Google Fiber laying off 9% of staff, will “pause” plans for 10 cities

Alphabet ISP shifting to wireless tech, but not giving up entirely on fiber.

Read the whole story

 

[NoMorePosting]

As to why Google isn't hitting its goals - how is it not illegal anticompetitive behaviour, when the existing "monopoly" ISPs drop their prices in ONLY the areas that Google is rolling out?

 

[crustythaclown]

I hope this doesn't disrupt keeping ISPs off balance.

 

[clarityoffline]

What? This can't be true... google wouldn't abandon a project at the first sign of trouble...

i'm anxiously awaiting the launch of Pixel Fiber.

 

[taiganaut]

After the endless delays in various "potential" cities, I hope everybody wanting salvation from duopoly-land stopped holding their breath years ago.

 

[biscuitsandcookies]

Very disappointing news, especially for people in those cities that were Potentials.

Some might say that Google won anyway, by forcing Comcast and ATT and the like to push up their network upgrades and cut pricing. But without the constant threat of competition from overbuilding, I don't expect those gains to continue.

My hope is that, after the "pause," Google will proceed with a slower, but steadier, rollout. Concentrate a lot of resources on a couple of receptive cities.

 

[MrMalthus]

Mistrose[/url]":2hqqlbut]As to why Google isn't hitting its goals - how is it not illegal anticompetitive behaviour, when the existing "monopoly" ISPs drop their prices in ONLY the areas that Google is rolling out?

Well, that's exactly what you'd want (and assuming an actual free market, what you'd expect) when competition opens up in an area.

The real anticompetitive behavior is in the markets where there isn't competition. Companies working very hard to make sure they will never have any competition so they can charge and act in any way they please, but unfortunately the government (municipal, state and federal) has been fully complicit with that state of things, so the FTC probably won't be bringing charges any time soon.

(edit: as for the implication that maybe with actual competition, the price of internet that the market will bear is not enough to pay for multiple build outs of independent network infrastructure, maybe that's just a great argument that internet access should be a basic utility)

 

[Statistical]

Sad. Wireless won't cut it. Fiber scares the shit out of ISPs because it has the potential to offers magnitudes higher bandwidth at significantly lower costs. It requires them to actual deploy infrastructure to compete. We are seeing it with ISPS rolling out their own fiber. Not just fiber to the home but upgrading node backbones and splitting nodes to support higher DOCSIS speeds on existing HFC (coax cable) networks. Granted the later isn't as good as FTTH but it is infrastructure improvements and means improved cable internet speeds. They aren't doing that to be nice.

If google just deploys wireless, the ISPs will cut their margins 10% undercut them in cities where they offer it and let everything stagnate. Sure it might save you $5 a month or a slightly higher cap if Comcast has to compete with google wireless but it will be a hollow victory.

 

[polycyclicAnthrocene]

Why can't we all just have fiber to the home? Fuck this wireless crap. God damn it.

 

[Statistical]

polycyclicAnthrocene[/url]":3orlp604]Why can't we all just have fiber to the home? Fuck this wireless crap. God damn it.

Because then the CEO of Comcast will only be able to buy one yacht not two.
#WontSomeoneThinkOfTheRich

 

[unequivocal]

Comcast just popped a cork on the bubbly.

 

[Benzyl]

Building infrastructure is hard, much harder than writing software, or even building phones. People underestimate the costs of deployment, maintenance and legal compliance. Google tried to piggyback a significant portion of the work on the infrastructure built by other companies and was "shocked" that there was push back. Google wanted preferential treatment when it came to rules governing every other telecommunication company, and basically whined about it when they didn't get what they wanted. They did the whole Walmart shuffle by saying we will give you a nice shiny (store....fiber) if we don't have to play by the same rules as everyone else. I wanted Google Fiber as much as everyone else, but the economics and politics never added up to a viable plan in my mind.

 

[truthyboy15]

here's a thought all utility infrastructure should belong to the the city in which it resides not national conglomerates who don't give a shit about anything but gouging every dollar they can out of a customer while sniffling any ability for anyone else to offer cheaper services.

 

[DaphneDiane]

Just got my fiber installed today. Hope I don't have to hunt for a new ISP in a few years.

 

[laitpojes]

Wireless ISP options that are viable for home/business use can't come soon enough.

It's our only hope to get away from the Comcast's of the world.

 

[JButler]

Next up (< 1 yr of life left): Google Express
Next next up (< 2 yrs of life left): Google Cars

 

[Carewolf]

Mistrose[/url]":3hlzarfp]As to why Google isn't hitting its goals - how is it not illegal anticompetitive behaviour, when the existing "monopoly" ISPs drop their prices in ONLY the areas that Google is rolling out?

Depends on whether they drop the price below cost or not, and whether or not the anti-trust regulation have been completely gutted or not.

 

[Gern Blaanston]

When Google first announced their gigabit fiber plans, I predicted this would happen, although I really thought it would take a little longer.

Widespread gigabit fiber won't happen in your lifetime. Probably not ever. The U.S. is too big, it costs too much and takes too long. And running all new wiring to every house, in every neighborhood, in every city, just doesn't make sense. We've already wired the entire country, twice (phone and cable) and it's time we make use of it:

Local Loop unbundling. Force the phone/cable oligopoly to open their networks to legitimate competition. Speed will go up, prices will go down and nonsense like data caps will disappear overnight. You won't get gigabit speeds, but you'll get something that's better than what you have and that will easily meet the needs of the 99% of the population not lucky enough to be blessed with a Google fiber presence.

Do not allow states to ban municipal broadband.

 

[Dilbert]

tl;dr: last mile is hard

 

[Lee L]

DaphneDiane[/url]":3p9e32nh]Just got my fiber installed today. Hope I don't have to hunt for a new ISP in a few years.

My install is set for next Tuesday so this headline scared the crap out of me. Luckily the google push at least got ATT to run fiber as well.

 

[AnchorClanker]

here's a thought all utility infrastructure should belong to the the city in which it resides not national conglomerates who don't give a shit about anything but gouging every dollar they can out of a customer while sniffling any ability for anyone else to offer cheaper services.

That only works if the municipality has the extra revenue to maintain that infrastructure. I've lived in some very rural municipalities where the combination of depopulation (Flight to the cities) eroded the minuscule property tax base to the point where they struggled to provide basic emergency services and keep some of the roads passable. They're lovely, inexpensive places to live and high speed internet might enable them to attract enough residents to keep the doors open. Lamentably, they just can't afford your solution.

 

[mousimus]

Can't say I'm surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised.

 

[Sasparilla]

Google Fiber is dead. Being in the Chicago area, I'm very bummed.

AT&T, Verizon and Comcast won...<insert noncomplimentary words here>

Nice article on AT&T today: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... rofit.html

 

[piaw]

Yeah, let's roll out our service in places where people don't care about internet speeds. If they'd tried it in their own home town of Mountain View or anywhere else in Silicon Valley or San Francisco, they would have had more customers than they could have handled.

 

[jig]

god dammit mother fu**er, i can't catch a break. verizon FTTH stops, literally, a block away. ATT won't build out to the same border. Sonic says we can give you some DSL, I guess, if you want. and now Google is on "pause"?

I'm never going to get FTTH, unless I string it myself.

 

[toukale]

This is the problem I have with everything Google does, they do not have the stomach nor the patience to see it through. It is also the reason why I am not confident their new Pixel initiative will ever compete with Samsung and Apple offering. They don't want to do the hard, tedious labor work that is require to lay the foundation for years later. Google have never been able to do that type of hard work.

There is a reason Samsung is so successful, it's a combination of those hard labor foundation work that takes years to develop, bending over for the carrier relationships, they hustle like crazy and react fast to anything they competitors do, a ton of marketing and rebate programs. Can Google stomach such an endeavor for years before they abandon it. This is what happens when your first attempt was so successful and you think the best tech will win the day. Google have not learn that the best tech usually never win, consumer space and history have taught us as much.

 

[rusticus]

Too bad that Google can't find a way to leverage the crowd funding concept by locality and gauge where there is the greatest interest in their services. The funding would not have to be a private subsidy. It could be more of a pledge for services to be made available.

I'd pledge a multi-year contract if it would entice Google to set up shop in my city and put heat on Comcast and AT&T.

 

[Chemical Tribe]

toukale[/url]":2jae47uu]This is the problem I have with everything Google does, they do not have the stomach nor the patience to see it through. It is also the reason why I am not confident their new Pixel initiative will ever compete with Samsung and Apple offering. They don't want to do the hard, tedious labor work that is require to lay the foundation for years later. Google have never been able to do that type of hard work.

There is a reason Samsung is so successful, it's a combination of those hard labor foundation work that takes years to develop, bending over for the carrier relationships, they hustle like crazy and react fast to anything they competitors do, a ton of marketing and rebate programs. Can Google stomach such an endeavor for years before they abandon it. This is what happens when your first attempt was so successful and you think the best tech will win the day. Google have not learn that the best tech usually never win, consumer space and history have taught us as much.

I agree with your first paragraph, but IMO think Samsung is successful more because HTC and Motorola screwed up and gave the market to Samsung.

Personally I think fiber would be a higher priority if so many incumbent fuckers weren't trying to undercut and strangle them at every turn. But it is not as if Microsoft and their "friends" didn't try to kill or strangle google at search at every possible opportunity. It's just that MS didn't have the means to stop them.

 

[caspar347]

polycyclicAnthrocene[/url]":22pxfr74]Why can't we all just have fiber to the home? Fuck this wireless crap. God damn it.

Because deploying fiber is really, really hard. Like really hard. Hard enough that Google is having trouble even with its basically unlimited cash supply. The current players got to where they are on a combination of federal subsidies, loooooots of horizontal integration over the past half-century, and building out excruciatingly slowly (i.e. individual neighborhoods can take 2+ years factoring in common rollout delays) to the specifications of every individual HOA and municipality.

Even with all of that, a nationwide FTTH buildout is possible. Google just needs to follow a realistic timeframe (as I've repeatedly pointed out) and come to terms with the fact that individual cities may take upwards of 10 years to reach satisfactory completion.

And this news is probably worse than it appears on the surface. Fiber (really infrastructure in general) rollouts are done on a block-by-block basis. If they're "pausing" entire planned cities, they're probably also stopping deployment in cities where fiber is already available in certain neighborhoods.

 

[Commander_Keen]

Fuck me. They are giving up? The battle is already over.

And I am in California. I so called this.




Google needs a prescription to ritalin.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Google's ADHD strikes yet again.

 

[NicoTexas]

It's not Thanksgiving yet but I am thankful Google is wiring my neighborhood right now!

 

[dragonherder]

Gern Blaanston[/url]":1xtcqrk2]When Google first announced their gigabit fiber plans, I predicted this would happen, although I really thought it would take a little longer.

Widespread gigabit fiber won't happen in your lifetime. Probably not ever. The U.S. is too big, it costs too much and takes too long. And running all new wiring to every house, in every neighborhood, in every city, just doesn't make sense. We've already wired the entire country, twice (phone and cable) and it's time we make use of it:

Local Loop unbundling. Force the phone/cable oligopoly to open their networks to legitimate competition. Speed will go up, prices will go down and nonsense like data caps will disappear overnight. You won't get gigabit speeds, but you'll get something that's better than what you have and that will easily meet the needs of the 99% of the population not lucky enough to be blessed with a Google fiber presence.

Do not allow states to ban municipal broadband.

This is somewhat nonsensical as far as the US being too big. The US isn't "too big" it is more the fact that we have a few massive ISPs serving large swaths of the US that don't really want to invest. If it was split into a bunch of more regional ISP's that didn't try and operate in as large an area as possible (without stepping on incumbent providers toes as they'd need a better product to compete). Smaller regional ISPs tend to actually do a good job of things and often invest in their networks frequently. A prime example of this is RCN who consistantly continue to improve their network and while not up to gigabit speeds yet may eventually switch over to it as their entire network is fiber up to a point and then runs standard cable.

RCN tends to use NY as a test bed for their newer stuff and then rolls out their network in the other few areas they operate in after the fact. They currently offer 330 mbps down and like 20 - 25 up when I first joined them a few years back they only offered around 10 - 15 top speeds.

If we broke up these companies so they weren't massive and trying to be whole US at times things would be much much better

 

[drjekel_mrhyde]

Sasparilla[/url]":275spb8b]Google Fiber is dead. Being in the Chicago area, I'm very bummed.

AT&T, Verizon and Comcast won...<insert noncomplimentary words here>

Nice article on AT&T today: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... rofit.html

I live in Chicago(Westside) and I can get At&t's fiber.

 

[Uxorious]

Benzyl[/url]":1apssm5x]Building infrastructure is hard, much harder than writing software, or even building phones.

Being accurate is hard.

Building infrastructure is annoying and filled with red tape in the sense that if a crew touches AT&T wires on a pole without being properly supervised by 3 people in hard hats standing around at $45/hr. someone will get mad and file a grievance or a lawsuit, but not "hard" in the sense that if electronics controlled by poorly secured software can slow down or block operations of a huge portion of the entire f&@$ing Internet ...

 

[toukale]

sprockkets[/url]":3d9catmr]

toukale[/url]":3d9catmr]This is the problem I have with everything Google does, they do not have the stomach nor the patience to see it through. It is also the reason why I am not confident their new Pixel initiative will ever compete with Samsung and Apple offering. They don't want to do the hard, tedious labor work that is require to lay the foundation for years later. Google have never been able to do that type of hard work.

There is a reason Samsung is so successful, it's a combination of those hard labor foundation work that takes years to develop, bending over for the carrier relationships, they hustle like crazy and react fast to anything they competitors do, a ton of marketing and rebate programs. Can Google stomach such an endeavor for years before they abandon it. This is what happens when your first attempt was so successful and you think the best tech will win the day. Google have not learn that the best tech usually never win, consumer space and history have taught us as much.

I agree with your first paragraph, but IMO think Samsung is successful more because HTC and Motorola screwed up and gave the market to Samsung.

It's not that Moto and HTC screwed up, it's that Samsung had scale, develop carrier relationships (which helps push their Galaxy line at every turn to the regular users), react quickly to their competitors, flood the market with every incremental inch of devices and spend a ton on marketing an promotion. Those other guys just could not compete on all those fronts. It's not that the other guys screwed up is that it takes several things to be successful in the consumer space and Samsung did all of them to win the market. I think you are giving too much credit to those other guys. Moto did not have the products, nor the marketing dollars for the push once Verizon stopped their Droid pushed. Outside of north america moto was also a non factor.

HTC did not have the scale, nor the deep pockets to compete on such a wide scale. Samsung just simply made their way through those guys.

 

[ManuSamoa]

In my anecdotal experience here in Provo, a lot of people like me here are students, and unfortunately a lot of people here just want cheap internet, so they get the free google fiber. In addition, most of the landlords here also like the free Google fiber option, and in many instances even if you want to change to the faster internet you can't. So in addition to the many hurdles that Google Fiber has to overcome just to get into a city or expand, it appears that they also have to deal with people who just want cheap internet that works. I'm curious how much that factors into Google Fiber's relative growth, since I know many places here tell you they have google fiber only to realize later that the majority of them just have the free version.

 

[rkhalloran]

Lee L[/url]":kckdlfry]

DaphneDiane[/url]":kckdlfry]Just got my fiber installed today. Hope I don't have to hunt for a new ISP in a few years.

My install is set for next Tuesday so this headline scared the crap out of me. Luckily the google push at least got ATT to run fiber as well.

My situation too: the announcement of Jacksonville as a "Potential" scared AT&T into stringing more fiber . Mine was installed late June, and already having DirecTV meant a] no data cap b] a better cost for Net/TV/VOIP than the bills I had been paying Comcast/DirecTV/Vonage with a speed jump from 75 / 12 Mb/s to 940 symmetrical.

Now I have to figure what to do when the two-year deal expires if Google won't be here to threaten them with...

 

[Peevester]

polycyclicAnthrocene[/url]":3gcvgnsp]Why can't we all just have fiber to the home? Fuck this wireless crap. God damn it.

Because it costs a freaking fortune to deploy infrastructure like that even in areas with dense population. I've said it before, and I think it's still true - nationwide fiber infrastructure, if it ever happens at all (and I don't think it will, we'll just get better wireless), is half a century away.

 

[jagerman]

clarityoffline[/url]":3kr1ohyf]i'm anxiously awaiting the launch of Pixel Fiber.

And, to make sure that no one thinks it is cheap internet (and therefore doesn't buy it), they will price-match it to the most expensive internet plan in the country.