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...
Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised
171–180 of 333 posts
Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised
#172I 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…
You could say that Google Fiber was a response to Comcast's announcement of its intent to acquire NBC in December 2009. Google makes no money if they can't show ads to people, and at the time Comcast and friends controlled Google's access to a majority of US audiences that Google's customers (advertisers) wanted their ads in front of. Advertising in the US was more than half of Google's revenue then. Comcast had the…
> Google makes no money if they can't show ads to people
I'm really, really hoping that changes drastically in the next decade. It would be really nice if Google started making the majority of their money from compute cloud offerings (a little out there, but that sector is growing much faster than their general business). I think it's essential if Google's ever going to gain some independence from the perverse incentives they've set themselves up for, and I think that's essential for Google (and society in general) as we move forward.
I'm not sure what to do with Facebook. I don't see people paying for that. Then again, with the amount of time people spend glued to Facebook, they could probably make a tidy business offloading general computing tasks to their users through JS. The concept has been brought up before, generally in the discussion of blockchain mining through websites, but at Facebook's scale and usage it's an entirely different story. I imagine Facebook could have the largest weather supercomputer in the world (by many factors) next week if they really wanted to.
I wonder if Facebook has a department whose job it is to look into developing more parallelizable algorithms for common workloads...
Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your analysis is backwards. There aren't special laws that "make it difficult for new companies to hang wires." The issue was not Google hanging its own wires, but Google contractors moving AT&T's wires in order to make space on the poles. Louisville passed special laws to enable one company to relocate another company's property on utility poles. I think those laws are a good idea, but its hard to blame AT&T for not…
> but its hard to blame AT&T for not wanting Google contractors to touch its infrastructure Exactly -- AT&T thinks it's their infrastructure, but it's not. It's ours.
"We" (the government) didn't build it or pay for it. Even back in the AT&T monopoly era it was always private infrastructure.[1] AT&T got certain rights (e.g. easements) but that also came with a lot of strings attached (they had to build in a bunch of rural places they never would've built otherwise). Public ownership of the wires was never part of the bargain.
[1] The same is true for power lines. They're mostly privately owned. The power utilities are subject to various regulations (rate regulation, etc.) but the wires were built with private money and are private property. In contrast, most water/sewer lines are owned by the municipality, and paid for by the public through taxes and hook-up fees for new construction.
Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised
#174One 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.
Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised
#175As 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...
Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
spectrum, specifically the 2.4ghz band, where google was looking for wireless alternatives is unlicensed no ?
He was most likely referring to the proper noun "Spectrum", rather than the common noun "spectrum". It's a cable tv/internet company owned by Charter.
FKA Time Warner Cable
Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised
#177Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised
#178I 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…
There was so much news about all of the dark fiber that Google was buying up. Every time it popped up in the news, it seemed like people assumed it was for the Google Fiber project.
I wonder if a lot of that ended up being used for GCP datacenter connections?
Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's billionaires launching cars into space and fighting for personal wealth at the detriment of the rest of the society. What?
"launching cars into space" is a reference to the recent launch of a Tesla into space. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falc...
I know that, but to the detriment of society?
Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised
#180I 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…
Comcast still charges too much, but since Google Fiber they stopped sending out techs who barely know more than the troubleshooting checklist they use when you call.