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Advancing our amazing bet

googlefiberblog.blogspot.com

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Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#151

Post by jpalomaki »

stomato wrote: post #75

I was a big supporter, however now I wonder whether the cities that they've started rolling out to will get half-assed because their budgets are cut or morale has dropped. It's freaking Google- I don't understand how they didn't do the due diligence ahead of time to prepare budget for costs adequately. But, if they ever come, I'll probably buy in, because I can't believe that AT&T is saying things like this- do they…

I believe the intention of Google Fiber project was not to make money directly, but to put pressure on other ISPs by showing that Google can actually enter the market and act as viable competitor if they don't behave.

For me this sounds like somebody just made a high-level decision that this thing is no longer important for Google's mission. As we have seen, they have been trying quite hard to focus on fewer things. It's not necessarily even about money. Each individual business requires some attention from the (top) management and they are competing on talented people inside the company.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#152

Post by matt4077 »

asafira wrote: post #122
chii wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> investors would have priced the loss into the stock price long ago That's a misconception. The investors had done expectations. They were either met or unmet. But unless there is insider info, a project going bad won't get priced before the news is known. Stuck prices isn't some magical thing that knows all. It's simply an average of what everyone believes. Beliefs are sometimes wrong.

Thinking about your last statement: If the price were an average of beliefs, we would have people that believe it's worth more and people that think it's worth less. Those that think it is worth more would, logically, buy Google stock, and then the price would increase until we reached the price where people are somewhat on agreement that it isn't worth more. So, either there is a lack of funds to make the purchases,…

It also depends on "the lowest price someone is willing to sell at", and you can start sketching it graphically, and have to ignore "some people don't have the money to buy" and "this only applies to people actually trading stocks", but at the end it really has no impact on OP's point, namely that stock price is a reflection of a collective opinion, subject to the full range of flaws tainting all human perception.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#153

Post by matt4077 »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #32
GavinMcG wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out saying "we failed and are canceling a product, again" hurts the stock price more.

Which, said another way, is lying for profit.

Which, in yet another way, would be called "fraud". But may (s)he throw the first press release who does has never couched bad news in sweet sweet quantum leaps of paradigm-shifting.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#154

Post by mozumder »

Inconel wrote: post #51
nostrademons wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked briefly on the Fiber team when it was very young (basically from 2 weeks before to 2 weeks after launch - I was on loan from Search specifically so that they could hit their launch goals). The bottleneck when I was there were local government regulations, and in fact Kansas City was chosen because it had a unified city/county/utility regulatory authority that was very favorable to Google. To lay fiber to the…

It's very interesting that you say the biggest hurdle was regulatory capture, that is certainly depressing. This leads me to another question that maybe you or someone else can answer, although I understand if you can't for various reasons. There seems to be a ton of very smart people working at Google and I can't imagine that they would go about trying to set up their own ISP without taking into account the huge pus…

> It's very interesting that you say the biggest hurdle was regulatory capture, that is certainly depressing.

Why is that depressing? Do you feel any company should be allowed to build a phone line above your street, instead of being a regulated monopoly?

This is what happens when you do that:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/photos-from-the-days-when-thousands-o...

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#155

Post by HNSucksAss »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #5

This announcement needs a little bit of translation from the marketing language it's written in: > And thanks to the hard work of everyone on the Access team, our business is solid: our subscriber base and revenue are growing quickly, and we expect that growth to continue. "We're not yet profitable." > We have refined our plan going forward to achieve these objectives. It entails us making changes to focus our busine…

Yep, another company reneges on fiber. There's no more FIOS, and now this.

It's off to create a half-assed, wireless cop-out. And the U.S. stays in the past.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#156

Post by potatosareok »

nostrademons wrote: post #39
Inconel wrote: post #14

I won't be surprised if this news is met with the usual sentiment that Google abandons everything that isn't immediately hugely successful, and while I often share that criticism of Google, I can't really fault them too much in this case. Getting a nationwide ISP up and running from scratch just seems like an almost impossible task. This is disappointing to me nonetheless. Can someone with knowledge of the industry e…

I worked briefly on the Fiber team when it was very young (basically from 2 weeks before to 2 weeks after launch - I was on loan from Search specifically so that they could hit their launch goals). The bottleneck when I was there were local government regulations, and in fact Kansas City was chosen because it had a unified city/county/utility regulatory authority that was very favorable to Google. To lay fiber to the…

I don't understand a few things about Google fiber ever as a long term viable business unit inside Alphabet as a whole. As you mentioned in the thread, and I agree with the sentiment, Access succeeds by forcing others to take action. For example, bidding on wireless spectrum for get open access.

But does Google really want to be the one left holding the hot potato in situation like this? Does Google have any success/relevant experience in running a business like a residential ISP? Even established telcos like Verizon can't grow wireline very much.

You mention AirBnB and Uber as successes but those legal battles aren't over yet, with examples such as Austin/Uber and NY/AirBnB just recently. Also I think the value provided by Uber/AirBnB is much larger then Google fiber, which is to serve like 6 US cities with marginally faster internet that most websites can't even take advantage of.

Also I find your statement "they'll go right up to the boundary of what the law allows" as disingenuously painting Google as helpless & innocent. Google has gone to court for a variety of things they felt were worth it for their business 1) Anti-poaching 2) Google books scanning 3) Youtube copyright 4) Oracle Java

Whether or not you believe they were in the right or the wrong, they are a massive multinational corporation who are capable of arguing for their business interests in court. Whether Fiber was ever important enough for Google as a long term real business unit is what I question. They put 4.5 billion on the line for spectrum open access, I don't see the same time of commitment applied to Fiber at all.

Basically what I'm asking what was the successful longterm outcome for fiber if not a quiet drawdown like this? For Google to really be a large US ISP?

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#157

Post by sverige »

rdtsc wrote: post #102
thaumaturgy wrote: post #5

This announcement needs a little bit of translation from the marketing language it's written in: > And thanks to the hard work of everyone on the Access team, our business is solid: our subscriber base and revenue are growing quickly, and we expect that growth to continue. "We're not yet profitable." > We have refined our plan going forward to achieve these objectives. It entails us making changes to focus our busine…

Thanks. When I read those thing it is like they are written in a different language. Reading it I got a positive vibe even -- oh look we are growing and are about to just deploy some amazing new technology. The stepping down part was a surprise at the end a bit. Corporate-speak is a funny thing. I guess it is in a way a test or a filter for good SVPs and CEOs -- can they speak in this language (they better). Talking…

I have come to the conclusion that the difference between directors and VPs is that VPs have better platform skills. The difference between VPs and officers is the ability to spew this kind of corporate bs without thought on the fly in front of a crowd.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#158

Post by amelius »

paulsutter wrote: post #80
thaumaturgy wrote: post #5

This announcement needs a little bit of translation from the marketing language it's written in: > And thanks to the hard work of everyone on the Access team, our business is solid: our subscriber base and revenue are growing quickly, and we expect that growth to continue. "We're not yet profitable." > We have refined our plan going forward to achieve these objectives. It entails us making changes to focus our busine…

This is why I read the comments first, just avoided another painful article. Do people who communicate in spin-speak start to think that way on the inside too?

> This is why I read the comments first, just avoided another painful article.

The comments also load a lot faster than the article, usually :)

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#159

Post by stomato »

jpalomaki wrote: post #151
stomato wrote: post #75

I was a big supporter, however now I wonder whether the cities that they've started rolling out to will get half-assed because their budgets are cut or morale has dropped. It's freaking Google- I don't understand how they didn't do the due diligence ahead of time to prepare budget for costs adequately. But, if they ever come, I'll probably buy in, because I can't believe that AT&T is saying things like this- do they…

I believe the intention of Google Fiber project was not to make money directly, but to put pressure on other ISPs by showing that Google can actually enter the market and act as viable competitor if they don't behave. For me this sounds like somebody just made a high-level decision that this thing is no longer important for Google's mission. As we have seen, they have been trying quite hard to focus on fewer things.…

Understand that they would have assumed some loss in the front of nationwide rollout, but they seem to have overestimated adoption and underestimated the costs required to rollout.

The one thing they did right, imo, were t-shirts. Compared to billboards, TV commercials, etc. a well-designed t-shirt lasts a really long time and gets more attention.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#160

Post by JetSpiegel »

lorenzhs wrote: post #150
magila wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Comcast does offer higher speeds, it's prohibitively expensive. In a typical market where Comcast has an effective monopoly the 2Gb service is $300/month and even just 250Mb is $150. Their upload speeds are also pathetic, the 250Mb service is only 30Mb up.

For comparison, I pay 50€/month for 200/10 Mbps in Germany (including some phone / TV service that I don't use)

I pay 34€ a month for 100/100 Mbps in Portugal, including TV and Phone too. And that's because I missed the promotion for a few days or it would be 25€/month.
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