Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

googleblog.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 287 posts

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#111

Post by jimktrains2 »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #103
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what happened when GMail offered 2 GB inboxes. The competition got serious.

> The competition got serious. It's interesting how pure competition and "rational self-interest" got us the likes of Comcast and Cox and Verizon and all these other awful, awful companies. They quickly locked up the market, injected their own lobbyists into Washington, and then were content to provide a poor service for a lot of money. What is shaking them out of their complacency now is not "the market" or "competi…

> Perhaps it's time to go back to the drawing board, and figure out what's wrong with these purely mechanistic models of society and the market

I've always had the impression that it's more a matter of timescales. Places do what's best for them in the next year, not the next 50yrs. If companies thought further ahead and building long term plans and potential would be a reason to spend capital, then I think we'd see a very different market, in many markets.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#112

Post by acomjean »

avn2109 wrote: post #62
slowmovintarget wrote: post #5

>> It’s been nearly five years since we offered to build a fiber-optic network in one U.S. city as an experiment — and were met with overwhelming enthusiasm. I suspect the enthusiasm had to do with Google not acting like a phone/cable company. My own hope is that this remains true, and that they come to the Boston area.

Excavation projects are famously successful in Boston, so the Google Fiber people are probably chomping at the bit to get their shovels in Beantown dirt. But seriously, your hypothesis about GF's non-evil fundamental DNA is a good one. It makes for a much better user experience.

Well when the dust settled we (Boston) did get a better highway system and a second tunnel to the airport, and only 10x more expensive than expected!

We need some faster pipes in Boston/ Cambridge. As a place that wants to be a tech hub, its a little embarrassing...

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#113

Post by samelawrence »

rkalla wrote: post #6

For anyone interested... the whole motivation of Google Fiber to motivate ISPs to stop gouging us does exactly what it is designed to do. Cox, in Phoenix, miraculously doubled everyone's speeds > 100mbps last year because they were concerned with our general happiness levels and wanted to show their affection. Nope... that's not it. Ran into two leads at Smash Burger in June of 2014 and asked them on the spot "When a…

Also worth noting that Google isn't doing this because:

1) They want to be an ISP

2) They feel bad for America and want us to enjoy faster internet.

They're doing it because they have plans for products which necessitate nationwide high speed internet. I don't know what those plans are... maybe making YouTube the everything-video-delivery-system, maybe massively collaborative work tools as they expand Google Docs et al... maybe something we haven't even heard about... but they've got something coming that they require Fiber for.

This is a business plan.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#114

Post by adventured »

nolok wrote: post #40
evo_9 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that reality one wonder why the incumbents don't raise all their speeds to dissuade google from entering there various markets. Perhaps the shear magnitude of their collective greed obscures their reasoning?

Because you're talking about a few cities affected, while the incumbents have a very large number of them in their markets. Waiting to get the names, and changing only those, allow them to keep milking cities where google fiber is not coming (which is most of their market).

Google doesn't need to add its service to every city. If you nail the top ~50 cities, then the rest must compete regardless. It adds massive pressure at a national level when you're talking about tens of millions of people having access to 1gbps, it becomes a cultural talking point, average people start applying pressure to politicians over it.

If you put a 1gbps service in Cincinnati, that forces Cleveland to have to compete with the economic gravity that generates. And they will either respond through attempting to build their own muni broadband or enticing eg Google fiber, or they will suffer and Cincinnati will draw people, capital and talent away from Cleveland.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#116

Post by throwaway90999 »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #103
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what happened when GMail offered 2 GB inboxes. The competition got serious.

> The competition got serious. It's interesting how pure competition and "rational self-interest" got us the likes of Comcast and Cox and Verizon and all these other awful, awful companies. They quickly locked up the market, injected their own lobbyists into Washington, and then were content to provide a poor service for a lot of money. What is shaking them out of their complacency now is not "the market" or "competi…

"with goals beyond pure financial gains and rock-bottom self-interest."

This doesn't paint an accurate picture. Google isn't deploying Fiber out of any notion of selflessness. This is a competitive play, and a very good one at that.

You say selfless ideals, I say this is exactly how "the market" and "competition" are commonly understood to function -- in the absence of corruption, regulatory capture and state granted monopolies.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#118

Post by jscheel »

evo_9 wrote: post #16

Is there any rime or reason to the cities that Google chooses to put fiber into? Is it a matter of more friendly local government, less resistant local teleco's, a combination thereof or some other factors? Just seems the locations aren't exactly tech hubs so I'm trying to get a better idea of how the expansion works.

Nashville is becoming a pretty good city for tech.

Google has taken a pretty good interest in us lately: http://archive.tennessean.com/article/20130925/BUSINESS04/30...

We have the second-fastest growing market of tech jobs: http://fortune.com/2014/12/23/tech-job-trends-2015/

We are attracting a large amounts of college grads: http://www.businessinsider.com/city-observatory-report-on-th...

Of course, I'm partial since I live here. Unfortunately, I'm in an area outside of metro that I'm sure won't get fiber.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#119

Post by kevinwallace »

evanm wrote: post #54

I'm fully aware of the extreme cost of rolling out a fiber infrastructure in new locations, but I still wonder why Google isn't more aggressive with their expansion. While the upfront costs are great, they more or less have guaranteed success in most major cities. Nobody likes the incumbent telcos--they're hated all over the US. I just dream of a world in which we aren't getting raped by Comcast, TWC, and Cox. They a…

I assume your comment was not meant to come off as hostile, but please don't use the word 'rape' to refer to things other than sexual violence. Doing so creates a hostile environment and minimizes the experiences of rape victims.
Post reply on HN