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

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

#61

Post by dublinben »

rhino369 wrote: post #52
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 disagree. I think it's pretty clear that Google fiber is an attempt to create demand for faster residential connections and provide a model for ISPs to do it. If Google wanted to come at Comcast, they'd be gearing up a lot faster than they are. At this point Google Fiber is mostly FttPR-Fiber to the Press Release. And also, I don't think any of the first several Google Fiber locations were even in Comcast territory…

A press release seems to be all it takes for local incumbents to shape up. Faced with even the threat of competition, AT&T and TWC will pump up their speeds and service in a given area. It's quite transparent.

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

#62

Post by pash »

rcraft wrote: post #54
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…

This is an entirely misleading garbage statistic. This statistic only relates to the rather small Kansas City Missouri public school district which only contains an estimated 17,500 students. The author is misleading readers to believe that this statistic relates to all the schools in a relatively large US City named "Kansas City." Per wikipedia: In fact, there are portions of Kansas City, Missouri, where children at…

I mostly agree, but there are far more white people living within the boundaries of the Kansas City Public School District than you realize. It's difficult to find numbers, but I guesstimate that at least 30% and probably more like 40–50% of residents there are white.

(To see this, look at the number of black people in Kansas City, Missouri, who live within the boundaries of the Hickman Mills, Center, Grandview, Raytown, and Independence school districts.)

If that's true, then the Kansas City Public School District really is very segregated, even considering only the very narrow context of the population living within the district's boundaries. How it got that way is well documented; it is less well recognized that a major reason the district remains so segregated is that the black political establishment has adamantly opposed every recent effort to make the district more attractive to its white residents, many of whom are wealthy enough to pursue better options. One current example is Académie Lafayette's stymied effort to establish a high school in partnership with the district.

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

#63

Post by kohito »

discardorama wrote: post #48

"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?

Subsidy is one way of handling the signup fees. And it might work. But I can't tell if you're saying subsidy is the right answer here, or if you're saying the congressman's complaint to Google is out of line.

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

#64

Post by a3n »

jpatokal wrote: post #30
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…

Genuinely curious here: what additional data would Google get as an ISP that it doesn't already get via search, Gmail, ads, etc? Or do you mean "man-in-the-middle" in the cryptographic sense, and you think Google is playing mini-NSA and start spoofing Facebook certs so it can eavesdrop on SSL connections or something? See also Google Fiber's privacy policy: Other information from the use of Google Fiber Internet (suc…

Just knowing that I visit the sites that I do is more than google gets now. Although I have a legacy google account, I'm never logged in. I don't use gmail. So the only thing they know about me is when I visit a site displaying their ads. If they were my ISP, they'd know everywhere I go, they'd know who I use for email, they'd know my address and my payment reliability. Probably lots more, I'm not as smart as they are.

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

#65

Post by exelius »

mseebach wrote: post #47
exelius wrote: post #46

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. 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.

The whole reason Google is developing Fiber? They want everyone in the US to have a fat pipe so they can deliver services / advertising over it. They cherry-picked a few markets where overbuilding is potentially profitable and post stories about it all over Google News. That puts pressure on ISPs to deliver a better product, because honestly customers didn't see a need for gigabit pipes before. They still don't really, but Google tells them they need it so people think they do.

Google will never expand Fiber to the entire country, and I'd be surprised if they don't sell the infrastructure to another company in 5-10 years once they've achieved their goals. If the ISPs are providing better service, customers can upload more personal / sensor data to the cloud for Google to mine, and Google can cram more ad-laden services down the pipes. It's a win/win for them.

This whole endeavor is about Google flexing its muscles as a media power player to ensure their content/ads aren't held for ransom by any ISPs. Any company can try to build a national fiber network; but it takes Google (and their army of media contacts thanks to Google News) to talk this much about what amounts to a minuscule infrastructure investment (~$150 million over 5 years - or about what Comcast spends on infrastructure in a week).

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

#66

Post by SG- »

Just curious, but realistically if I wanted to move to KC and rent a single or double bedroom apartment or small home that could get Google Fiber, what would I be looking at?

Seriously pondering moving out of Canada and back to the US and I'm not interested at all in paying for a place like Boston where I used to live.

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

#67

Post by peacemaker »

SG- wrote: post #66

Just curious, but realistically if I wanted to move to KC and rent a single or double bedroom apartment or small home that could get Google Fiber, what would I be looking at? Seriously pondering moving out of Canada and back to the US and I'm not interested at all in paying for a place like Boston where I used to live.

Take a look on Craigslist but the prices vary quite a bit around here. We're in Overland Park, where Google Fiber isn't here for another year or two and a 1400sqft 2 bed with a garage will set you back between $1000-$1500 a month.

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

#68

Post by chrisrogers »

gopowerranger wrote: post #38
chrisrogers wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

St. Louis has a similar disparity, especially vs its MSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Public_Schools#Demog... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis#Demographics

Like most people, your links confuse people by combining St. Louis city with St. Louis county. However, St. Louis county is not part of St. Louis city. The statistics, such as this and the too often ballyhooed crime stats, are falsely skewed. It's like taking the crime stats of the baddest part of your town alone to represent the crime (or education) of your city as a whole. Here's another example. The City of St. Lo…

The links are both to the city of St. Louis.

I do agree on the point that it is a choice for those exiting for private schools, or exercising their economically-empowered physical mobility. But to say that those students attending St. Louis Public Schools all choose their school is ludicrous. They are assigned a school, and many cannot afford to move into an area with a better school or attend a private school.

So the choice is one-sided.

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

#69

Post by shas3 »

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…

The podcast, This American Life had a great episode on modern segregation and the failure of attempts at desegregation: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t...

Missouri has a particularly bad problem. Basically, there is a lot of evidence that desegregation works in improving education outcomes. Yet, the issue is looked at with suspicion, since richer people in good school districts believe it is bad for them. The podcast features a shocking town hall meeting where you can hear the worst of people's racial prejudices. They looked at Ferguson, MO in particular, and how kids got bused to a predominantly-white suburban 'good' school district and the ensuing political drama viewed from the real implications on people's lives.

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

#70

Post by exelius »

roymurdock wrote: post #57
mseebach wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Always a good idea to weigh financials heavily when analyzing a company's strategy. After all, that's what the C-suite and investors are doing. Granted, they have more info than us, the public, but sources of revenue are an important part of the framework for sure. Perhaps it makes more sense that Google is investing in high-cost infrastructure because they want to move away from the ad-model business. It's risky to…

Except that it's a terrible idea. Why would you take billions you make from doing work at a 30-40% margin and blow it buying a business that returns 5-10% margin at scale -- but only after 5-10 years of cash flow negative investment? Wouldn't a better idea be to invest in businesses that could potentially return 20% and are closer to your core skills as a business?

Google has many skills, but last-mile delivery networks aren't one of them. Not that they can't be, but it's just not that profitable of a business to waste their time on. The business itself is just a math problem balancing quality of service with investment -- and not a particularly difficult one.

Fortunately, that's not their play here: Google has invested far too little money in Fiber to be truly serious about it as a business. Fiber is just their way of generating consumer demand for higher speed pipes by saying "hey, look at this! this is how it should be!" They did the same thing on Android with the Nexus phones, so it's not even a new tactic for them.

> Google can eat a lot of the costs of setting up a better network, which is a great investment in the future if you're betting that a majority of people will need high speed internet access 10-20 years from now.

The problem is that you can't just build the network and be done with it. It costs a lot of money to maintain and provide service (approx. 10% of the original cost of the network per year), and that's money that Google will want to spend on other, more profitable things. Hell, if they want to get into infrastructure, the smart play would be free wireless Internet for the developing world (i.e. what Facebook is doing).

But again, Google hasn't spent anywhere near the amount of money on Fiber that they would need to in order to make it a commercially successful business. Because that's not the point: they're using cities like Kansas City and Austin to showroom their vision of what the Internet should be.

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