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Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

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Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#341

Post by bathat »

mahyarm wrote: post #242
pavel_lishin wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which requirements are you talking about, specifically?

Airlines enforce minimum check-in times of 1.5 hrs before domestic flights and around 2.5hrs for international flights. With international flights, they love to have you wait in line to check in and get your ticket with an actual person. They won't let you print off your ticket online, or when you purchase it half the time with international flights. They do this because they know that people can be stuck for 30-60 m…

Here's what I would suggest: Part with $400-500 to join your airline's airport lounge/club for a year. The saved time and stress vastly outweighs the cost if you fly more than five or six times a year--if you fly that much it's usually worthwhile to try to stick with a single airline anyway for the frequent flier miles and the perks they hand out to those with "Elite" status (or whatever your airline calls it). If you fly less often it makes more sense to just buy day passes.

Most clubs have showers, free wifi, numerous power outlets, free snacks and adult beverages and, most importantly, a quiet place to relax before your flight (and none of those annoying "The TSA has recently blah blah blah blah" announcements over the PA). Many airlines offer reciprocal benefits with other airlines' lounges (for example, when flying on Alaska, you can use the Boardroom at an airport without an Admiral's Club).

Earlier this week I had to catch a flight departing at 6:15am. Instead of waking up at 3am, I spent my mandatory pre-flight airport time taking a shower (shampoo, soap, a razor and, of course, clean towels complements of the lounge), eating breakfast (free coffee, muffins and an apple) and catching up on email.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#342

Post by repsilat »

jonknee wrote: post #262
bound008 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not doing much of a job of disrupting the tv part of the deal. $120/mo with Comcast gets you the same channels, Internet, dvr, and telephone service with no contract. They also have customer service. When you call Comcast about a service outage, they prorate it every single time. The real disruption here is free Internet. And for that I tip my hat to google. Disruption to cable would be a la carte channel se…

No, the real disruption here is speeds 50x faster without any caps. There is no comparison with Comcast, but their fast package of 105/10 Mbps is $199.95 a month. Yes, 10 megabits of upload... They have a limited available tier of 305/65 Mbps (FWIW this plan is a day old and probably to fight FiOS Quantum, it used to be 50Mbps) which runs $299.95. http://www.comcast.com/internet-service.html tl;dr Comcast is a joke.

Another point of difference is that Google's $120 plan comes with a free Nexus 7 and 2TB of storage.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#343

Post by karlshea »

ferongr wrote: post #316
karlshea wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has to be latency issues, but as anyone that used to play Quake over dial-up can tell you: you get used to it.

A local client does not suffer from input latency and the client does not validate camera movement (mouselook) to server snapshots . There's also some leeway into other kinds of movement so latency jitter and a few dropped packets do not inadvertently disrupt the player's flow. Furthermore, the server does latency compensation that is crucial for actually hitting anything, especially with hitscan weapons lacking AoE…

That's true, I remember there being lots of prediction and compensation in QuakeWorld especially.

I haven't played the OnLive stuff so I'm not sure what it's like, but with a decent connection I'm guessing it's something that your brain just ends up dealing with. Although if it's anything like using RDC for a long period of time I can see it getting annoying.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#344

Post by pbhjpbhj »

wmf wrote: post #315
chimeracoder wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're leaving out a very key point: because of an antitrust case against AT&T, they were forbidden from turning their non-telephone technology into proprietary products. In other words, they were essentially conducting research for the public interest at no real cost to the public . That's very different from any definition of a 'monopoly' that I'm aware of, and very different from modern network providers. Many fac…

No cost to the public? Instead of doing research they could have provided better support (or perhaps lower prices) to their actual customers .

>they could have provided better support (or perhaps lower prices) to their actual customers //

You can level this at any company making a profit. Are you happy with companies making profit? [If so] Well then why not companies using what would be profits on beneficial research.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#345

Post by yxhuvud »

maratd wrote: post #102
api wrote: post #29

Thank GOD they're disrupting this industry. All the telcos are worthless "Soviet bureaus" that deserve death. It's really sort of amazing to think about. In all my years on this planet I have never been pleased with a telecom company. Never. I have always felt like I was paying far too much for inferior service, contemptible customer support, and endless efforts to further "monetize" me through harassing phone calls…

> contemptible customer support Because Google will be so much better? Look, I hate telcos just like the next guy, but the suckage is mostly due to the nature of the business. They form natural monopolies and that sort of thing doesn't lead to customer satisfaction. The only way that sector is going to get truly disrupted is through gigabit wireless internet. You can have multiple competitors in one space with compar…

Exactly why is it outright illegal? I guess Google can make a fair argument that the added exposure to google ads will pay for the running costs of the connection.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#346

Post by pbhjpbhj »

One day Google will launch something new and there will be a highlighted note at the top "based on your IP this release doesn't apply where you are [and probably won't ever]" and then I won't need to stare blankly for 10 seconds at an address form working out how it's possible to enter a real [read: my] address in to that weird configuration.

But then again, maybe not.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#347

Post by Tuna-Fish »

ferongr wrote: post #290
Kerrick wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why own a game system... There's actually a service called "OnLive" that streams games, it seems pretty cool. It's a mashup between Steam and Netflix; you don't have to have a gaming PC to render the frames, just a fast Internet connection to stream them.

Not until we can push data across distances faster than the speed of light. The input and video latency makes it impractical for all but the slowest-paced of games.

Depends on the distance. I have 14ms roundtrip latency to the closest google CDN -- that's less than what the typical monitor adds. Most of world's population lives in cities where putting up a game CDN is potentially worthwhile.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#348

Post by mythz »

Tloewald wrote: post #340
fromhet wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really depends - as you know Google's motto is "don't be evil". And it is apparent that the other american telcos don't share this motto. If Google manages to stay not evil it is the only way they will be relevant in the future. I think it is possible, and it's the only way to survive competition.

Yeah google has a nice motto.

It's the worst company motto of all time!

They seemingly can't make any pro-company decision without being accused of consorting with the Devil.

In contrast everyone knows Apple just cares about Apple. Whenever they do something evil, it just gets labelled as "Oh, that's just Apple being Apple".

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#349

Post by Jacqued »

wmf wrote: post #315
chimeracoder wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're leaving out a very key point: because of an antitrust case against AT&T, they were forbidden from turning their non-telephone technology into proprietary products. In other words, they were essentially conducting research for the public interest at no real cost to the public . That's very different from any definition of a 'monopoly' that I'm aware of, and very different from modern network providers. Many fac…

No cost to the public? Instead of doing research they could have provided better support (or perhaps lower prices) to their actual customers .

Would it have been better ? I'll prefer a company that produces massive advances like these to one that would just provide better service or lower costs for some customers at some point in time.

We had some big advances in France too, when telcos sold telephone for stratospheric prices. Now they still charge too much, but just use their cartel agreements to get more revenue. I know which one I prefer.

Full disclosure : i'm from Europe, so not a real capitalist.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#350

Post by Nrsolis »

timthorn wrote: post #303
larrys wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just because bell labs was owned by a telco" They were able to do that because they were a public utility with guaranteed profits. The stock and earnings were stable ("widow and orphan" money was an expression for people who needed these safe investments). Something important to keep in mind. Really not possible to do that in today's competitive disruptive environment.

IBM isn't a public utility with guaranteed profits, but they do a fair amount of both fundamental and applied research.

IBM has one of the most extensive patent portfolios known to man.

Whatever basic research they do, it's definitely in pursuit of digits for the bottom line.

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