Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America • Hacker News Board

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#41

Post by mseebach » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 12:27 PM UTC

pdkl95 wrote: post #27

bsder wrote: post #16

I am always amazed that people can't figure out why Google is doing this. Google is rolling out fiber to neuter Comcast. Period. Comcast basically blackmailed Google several years back and thought they won. Google, rightfully, now saw Comcast as an existential threat to their business. Google will keep rolling out until they have Comcast by the balls. Only then will they stop.

I am always amazed when people can't figure out that google is doing this because their business model is based on "targeted advertising", which necessarily requires gathering as much personal information as possible. All of their products are designed to give them different kinds of data, and being the man-in-the-middle to the entire internet on a per-household basis gives Google an incredibly fine-grained picture o…

And I'm always amazed at the lengths people will go to in pushing the "Google is an ad company" trope.

Your argument doesn't make sense, especially not with the rapid migration of traffic to SSL (and no, Google aren't MITM'ing SSL connections). The lifetime value of a single family's worth of ad-eyeballs simply isn't there to justify an undertaking of the size of Fiber.

Yes, they are ultimately an ad-company, but that doesn't mean that there is always a single-hop connection between any Google activity and ad revenue. If there's an ad angle here, it's in enabling end users to consume much larger quantities of ad-supported content.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#42

Post by Asbostos » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 12:34 PM UTC

omurphyevans wrote: post #29

Elepsis wrote: post #18

This is just mentioned as an aside in the article, but is this accurate? "Even now, the schools in Kansas City, Missouri, are effectively segregated, with almost all white children at private schools. Just nine per cent of pupils in the state system are white. Almost 90 per cent are on free lunches." That statistic was totally shocking to me. Are there any other places in the U.S. where there's such a dramatic dispar…

There was a recent This American Life episodes about this. Apparently the best way to raise poor black children's scores is to remove segregation, but white communities don't want it: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t... I'm from the UK and was genuinely shocked. While there are disparities and issues over here, they're on a different scale compared to the US.

Depends where you are. London is deeply racially divided. There are effectively black-only schools and white-only schools. There are also schools almost completely dominated by various other ethnic groups too. The divide includes both the teachers and the students.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#43

Post by rayiner » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 1:01 PM UTC

Elepsis wrote: post #18

This is just mentioned as an aside in the article, but is this accurate? "Even now, the schools in Kansas City, Missouri, are effectively segregated, with almost all white children at private schools. Just nine per cent of pupils in the state system are white. Almost 90 per cent are on free lunches." That statistic was totally shocking to me. Are there any other places in the U.S. where there's such a dramatic dispar…

Chicago's public schools are 86% low income and 9% non-Hispanic white.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#44

Post by VLM » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 1:08 PM UTC

Asbostos wrote: post #40

Either something's missing from the report of Vogl's argument, or she's trying to do something purely destructive in shutting down the startup offices. This seems to be the entirety of her case: - The workers use up too many parking spaces. - They're richer than us. - They think we're poor. - They commute to work instead of living in the office. - They're untrustworthy because they're outsiders.

Imagine she has a clone in the same governmental position right next door. This is a thought experiment, obviously.

Her neighborhood will have a slightly lower standard of living than her clone because the residents have no where to park, are not a cultural fit with the neighborhood, their voting patterns and motivations are not the same as their neighbors or are otherwise screwing up carefully gerrymandered districts (WRT funding local schools or police, for example).

Also there are likely zoning issues based on old laws, for example maybe the zoning laws somehow prohibit my long dead great grandfather from running a small accounting practice or a yoga studio next door by banning retail traffic, but somehow they're skirting the zoning laws by sneakily not allowing retail traffic or visitors or some other cheaty hack of the local zoning laws. This will also make her life a living hell when the zoning laws are inevitably changed to permit the outsiders and suddenly neighbor X is screaming because neighbor Y used the new loosened rules to sneak in an autobody repair business and is legally running a weld grinder at 2am every night and neighbor Z is dumping waste from his home electroplating business in his backyard.

Now she can't go out in public and start whining that she doesn't want to do work and take risks in exchange for the same salary she got for doing basically nothing, like in the past. And she can't whine in public about how they screwed up the perfectly gerrymandered districts. And she can't whine in public about cultural fit because we tolerate, even encourage, that in business but in public thats just old fashioned racism, whatever-ism, etc, and that doesn't fly in public. But she can go in public and rant about how "they hate us because we cling to our God and our guns" and "they hate us because they're rich" or whatever. So she's a bundle of hate and anger but all she can say in public about it is babble.

So from an empathy standpoint, whats in it for her? Oh nothing? But there is a huge potential downside? Well there you go.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#45

Post by ashark » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 1:23 PM UTC

Elepsis wrote: post #18

This is just mentioned as an aside in the article, but is this accurate? "Even now, the schools in Kansas City, Missouri, are effectively segregated, with almost all white children at private schools. Just nine per cent of pupils in the state system are white. Almost 90 per cent are on free lunches." That statistic was totally shocking to me. Are there any other places in the U.S. where there's such a dramatic dispar…

I very much doubt that even a majority of the white kids living at Kansas City, MO addresses are going to private school, let alone "almost all". And that's just KCMO, not considering the rest of the metro area.

KCMO school district, maybe, but (perhaps surprisingly) there are large parts of the city that have Kansas City addresses but don't fall in the KCMO school district.

To be clear, though, the broader point about schools being effective segregated is true, and the KCMO school district is awful.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#46

Post by exelius » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 1:26 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #41

pdkl95 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am always amazed when people can't figure out that google is doing this because their business model is based on "targeted advertising", which necessarily requires gathering as much personal information as possible. All of their products are designed to give them different kinds of data, and being the man-in-the-middle to the entire internet on a per-household basis gives Google an incredibly fine-grained picture o…

And I'm always amazed at the lengths people will go to in pushing the "Google is an ad company" trope. Your argument doesn't make sense, especially not with the rapid migration of traffic to SSL (and no, Google aren't MITM'ing SSL connections). The lifetime value of a single family's worth of ad-eyeballs simply isn't there to justify an undertaking of the size of Fiber. Yes, they are ultimately an ad-company, but tha…

> And I'm always amazed at the lengths people will go to in pushing the "Google is an ad company" trope.

When 95% of your revenue comes from ad sales, you're an ad company.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#47

Post by mseebach » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 1:45 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #46

mseebach wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm always amazed at the lengths people will go to in pushing the "Google is an ad company" trope. Your argument doesn't make sense, especially not with the rapid migration of traffic to SSL (and no, Google aren't MITM'ing SSL connections). The lifetime value of a single family's worth of ad-eyeballs simply isn't there to justify an undertaking of the size of Fiber. Yes, they are ultimately an ad-company, but tha…

> And I'm always amazed at the lengths people will go to in pushing the "Google is an ad company" trope. When 95% of your revenue comes from ad sales, you're an ad company.

And I conceded as much. But for all its truth, it just doesn't give you a useful analytical framework for reasoning about Google and what they do.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#48

Post by discardorama » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 1:59 PM UTC

"In February, local Congressman Emanuel Cleaver sent a letter to Larry Page, co-founder of Google, warning that “preliminary statistics [for Google Fiber] suggest the beginning of a ‘digital redlining’ in our city”"

But this Congressman couldn't find the funds to subsidize the poor people's signup fees, which are just $10 each?

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#49

Post by dublinben » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 2:15 PM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #23

hueving wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>where it could have really made a difference. Is there a study that shows that the low income population makes better use of high speed bandwidth? Right now it's mainly just a luxury product for HD video streams and the majority of the educational gains of an Internet connection can be had with 5-10mbps.

The quote was "cheap WiFi" - he meant getting net access for people who don't currently have it.

"Cheap WiFi" implies to me that they would still be charging users for access. Reselling a connection is obviously against their terms of service. Community organizations will probably have better luck simply paying for connections, and then running open access points to provide free access to the community.

Re: Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America

#50

Post by bachmeier » Wed, Sep 09, 2015, 2:17 PM UTC

Elepsis wrote: post #18

This is just mentioned as an aside in the article, but is this accurate? "Even now, the schools in Kansas City, Missouri, are effectively segregated, with almost all white children at private schools. Just nine per cent of pupils in the state system are white. Almost 90 per cent are on free lunches." That statistic was totally shocking to me. Are there any other places in the U.S. where there's such a dramatic dispar…

That quote, while true, doesn't tell the whole story. Families with school-age children will normally locate on the Kansas side of the border and send their children to the public schools there. Right or wrong (I'm not in a position to say) the Missouri schools have a very bad reputation. If you're thinking about buying a house on the Missouri side of the border, you factor in the cost of sending all your kids to private school.