
Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised - olds
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/zmwkdx/eight-years-later-google-fiber-is-a-faint-echo-of-the-disruption-we-were-promised
======
apeace
As you can surmise by reading this article, the rise of the wireless ISPs (or
WISPs) is not because the wireless technology is better or drastically
cheaper. It's because in so many places, the incumbents are able to prevent
you from building out fiber. They simply haven't developed the weapons to
destroy the WISPs yet, but unless the political climate in states/cities
changes, they will.

It is tough for WISPs to compete on latency[1]. Not to say there's no value in
it or that it couldn't be improved, but right now, aside from the
political/regulatory issues, fiber is the best way to build an awesome network
for customers.

If you want to work on software at a company that is deploying fiber in
multiple cities, we're hiring[2].

[1] [https://serverfault.com/questions/286588/intermittent-
high-p...](https://serverfault.com/questions/286588/intermittent-high-ping-
latency-problem#286603)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16493742](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16493742)

~~~
sireat
Speaking of latency: a well calibrated point to point wireless connection is
less latency than fiber jumping a bunch of switches.

Proof: finance industry's wide use of microwave towers.

[https://meanderful.blogspot.com/2017/05/lines-radios-and-
cab...](https://meanderful.blogspot.com/2017/05/lines-radios-and-cables-oh-
my.html)

There was another set of articles describing microwave towers in Europe, quite
fascinating.

Not sure if this was the one:
[https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-
ba...](https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-backyard-
part-i/)

~~~
seattleeng
Doesn't weather adversely affect these, though?

~~~
anigbrowl
What of it? If you have an advantage half the time that's better than not
having it, as long as benefits exceed costs.

~~~
theptip
That assumes that the marginal utility of more bandwidth doesn't decrease;
personally I'd rather have 10Mb all the time, than an average of 10Mb that is
sometimes 1Gb and sometimes 0.1Mb.

If you can't stream Netflix when it's raining heavily outside, that's a big
problem.

~~~
anigbrowl
I don't think that's the right way to look at the problem. Financial concerns
use these microwave networks for additional speed; if it's not available all
the time, their competitive edge is limited, but their trades still go
through, just not a few milliseconds in advance of their competitors.

At least, one hopes that their trading strategy is based on a combination of
financial fundamentals and a technological speed boost; if the speed boost is
the only thing they've got going for them then that doesn't speak very well of
their business.

~~~
theptip
My comment was referring to the broader conversation about WISPs vs. fiber for
consumer broadband.

I agree that in the financial use-case, the trade-offs are different, and
perhaps you can just turn off your wireless link and just fall back to normal
fiber when it's raining.

To address your last point, under my limited understanding of high-frequency
trading, the edge is in predicting small fluctuations in price, and acting
first. For that kind of trading if you incur unpredictable latency, you'd
expect to lose money on more trades, since your orders come in after the
latency arbitrage has been removed.

You still need to be able to (somewhat) accurately predict those price
movements, but that prediction is meaningless if you can't also execute
quickly. So the speed boost is a necessary but not sufficient criteria for
executing many HFT strategies.

------
adamcharnock
I wonder, was Google Fibre ever intended to succeed in the traditional sense?

Instead, perhaps it was an attempt by Google to change the industry by 1)
scaring the incumbents into improving, and 2) expanding consumers' Overton
windows[1] regarding what they could/should expect.

Google presumably wants to ensure its services can be delivered to consumers,
so this would seem towards that end. As another commenter notes, Google also
has deep pockets. Creating & operating a whole company as a PR 'stunt' doesn't
seem beyond the realms of reasonable probability.

PS: I think a similar argument can be made for Tesla. I don't think it is a
given that Musk intends for Tesla's success to be an economic one.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)

Edit: made last sentence less strong.

~~~
300bps
_Instead, perhaps it was an attempt by Google to change the industry_

I’ve been a happy Verizon FIOS customer for 12 years. For $140 per month I
have TV with every pay channel, landline phone and gigabit Internet. The
gigabit is relatively recent but I get full gigabit speeds for up and down and
it is amazing. I think you’re right that I don’t believe Verizon would’ve
offered this at this price without the threat of Google and other competitors.

~~~
radiorental
Fwiw, $140 is quite a lot. We shared what everyone was paying for Fios here at
work. I'm on the upper end of $65 for 50/50 (no TV). The lowest we found was
1G for $40.

the trick seems to be to cancel and sign up again for the new user deals.

~~~
bob_theslob646
He also mentioned that he gets a TV package.

I believe gigabit is $70 a month stand alone from Verizon.

~~~
radiorental
As I mentioned, the lowest we found here at work was 1Gig for $40.

------
cdancette
This is why I'm happy to live in a country like France where the government
takes part in deploying those infrastructures (by investing money in the
deployment). They planned to equip 50% of the territory by 2017 (which was
achieved), and 100% by 2022.

Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the
same quality of service.

~~~
twelve40
Funny though. No offense and I love France, and I love Europe (really do!),
but FB's and GOOG's and BABA's of the world seem to be ... elsewhere? inverse
correlation?

~~~
ehnto
There is probably a place in the world for both, but I would rather smaller,
competitive companies, over encumbent monopolies and aggressive investment
strategies (build a moat with money and watch everything else fail).

~~~
twelve40
Puzzled why it came across as big vs small cos. Who's been the smaller
competitive company out of Europe to take on incumbents? Skype? Dailymotion?
Spotify? Blablacar? Seznam.cz? That's... it? Seems a bit underwhelming for 1/2
billion highly educated rich people with fast internet, no?

~~~
ehnto
I just don't think it matters much that the rest of the world doesn't have
massive, unicorn tech companies. I don't believe they are the unwavering
innovators we make them out to be. They are amazing in their space, sure, but
most tech companies aren't actually that big economically speaking.

Silicon Valley has been a playground for venture capitalists and their
beneficiaries but I would wager that their influence, while wildly public and
social, is only important inside it's bubble, and much of that influence has
been frivolous, bought or self inflated. Does anyone really need Facebook or
Twitter, or Hootsuite or Gmail? They have only existed for circa ten years
each.

So I don't believe it's the beacon of social benefit or industrial power. It
is certainly a beacon of wild capitalism, excitement and glamour. Whether
that's a good thing or not is hotly debated, but a world without SV unicorns
would move on just fine.

------
purple-again
I remember the prevailing attitude at the time in message boards being that
Google had no real intention of taking this serious and was instead just
trying to bluff the entrenched interests to upgrade.

It worked in the markets Google rolled out in...and that was it. These
companies stubbornly refused to preempt Googles expansion anywhere.

Maybe they called Googles bluff, maybe they were never nimble enough to even
think about getting ahead of Google let alone execute it, and maybe Google was
just never that serious in the first place.

~~~
glenstein
I think the time you are referring to was at least a few news cycles after the
start of Google fiber.

I think it genuinely was received as the Cool New Thing for a while. Then the
cities applied to be Google fiber cities. Then fiber rolled out to some
cities. At some point competitors responded by upgrading their service. And
then with some retrospection, we collectively looked back at that series of
events and said "ah, this must have been Google's plan all along."

I honestly don't doubt that Google's initial plan was insanely ambitious. And
that what transpired, while falling far short of the original vision,
nevertheless did advance their interests. But my recollection of the events as
they unfolded in real time wasn't that this was their plan from the start, or
that people felt that way, until a few news cycles passed and it was clear
that it spurred other internet providers to action.

But I do agree with you that it definitely did become the prevailing wisdom,
eventually.

------
zzz157
Google seems to halfass a lot of their products. I really had expected it
would at least be live in the Bay Area right now. It's not like Google doesn't
have the money.

~~~
mcny
My understanding is that homeowners in the bay area have some next level NIMBY
ism that even Google can't overcome. Those fiber huts have to go somewhere...

~~~
avree
And yet companies like AT&T and Comcast have been able to improve their
infrastructure and launch fiber in more and more areas in the Bay Area (it's
more than just San Francisco, you know!)

The cause is not NIMBYism, or any other negative traits you might try to tag
on to people from the Bay, but rather, the existing telecom companies and
their attempts to protect their pseudo-monopoly.

[https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/03/10/google-fights-att-
com...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/03/10/google-fights-att-comcast-over-
bay-area-google-fiber-service/)

~~~
dlgeek
To be fair, AT&T and Comcast have existing infrastructure (mostly poles) they
can leverage.

------
EA
Our city just built a fiber network and GF was the first to offer service.

Since they have come to town, ATT has installed their own fiber network in our
neighborhood and Comcast has increased their speeds. I consider our local area
disrupted. And I feel no matter what happens with GF, we’ll have faster
internet from now on.

BTW: cut the cord. GF 1Gb plan with DirecTV Now and YouTube TV.

~~~
s73v3r_
I'm happy for you, but I think you have to realize that you're in the minority
in this country with the levels of choice and competition you have.

~~~
Scooty
I wish I had any choice. I'm stuck using my phone as my primary internet
source because my Comcast cable connection drops every fifteen minutes. After
several tech support calls and router/modem replacements, I assume they either
don't know how to fix the issue or they just don't care.

------
kosei
I think some people still don't realize quite how expensive it is to truly
build out a national Telecom network. I remember when Clearwire raised ~$7
billion [1] and still wasn't in many markets and rural areas, ultimately
selling to Sprint for pennies on the dollar. The infrastructure costs are
staggering, and even a rich company like Google can't just dip their toes in
hoping to succeed.

[1] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/clearwire#section-
fu...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/clearwire#section-funding-
rounds)

~~~
yaantc
Yes, I agree this is the key here. Google realized FTTH is too expensive in
most places, and still are looking at wireless IIUC. Except for new buildings
in dense areas or similar, it's likely that bringing fiber close and going
over the remaining distance with either 3.5 GHz radio or millimeter waves
(former better for range, later for available BW) makes more sense. We'll see
soon how well it works in practice, 5G NR deployments will start with fixed
wireless like this.

------
jbarham
[http://www.speedtest.net/result/7112084631](http://www.speedtest.net/result/7112084631)
is my 4G home wireless "broadband" plan's speed in suburban Melbourne,
Australia. Basically 10/1 Mb which is not great, but still much better than
what I was getting with ADSL, and I'll have to wait another year or two until
the NBN rollout reaches my house. But by 2020 the mobile networks will be
rolling out 5G.

Apart from mailing out the modem to me, my wireless ISP has basically zero
marginal installation cost for adding me as a customer, assuming their closest
towers have sufficient capacity (they vetted my address first before selling
me the wireless modem). And I know for a fact that they're capping my modem's
speed in software as my 4G smartphone's connection is much faster. This is why
the NBN's CEO said wireless networks are its biggest threat.

~~~
ailideex
Is there any cap on that? Here I can get uncapped 100mbit/100mbit up/down
fiber for a fraction of the cost of 100GB data over mobile/wireless broadband.

~~~
jbarham
Monthly cap is 200 GB. I typically use 50 GB/month, so it's effectively
unlimited.

------
BatFastard
GF potential customer here in Atlanta, I will say 5 years in it has been
nothing but a series of disappointments. I was in one of the first
neighborhoods to get GF actually laid down. I have been promised "any day now"
for 2 years. But what it looks like is if your house is not on a direct fiber
line, it will never be coming. GF had promised it would get ATT to complete
the 1 block connection between their fiber and my house for 2 years.

However I did get fiber from ATT for 100 meg symmetrical for 50 bucks a month.
And unlike comcast it really delivers 100 megabits per second. I could have
gotten the full gig fiber for 70 a month. But it did not seem worth it.

~~~
linsomniac
Sounds like GF succeeded in getting you gigabit Fiber Internet for $70/month
to me. :-)

~~~
BatFastard
It did indeed! Just not on the expected path.

------
cowmix
I credit GF for getting Cox and Centurylink to roll out fiber here in Phoenix.

I have gigabit through Centurylink at a reasonable price. Thx Google!

------
andrewla
> By late 2016, Google executives clearly started becoming disenfranchised by
> the slow pace ...

I assume they mean "disenchanted" \-- this sentence makes no sense as written.

~~~
rdiddly
There's another malapropism further down too - so-and-so trying to bring
financial constraint (restraint) to Alphabet.

~~~
empanadada
Yeah, I'm a bit befuddled as to how a journalist can miss these.

------
res0nat0r
Honestly I'm sure they just realized how time consuming and expensive it is.
And fiber isn't their main gig so they decided to duck out.

AT+T rolled out fiber to my neighborhood over the last 6 months. They've been
digging up yards and shared areas for months and I was the first person in my
area to sign up. It took multiple visits for the techs to fix the line noise
and clean the lines after the first rollout, and the techs are still here
almost every day fixing other noise/line issues the last few weeks.

Laying new cable is expensive and time consuming.

------
brandmeyer
Recall the CEO's departure and scale-back announcement[0]. There was going to
be a shift of direction towards other kinds of last-mile (or even, last 100
yards) technology. Its a shame we haven't heard any more since then.

[0]: [https://fiber.googleblog.com/2016/10/advancing-our-
amazing-b...](https://fiber.googleblog.com/2016/10/advancing-our-amazing-
bet.html)

------
EADGBE
Though I'd have the option of getting Google Fiber if I only lived across the
street, I still consider it a win, because after Time Warner was bought by
Charter which was bought by Spectrum, they're now starting to compete with
speed offerings.

Before Spectrum came into town, Time Warner was "forced" to give me 300Mb/s at
my 100Mb/s price simply because the average in the area was significantly
higher after most of the city switched to Google Fiber. It made me laugh,
thinking they had this capacity all the time but didn't even offer it
residentially.

I have the option of using Spectrum @ 940Mbs down now; which probably would
have never happened if Google Fiber didn't infiltrate my city.

------
jaggederest
I'm pretty happy with the results. The local company here in Portland really
stepped up the rollout of their gigabit service and while it's not quite a
full gigabit by my tests, it's more than fast enough (~400mbps).

~~~
dozzie
> [...] it's more than fast enough (~400mbps).

Even my GPRS connection is faster than 400 millibits per second.

------
cm2187
But is wireless seriously an alternative to fiber? I mean with 4k streaming
spreading, what will happen on a super bowl night? There is only one shared
bandwidth.

~~~
candiodari
You have to keep in mind that with enough antennas (and enough VERY high
bandwidth connections between the antennas - but only has to exist on the
service provider side, plus the antennas can be pretty close together and
still work) there is, in theory, 2^n interference patterns, each of which is
localized. Each of which can transmit data.

If you use the interference patterns to transmit data instead of the signals
directly, and you have enough antennas, you have essentially unlimited
wireless bandwidth, at least at relatively short range (ie. cells). Granted,
doing this for more than 4 or so antennas is currently beyond the capabilities
of deployed equipment, but we'll get there.

I don't understand why people keep saying that we won't be able to satisfy
bandwidth demand on wireless. We can, and it may be a lot cheaper (esp.
outside of the cities).

~~~
michaelt

      I don't understand why people keep saying that we
      won't be able to satisfy bandwidth demand on wireless.
    

Is it possible, from an engineering perspective, to build a wireless network
with very high bandwidth and generous transfer limits? Absolutely! You just
need to increase last mile bandwidth every time you get a new subscriber, so
cells never get overloaded.

Is it possible, from a market incentive perspective, to build a wireless ISP
business where it's more profitable to increase last mile bandwidth or turn
away customers, rather than overload a cell? I'm not sure.

~~~
alex_hitchins
Am I right then that to get super fast wireless everywhere we need lots of
fibre to back-haul it? That's my understanding. All the 4G super fast masts
springing up are all piping that hot traffic down fibre to the next hop.

~~~
zaarn
All wireless internet connections meet copper and fiber eventually.

Wireless is fairly useful to provide basic coverage to a huge area at
relatively low cost. The quality is lacking though. Low Cost, Coverage and
Quality, pick two.

------
exabrial
Living near kc, they're not very good at marketing to the local audiences.

Many people don't understand the difference between 1gpbs and "up to 300mbps".

~~~
EADGBE
So much of KC _still_ isn't available (metro, specifically), which is also a
large problem.

I don't think most people care when their typical WiFi setup will only get
them in the 100-150 real-world range.

As much as I'd love to sign up for Spectrum's 940 downloads, I can't even hit
the 200 I'm limited to with any of my internet devices.

------
thebigspacefuck
I'm still on the cheapest plan I could find, which is 60 Mbps for $40/month.
Even if fiber were $70/month, I'm not sure I would buy it, as 60 Mbps seems to
be doing the job fine. What kind of things would 1 Gbps allow me to do that I
currently cannot, that would justify an extra $30/month?

~~~
Mithaldu
You're looking at it from the wrong perspective. The difference between 60 and
1000mbit is not in allowing you previously impossible things. It is the same
difference as between spinning rust and SSDs. It affects every single
interaction you have with the networks to reduce friction as much as possible
on your end, and also improves parallelization capabilities.

Downloading of small files will change from being a fraction of a second to
nigh-imperceptible, and as long as the remote side supports it, this will
apply to all images on a website at once. And no longer will downloading a
game on steam mess with your youtube/netflix/whatever.

------
GiorgioG
I have fiber internet at home (US) and while I'm generally happy with it, the
thing I'm most happy about it is I'm no longer giving Time Warner Cable /
Spectrum any of my money. In terms of speed, yes it's fast (1gb up/down) but
let's be honest, there are very few things that can make use of that
bandwidth. As a test I just downloaded an Ubuntu ISO at 40 megabytes/sec (320
megabits/sec.) While it's nice, if I had to wait 4 minutes instead of 1.5
minutes with my old service, it's not really changing my world/life.

~~~
martinald
Agreed entirely, I also have 1gig up/down, even 802.11ac struggles past
300mbit/sec through a couple of walls.

Plus very few servers seem to be able to reliably send at fast speeds, and TCP
slow start means small files (<100MB) see 0 benefit at all.

The biggest problem I have is that a lot of portable storage I have (SD cards
+ USB hard drives) is way slower than my internet. I have one SD card which
struggles at random file writes at more than 50mbit/sec.

------
knowaveragejoe
Maybe it's because I live in a wealthier and more dense metropolitan area
where there is actually still some semblance of competition between them, but
over that same time period both major ISPs in the area have stepped up the
speeds they offer and prices haven't risen to match(as far as I can tell).
Their lowest tier service is 50mbit, which was just a few years ago one of the
highest. Both are offering gigabit to the home now, and one offers 2 gigabit
in certain areas.

~~~
zpallin
But the technology for these speeds were available 15 years ago. The ISPs did
not offer them or build them out to consumers, and this attributed to the lack
of competition.

Without Google trying to enter the scene, most internet consumers would not
have realized they could get better. Also, these ISPs are overcharging for
their service. Google's pricing allowed people to peer into the fact that they
were being cheated. I'm not a Google lackey by any means, but they did a huge
service to internet consumers, who are now much more aware of the quality of
service they should be getting from ISPs like Comcast and AT&T.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Well, what I was getting at is that Google did seem to have a tangible effect.
Either they did or some other parties in the area, I'm not sure. But based on
the jump in available speeds and prices remaining roughly the same, _someone_
at the big incumbents was worried about disruption.

------
shmerl
It's a management failure. They should have pushed further, despite
monopolists' resistance. But they gave up. Didn't they know it was a long term
investment? Alphabet could afford it.

 _> And in markets that Google Fiber has been deployed, it has resulted in a
dramatic reduction in prices among regional incumbents._

Yeah, that's the main outcome. Gigabit for $70 is a norm today, and if someone
charges a lot more, it's viewed as a rip off. And not only in markets where
they deployed.

------
throwaway84742
That’s because google rewards launching and doesn’t reward improvement. People
launched, got their brownie points, and now things are staffed by two kinds of
folks: a). Those who don’t yet know they’ll get nothing for their effort, and
b). Those who do. So things deteriorate on their way to getting canceled. This
happens all the time there.

------
exabrial
Also, they didn't really seek to keep expenses down where they could. Both the
jack and the router are proprietary, for instance. Also, in very high density
areas like high rise apartments, normal cat6a would more than suffice at half
the price of single-mode fiber, and that's not even taking into the account
the price of switch equipment.

------
stcredzero
Vice Media itself is a creature of the old media. It may successfully
transform itself into a new media company. I've noted a lot of Far-Left
ideological bias there, however. In my estimation, it's the 2018 equivalent of
Fox News, just on the other side of the political spectrum.

------
zpallin
This might be a bit off topic, but it seems folks still want to use the word
"disenfranchised" in the wrong context.

To be disenfranchised, it means you have lost the political privilege to vote.
It is not a synonym for "disillusioned".

------
IshKebab
There's a simple solution to this really - force ISPs to charge the same price
to everyone. The fact that there are different prices in different areas is
really weird and I don't think it happens in any other country.

------
bfrog
I feel like this is almost everything google does now... do they actually have
a growing profit outside of digital advertising? Digital advertising seems
like a growing quagmire of difficulties and skepticism.

------
skj
The difference between a "bet" and a "sure thing".

------
brian_herman
Google is a faint echo of the disruption promiced.

~~~
mcguire
Disruption is a faint echo of the disruption promised.

------
vermontdevil
Seems Google is banking on SpaceX and Starlink. I think this is a better
outcome than continuing to invest in the last mile to homes.

------
caycep
I had high hopes for Sonic as well, but it seems they can't get access to a
lot of markets....one can still hope...

------
rb808
One thing is that most people really dont need gigabit connection. I'd think
most people couldn't tell the difference between 10mbps & 1gig. Maybe 25-100
mbps is required if you have 8 kids each streaming their own movies.

Maybe 5g is enough and the fiber rollout is a waste of resources.

Upstream backups are a little different. It doesn't work quick enough with
dsl. But isn't that important.

~~~
JohnnyConatus
I have FIOS and aside from finally syncing my online backups, I've been struck
by how little difference / improvement there is over cable. I'm not a gamer so
the latency doesn't matter. My TV isn't 4k so no help there and I suspect
video "CDNs" will be the primary fix for most of the market.

What is the best use case for fiber? I feel like I'm missing it.

------
twostorytower
Today, I am able to get Gigabit fiber (1000/1000) in my area for $80/month.
It's not from Google, but from a major ISP.

I am pretty confident if Google Fiber never existed, it would not have pushed
other ISP's into fiber expansion at such an affordable consumer price.

Hopefully the fall of net neutrality is stopped before all this progress goes
to shit.

------
nukeop
If even Google cannot penetrate this market then it's for all intents and
purposes 100% impenetrable. Unless somebody comes up with a radically
different strategy, the ISP market in USA should be considered monopolized and
should be broken down by the government (fat chance). In any case, it's game
over for consumers - abandon all hope.

~~~
ckocagil
If Google's survival depended on solving this, they would have solved it 10
times over. Since it's not, they're approaching this problem with a
cost/benefit mindset and they seem to think it's not worth it.

An ideal solution would be nationalization of the infrastructure, but that's
never happening in the US. A possible solution is for the US government to
scare the telecom monopolies with antitrust lawsuits so much that they come up
with a solution themselves (which might be simply splitting the monopoly like
you suggested).

BTW, is your name an ss13 reference?

~~~
HillaryBriss
> If Google's survival depended on solving this, they would have solved it 10
> times over

assuming that's true, can we safely conclude that Google is unworried by the
loss of net neutrality? i mean, the broadband providers are still in position
and still have their potential anti-neutral leverage.

or does google have some other strategy to fight the loss of net neutrality?

~~~
PaulHoule
Google does OK without net neutrality. They can afford to pay the trolls, who
in turn help them keep competition out.

------
trisimix
Check out rocket fiber though

------
cletus
Tech companies are incredibly profitable. Fixed costs are really low.
Employees are probably the biggest cost. This is in stark contrast to the
likes of, say, Comcast, Spectrum or Verizon that have massive capex budgets.

Building a broadband network is an interesting business. I like to describe it
as a hyper-local national business. I saw this because every municipality has
different rules (eg compare getting pole access in Louisville vs Nashville vs
Austin), the ground is different (one area might have a lot of limestone in
the ground and make trenching slow, difficult and expensive) and so on.
Getting something resolved might be a case of whoever is the construction
manager in a given area knowing the right person to call that might otherwise
have 11 people standing around for 2 days.

This is something that national ISPs are exceedingly good at because they've
spent decades doing it. I mean they go further than that by trying to keep
competitors out through regulatory blocks and so forth but this doesn't change
the fact that this is a core competency.

It is not nor was it ever Google's core competency. Google is at its heart a
technical company that solves technical problems. Making search or Maps or
GMail worth with petabytes or even exabytes of data is something Google is
exceedingly good at. This is an entirely different business model and core
competency.

I don't know this for a fact but I SUSPECT that Google's executives went into
Fiber with the naive belief that (a lot of hand-waving here) they were Google
and could do anything and somehow they could reduce the cost per household
connected from a more normal $1000-3000 to <$500. This might be true if it was
a software problem. Digging up trenches and stringing cables to poles is not a
software problem.

What's more Google has never really had to control costs in the same sense
that a large capital project would have to. Worse, Google's culture that it'll
ship when it ships (which is great from a software engineering POV) doesn't
work when you need to plan for lighting up networks and areas and there are a
lot of moving parts to make that happen. It's really a case of what gets
measured gets done.

Add to this that there is uncertainty over what the future of fixed broadband
is going to be. Will it be wireless or wired? That's the ultimate question. If
it's wireless and you've just spent $50B building a national wired network
then... woops. If it's wired and you've just invested $25B in building
wireless infrastructure then... woops.

I suspect it's one of these cases where doing nothing is worse than doing
something but I suspect Google's board was scared off by the large capital
costs involved in doing anything and were too risk-averse to be wrong.

Disclaimer: Ex-Fiber Xoogler.

~~~
puzzle
The crazy thing is that Google invested in wireless technology, acquired
companies and filed patents even before the Fiber announcement. Yet, here we
are.

------
Feniks
Not really surprising, my own country is still profiting from the massive
investment in cable done by the state owned telecom operators in the 80s.
Infrastructure like this is something that can only be done with government
support.

~~~
princekolt
I don't think that's the case. Google certainly has more disposable cash
available at less bureaucratic cost than many country's governments. They just
lack the interest.

If there's a single company with a forever long track record of half-assing
products and never finishing them, only to cancel them later with disregard to
current customers, that's Google.

They make so much money that nothing really matters for them.

~~~
PinguTS
A government owned company has easier access to public land and can do that
while doing their public infrastructure work. It can go as a more coordinated
work and costs can be saved greatly, especially when the property is publicly
owned. The work itself is then normally done by private companies in a bidding
process. The government own companies faces only problems, when it has to
cross private property.

While a private company has to pay for the usage of the public property too.
It has also to work on the allowance to use the public property at all. Also
the construction costs are much higher, as they cannot share with other
infrastructure costs. If private companies wants to share the costs of
infrastructure work, it requires much more coordinating work. They also need
to know way in advance when which infrastructure work by which private company
is planned to be able to work together. That will become a bureaucratic mess.

------
digi_owl
Google suck at doing anything that do not support "push to prod" antics.

The company at its core is a child of the web, and thus it struggles to manage
anything that can't have a change/fix/AB-test pushed out on a whim.

