

~~~
pnako
I think Google is an insecure advertising company. It's as if Phillip Morris
International was trying to develop solar panels and vegan food products to
make everyone forget that most of their revenue comes from tobacco.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Phillip Morris International

You mean Altria. They changed their name, for some strange reason.

~~~
sitkack
Funny how it is almost like Altruism.

------
Animats
Lesson: never bet your business on a Google product other than ads.

~~~
toper-centage
Considering how easily you can get banned from Google ads, you should also
prepare for that scenario.

------
njacobs5074
This seems to be a part of the Google Station project (product?) being shut
down world-wide [1].

TBH, while I'm all for projects that provide public uplift, it's clear that
Google was never doing this completely out of the goodness of their hearts.
Moreover, providing things for free here needs to be balanced with building
services that provide a path out of the endemic unemployment that crushes so
many people and communities.

[1] [https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/338928-google-
pullin...](https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/338928-google-pulling-out-
of-free-wi-fi-project-in-south-africa.html)

------
silentsea90
I appreciate that Google tries new things, but I don't get why their success
rate seems to fall far short of Amazon.

~~~
asperous
I think they way they see it is they are a company of scale. Scale is what
they are good at (if anything). So they shutdown lots of small successes to
try and focus on the huge wins.. things like youtube, gmail, google docs, etc.
things millions of people use.

~~~
ineedasername
This is a reasonable perspective on their actions, but it then it still belies
a huge glaring problem in Google fundamentally lacking the ability to
understand which projects have the potential for scale at the desired level.
It seems a standard part of a typical SV pitch deck to address the potential
market and growth opportunities. Sure, they're wildly optimistic most times,
but VC knows this and can price it in. But it almost seems like Google doesn't
have the internal filtering mechanism necessary to perform this same function.

------
m0zg
This is how it works:

1\. Googler wants a promo. They know they need to "launch" to get promo. They
can't get a promo if they just improve or maintain something that already
exists.

2\. Googler gets together with other googlers and puts together something they
could launch. Nobody cares if it makes any sense.

3\. The thing launches. Googler gets their promo. It is now pointless to spend
any effort on maintaining something that you can't "launch" again. Googler
moves on.

4\. Project dies and gets shut down after a while because no sane person would
touch maintenance work with a 10 foot pole.

9 out of 10 projects at Google go through this lifecycle, pretty much
verbatim. This is why you have three different Google-provided messsengers on
Android, and why stuff launches with great fanfare and then quickly runs out
of steam. You get the behavior you reward. This is what Google rewards.

~~~
amznthrowaway5
Well if Google tried rewarding maintenance work, would people who do hard
maintenance work and reduce tech debt actually be rewarded? Instead I think
the result would be people gaming the new system and doing nothing while
claiming to solve hard maintenance problems. Managers, as usual, would reward
the wrong people. At least with the current system, google gets something
kinda measurable.

~~~
m0zg
Managers are only very tangentially involved with "rewarding" employees at
Google. They do not promote them: it's the responsibility of the employee to
apply for a promo, though manager has to support. And promotion decision is
not made by the manager either: it's made by a committee that has never even
seen the employee and knows nothing about their work other than what they
choose to put in their "promotion packet", as well as peer feedback. IOW your
manager can torpedo your promo chances, but they can't unilaterally "promote"
or "reward" you per se, aside from some fractional bump in the yearly perf
score.

So employees have to support the assertions they make in the promo packet with
evidence. I suppose you could support the assertion that you've done great
maintenance work on something that's valuable to the company, and show off the
metrics, PRs (or "CL"s in Google terminology), monetary impact, and things of
that nature. But Google culturally doesn't really give a shit about this kind
of thing, even if it's otherwise impactful. A few people manage to do well
maintaining code at scale, but by and large my advice to Nooglers would be to
stay as far away as they can from anything that's not contributing to a launch
in some _easily quantifiable and attributable_ way. Or even if it does
contribute to a launch, stay away from things they personally can't take
credit for. Otherwise you'll end up working on something that someone else
"started", and that someone will take credit when it's done.

~~~
amznthrowaway5
In other places without committees most of the same rules still apply. Instead
of the committee, the employee needs to justify the promo to the
manager+skip(s) and external assessors from other teams often need to also
approve promos.

I find a lot of the most impactful work isn't easily measured by metrics or
monetary impact. These metrics are always deceptive and if you are doing
honest maintenance you may encounter many additional issues that make you look
like a troublemaker. The people who get promoted often cause disasters and
then fix the disaster while recording metrics. Putting in hard work to make
stuff run as expected looks like doing nothing to people unfamiliar with the
low level technical details.

~~~
m0zg
Arguably Google's system is fairer, because the committee doesn't know you, so
their decision has to rely on the facts in the packet (and their cursory
validation of such facts against other evidence). IOW, you don't get a promo
just because you brownnose your boss or skip, or butter up some bosses that
you know will be present when the decision is made - they aren't on the
committee, and they aren't the ones making the decision.

Even though this system is objectively fairer, it _feels_ shitty nevertheless,
I suppose because it's much harder to game through the mechanisms outlined
above. You have to game it in other, much more labor-intensive ways, such as
"work with" people who are a level or two above you (of which there are very
few in remote offices, so you better be in Mountain View for that), sit in
important meetings, "show leadership", virtue signal, etc. In fact if you do
all of these things really well, you could skip the actual productive work by
switching to the management track. If you're not super good at this, you have
to do them in addition to your day job, and your promo prospects become
tenuous at best beyond level 5.

Regarding metrics, there's a universal law at Google: you can't improve what
you don't measure. This is part of the reason why Google sucks at UX for
example, and rocks pretty hard at ads and search. The former is not
measurable. The latter is.

------
judge2020
"ditches" definitely not the word that should describe this (this is towards
the article and not the HN submitter since it's the article's title); it could
lead those who don't click to think it's another project Google has shut down.

> “We are transferring our Station operations in South Africa to Think WiFi
> who will now carry out the project independently,” a spokesperson told
> Business Insider SA.

> “We'll work with Think Wifi on a plan to transition the service to them, and
> continue to support them until the end of 2020. We remain committed to
> looking for ways to make the internet more accessible to users around the
> world.”

~~~
xeromal
If I hand my child over to someone else to raise forever, I'm ditching them.
:p

~~~
chii
bad analogy. There's no parent/child relationship between this service and
google. As long as the service is continued, there's no issue as to who is
owning and operating it.

Using children makes it seem like google is providing essential operational
expertise to keep the child alive, and the child would die if stopped.

~~~
jbc1
Products often die when transferred to another organisation. They never say
that they will die in the announcement.

See
[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

It's entirely reasonable for people to assume this is basically Google
shutting down the free WiFi service but with extra steps.

------
satya71
It's being shuttered in India as well [1].

[1] [https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/google-to-
close...](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/google-to-close-
station-which-provides-free-public-wifi-in-railway-
stations/article30841811.ece)

------
justlexi93
SA doesn't have the resources to offer the poor free Wi-Fi so they will miss
out. And there is also the ongoing problem of cable theft so maybe google
won't chance it here.

~~~
nostrebored
What do you mean? Redirect the billions lost to state capture each year and
free wifi to a few townships would be nothing.

~~~
tibbydudeza
And do what with it ????.

Folks just want's the basics ... a job to feed their family and decent
education for their kids to escape the cycle of poverty.

I don't see how free Wifi is going to help with this one.

~~~
samatman
You don't see a connection between Internet access and a decent education?

------
kkarakk
Amazon, SpaceX and OneWeb are all doing satellite based internet service(or
atleast trying to push in that direction.

I wonder why project loon/whatever google calls it's think tanks now discarded
that as an idea? seems like a thing purpose built for the google brand - huge
idea, requires massive funding, literally no government can prevent you from
beaming internet at it's citizens without a satellite killer(which they can't
deploy without intl negative attention)

1\. [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/22/fast-internet-via-
satellites...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/22/fast-internet-via-satellites-
is-the-next-big-thing-in-the-space-race.html)

~~~
vineyardmike
Huge idea requiring massive Capex seems more like an amazon thing (AWS,
fulfillment centers, etc) than a google thing.

------
craftinator
Google gets just a little bit shittier, every day. Amazing.

------
jugg1es
What does recomplex mean?

~~~
nebulous1
typo, should be complex

------
ineedasername
I just can't think of any reason why, if I were building any sort of business
(tech or otherwise) I would incorporate google services (apart form google
search ads, perhaps) into any aspect of it that I would deem "essential" or
even "important". Even Drive & the associated sheets/docs/etc I look at with
an eye towards "be ready to mass download the lot of it on short notice"

As an example, about two years ago they were building something that looked
poised to compete with MS Power BI and Tableau. Not mature enough at that
point, but promising. I poked around and saw potential for what it could offer
if I pushed it forward in my work place, but I quickly realized it was a very
risky career prospect: It might not work quite so well and sure, that's fine,
we'd be trying it out on that possible basis. But it might work just fine, and
we migrate some clunky "enterprise" reporting over, decommission some old
iron, and then... ::Poof::! Google's system is gone, end-of-lifed with a 90
day notice and then I'm left holding the bag because Google is not a reliable
partner for anything outside a narrow core of the selections.

~~~
esprehn
There's a big difference between a paid (Google) service and a free one.

Google doesn't generally shutdown paid B2B services, but it certainly does
have a record of instability on free consumer services (like this wifi thing).

~~~
ineedasername
Well, they may not exactly sjut it down in th same abrupt way if it's paid,
but if you look at their recent changes to the costs if using their maps API,
they're certainly willing to rewrite the terms of use for paid tiers that
result in apps that were paying nominal fees to suddenly being charged
onerous, crippling costs order of magnitude more expensive that require
shutting down the service built on Google's tech.

So, no, paid services are not free from the fear of Google's drastic and
suddenly project cuts or (as near as cuts) massiveness overhauls.

~~~
esprehn
The pricing changes to Maps were 2 years ago, that's hardly a pattern.

Microsoft also ends support for products every year, often with replacements,
but there's still migration costs: [https://support.microsoft.com/en-
us/help/4470235/products-en...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-
us/help/4470235/products-ending-support-in-2020)

Apple also deprecates core APIs, not always with a replacement:
[https://stackoverflow.com/a/53285999](https://stackoverflow.com/a/53285999)

Google does turn down lots of (smaller) free consumer services, but the meme
that their behavior around consumer products should translate into not
trusting them for B2B is not backed up in their behavior or historical data
around support. They behave similarly to all the other major companies.

For example the App Engine Datastore has existed for 12 years and still works,
despite the availability of Firebase RTDB, FireStore, Cloud Spanner, Cloud
BigTable, etc.

~~~
ineedasername
The one example is not a pattern, but I'm not familiar with all such moves by
Google to know if there are others, but I freely admit there may not be. It
is, however, an existence proof to show the possibility, which is enough to
engender skepticism when choosing them as a vendor.

In my experience Apple is more considerate in such matters. They tend to API
end of life with more lead time, barring some issue that has to be changed
more abruptly either due to abuse, security, or bugs, which is not
unreasonable. But even they don't approach the level of support guaranteed for
traditional Enterpris software though, and Microsoft mostly fits that
category. Sure they end support, but it's telegraphed years in advance. In
large scale enterprise systems like ERP, a 10 year roadmap of product support
and 3 year roadmap of features is pretty much standard. Albeit the products
themselves are hardly best of breed, but there is a lot to be said for
guaranteed stability of infrastructure, capabilities, and support, especially
when you can bolt on your own custom needs (of course at additional expenses
though.) Enterprise has these benefits, but you pay an extraordinarily high
premium for that.

Also, special agreements with them (provided you're willing to pay even more)
are often available to continue support even beyond the EOL of those
Enterprise offerings. (My workplace had to do so for a major system for 3
years (it was a 40 year old system) due to delays in upgrades to the newer
offering.

Sure it's unfair to expect Google to keep money losing products, but I think
if they ate the cost to keep these sorts of things going a little longer for
more graceful exits, they'd engender more consumer confidence and gain more in
the long term.

------
ptah
slightly misleading as they are handing it over to someone else to run, not
completely stopping it

------
hadlock
We need a catchy verb for when Google abandons yet another service... De-
google?

"South Africa's free Wifi service 'de-googled' as Google abandons yet another
product"

~~~
jaimex2
Microsoft had a brilliant one.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogled)

Time to bring it back I say.

------
QueridoGuy
i always think that Google and Microsoft are the worst when it comes to
projects. They make good concept projects, but their problem is that they
don't do full commitment. Much like Google Duo or Google Allo. Their problem
was, while it's good to have those apps, they never made commitments into
pushing them for consumers to like or even recognize. instead, they kept their
hangout when they could either migrate fully, or just migrate the core from
the new app.

Microsoft did that with many projects too but their problem was different.
That's why i believe the last good time google did something good was from
when they announced their very first pixel.

At least Microsoft is doing great job currently with their open source
approach.

