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Project Fi by Google

fi.google.com

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Re: Project Fi by Google

#41
post #6

No mention of family plan or data sharing. If I have 3 lines that use 10gb between them, will this still be cheaper?

from the FAQ: Does Project Fi have family plans or other plans for multiple users? No, we only support individual accounts during Project Fi's Early Access Program. If multiple people on your current wireless plan are interested in joining our early access program, each user is required to have a Project Fi account.

Re: Project Fi by Google

#43
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't be a market leader in everything. What do they lead aside from search, ads, and mobile OS? The really funny bit is that near the end of Steve Jobs's life (per the biography), Larry Page asked him for advice and of course he said "focus on doing a few things really well, cut out everything else." Seems Larry decided he knew better.

> What do they lead aside from search, ads, and mobile OS? Browser, email, self-driving cars. Lots of other stuff too...

> Browser

Leading in memory usage perhaps

Re: Project Fi by Google

#44
post #8

This is insane. I can't think of an industry that google is not trying to compete in. Auto industry, space industry, internet of things industry (Nest), internet/media industry, cable/internet provider industry, automobile industry, robotics industry, software industry, smartphone industry, pc industry now the telecom industry. I'm starting to expect Google to launch an airline here pretty soon. How can they possibly…

They are in everything but they aren't a leader in everything. In some markets they actually accelerate competition, especially in ones where there have been long-time monopolists (Google Fiber).

Re: Project Fi by Google

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't be a market leader in everything. What do they lead aside from search, ads, and mobile OS? The really funny bit is that near the end of Steve Jobs's life (per the biography), Larry Page asked him for advice and of course he said "focus on doing a few things really well, cut out everything else." Seems Larry decided he knew better.

That advice led to the closing down of many Google services. Apple doesn't just produce a single device, either.

But they make a line of laptops, a line of mobile devices, and some software. There's no iSpaceship or Apple Submarine(TM) yet -- if you told me Google had a sub bouncing around San Francisco Bay, I wouldn't even question it.

Re: Project Fi by Google

#46
Who handles support for this? Is it Google, or one of the carriers that Google's using? Who do you talk to if the handoff between carriers doesn't quite work? I've skimmed the FAQ and I didn't see that listed in there.

For context, I use Google Voice, and while it's really nice in a lot of ways, it has some unfortunate bugs that have persisted for years that it seems impossible to get support for. I no longer unconditionally recommend it to people because while being able to take calls from my computer and get transcripts of voicemails is great, it also pseudo-randomly decides to only direct some calls to devices where I'm not present with no notification on devices that I'm using and also drops a small percentage of texts (my guess is around 1%). Most people I talk to are horrified by the idea of texts getting dropped, and I don't recommend GV to those folks, although it's fine if that's a tradeoff you're ok with.

I understand that it's a beta and that bugs are expected, but it's a problem when you run into a bug that interferes with your ability to use your phone and there's no way to get support for it.

Phone carriers aren't exactly known for their stellar customer service, but at least with them, if you call back enough times or escalate to higher level support, you'll eventually get a resolution. As far as I can tell, that's not true of Google's phone related products.

Re: Project Fi by Google

#47

Has the nexus 6 aged well? early reviews made it sound pretty flawed.

I have one and I'm quite happy with it. The screen is almost too large to use but I'd still give it 4.5/5.

The best thing about it is the fact that it comes with no bloatware. My S3 had 2 or 3 bloatware apps that would crash on startup every single time.

Re: Project Fi by Google

#50
post #8

This is insane. I can't think of an industry that google is not trying to compete in. Auto industry, space industry, internet of things industry (Nest), internet/media industry, cable/internet provider industry, automobile industry, robotics industry, software industry, smartphone industry, pc industry now the telecom industry. I'm starting to expect Google to launch an airline here pretty soon. How can they possibly…

This looks to me like a pure "commoditize your complements" play. All of Google's products require great mobile internet everywhere. By getting involved in that market, they can help make it much more competitive (at the moment, cell reception is expensive and shit).

It's like Google Code. Google didn't particularly want to be in that business, but Sourceforge was complete shit, and the open source ecosystem was key to their business. So they competed, seriously improved on the status quo, and when something better came along (github), they backed away, job done.

So leading this market doesn't matter to google. If they got completely outcompeted, I'd say they'd be delighted.

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