Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised • Hacker News Board

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#161

Post by FussyZeus » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

axaxs wrote: post #149

rayiner wrote: post #137

Earlier 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…

While I absolutely agree with you, that setup would have been untenable. I had an ATT line hanging about 6 feet off the ground(in Louisville, pole neighborhood). Took ATT multiple calls and visits, a total process of about a month, to adjust that one line on one pole. Now imagine a citywide rollout.

Is that because of legitimate difficulty in the work being done, or because ATT is completely bureaucratically incompetent?

I'm all for having a set of processes and procedures in place, especially for an entity as large as ATT, but even by the standards of telecos their internal workings are a Franz Kafka nightmare.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#162

Post by jsmthrowaway » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

hoschicz wrote: post #121

smileysteve wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what will happen on a super bowl night? Wireless multicast means that the superbowl will be sent out once to many subscribers.

That is unfortunately not the reality. It is impossible to do Internet-scale multicast streams without IPv6 and cooperation from the broadcaster.

> It is impossible to do Internet-scale multicast streams without IPv6

Wait, what? How did IPv6 become a multicast dependency? PIM/IGMP is difficult, but is quite possible without MLD/IPv6. Don't forget class D space.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#163

Post by jeffreyrogers » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #75

adamcharnock wrote: post #36

I 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…

> PS: I think a similar argument can be made for Tesla. I don't think it is a given that Musk intends for Tesla's success to be an economic one. I think it is though, but probably not in the automotive industry; ATM it still has a lead, just like Apple had for a while on the smartphone market, but I think it'll be passed left and right by the competition. But by then, Tesla won't be (primarily) a car company anymore,…

People always say Tesla is a battery company, but as far as I know their batteries are made by Panasonic and while I'm sure they're doing research on their own batteries, I don't know why you'd expect them to be more successful than a company that already makes batteries and employs researchers to improve them.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#164

Post by fulafel » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #162

hoschicz wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is unfortunately not the reality. It is impossible to do Internet-scale multicast streams without IPv6 and cooperation from the broadcaster.

> It is impossible to do Internet-scale multicast streams without IPv6 Wait, what? How did IPv6 become a multicast dependency? PIM/IGMP is difficult, but is quite possible without MLD/IPv6. Don't forget class D space.

Because of ipv4 NAT maybe?

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#165

Post by obmelvin » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

ailideex wrote: post #96

cdancette wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where are you living? This sounds a lot like being due a high level of corruption. I think that's one challenge to overcome, you're right that public services are not automatically better

Where I live is irrelevant as this speaks to the point that "profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service.". They can and do all the time. Maybe not in France and maybe not in USA - but the for profit model works just fine here. Why it works so well some places and not at all in others is the real kicker. And yes the problem is exceptionally high levels of corruption - but if the Govt does no…

It is hard to make an argument if you refuse to share the 'source of your information' so to speak.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#166

Post by tehwebguy » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #137

kyrra wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Fiber hit a lot of roadblocks along the way that slowed things down. You have the lawsuit from AT&T against local government in Louisville[0]. There was also a lot of arguments[1][2] around the country for Google trying to access utility poles to hang their wires. Incumbents tried their hardest to prevent Google from hanging new wires. Many of the laws in-place today make it difficult for new companies to hang…

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.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#167

Post by Bartweiss » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

demygale wrote: post #130

endtime wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for Fiber for two years. It was both (wanting to succeed as a business and wanting to shift the industry), with a primary focus on succeeding as a business, or at least that was what the internal messaging was. I won't comment on any possible changes in the last couple years or why they may have happened, except to say that to the best of my knowledge, at no point was the sentiment, "We've shifted the indust…

GF suffers the same fate of every other Google initiative: new exec decides it can't advance his career so it's starved to death in favor of something shinier. Google won't save us any more than Musk will. It's billionaires launching cars into space and fighting for personal wealth at the detriment of the rest of the society.

> billionaires launching cars into space

Can you help me understand the ire over that launch?

It's standard that new rockets are tested with a dummy payload to avoid destroying something valuable. Typically that's steel plates, but the Falcon Heavy was going to go up with a useless payload regardless. Saturn I-IV did the same, and V only had a payload because it was a module test and a launch test rolled into one.

I suppose the Tesla took up some extra man-hours fitting the car for launch, and the rocket wasn't aimed somewhere it would be destroyed (though I can't tell whether they usually are).

But seeing this spun as "SpaceX won't save us, they're just shooting cars into space!" is baffling to me; it was some personal wealth spent on adding spectacle to a totally normal rocket launch.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#168

Post by soundwave106 » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #145

kaennar wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how would you carry a model like that over to a place as big as the USA? Montana, Wyoming, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and just about every state that isn't on the East/West coast would have an incredibly difficult time executing this kind of plan because of the distance between communities. I'm not saying that a similar model wouldn't be easy to implement in the boroughs of New York, Boston, SV, Austin, etc., but w…

> But how would you carry a model like that over to a place as big as the USA? Montana, Wyoming, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and just about every state that isn't on the East/West coast would have an incredibly difficult time executing this kind of plan because of the distance between communities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act > I'm not saying that a similar model wouldn't be easy to implement…

America as a whole does have a lot more remote areas. France only has one department with a population density of less than 10 per square kilometer according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_departments_by_...). Compare that to America and note all of the counties with a population density of less than 10 per square mile (https://www.census.gov/dmd/www/pdf/512popdn.pdf) -- and a square mile is a larger unit than a square km. Fiber absolutely might be cost prohibitive in certain areas.

I still agree with you, though, that America could do something if there was a strong enough will. Even if the cost of fiber is prohibitive, it seems like there are wireless technologies out there that would be better than the zilch broadband 23 million Americans currently have. (https://www.npr.org/2018/03/03/590546371/rural-communities-t...)

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#169

Post by osteele » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #43

adamcharnock wrote: post #36

I 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…

> I don't think it is a given that Musk ever intended for Tesla's success to be an economic one. What did Musk tell investors?

My sense, from the press and from personal acquaintances, is that a lot of early investors, and at least some later investors, were impact investors[1]. DBL Investors is a notable example of an early Tesla impact investor. The successor, DBL Partners, is long on all three Musk companies.[2]

This doesn't mean that Tesla didn't need to be an economic success. It does mean that economic success wasn't the only criterion, or as highly ranked as it is for a non-impact company with non-impact investors.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_investing

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBL_Partners

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#170

Post by puzzle » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #123

Tech companies are incredibly profitable. Fixed costs are really low. Employees are probably the biggest cost. This is in stark contrast to the likes of, say, Comcast, Spectrum or Verizon that have massive capex budgets. Building a broadband network is an interesting business. I like to describe it as a hyper-local national business. I saw this because every municipality has different rules (eg compare getting pole a…

The crazy thing is that Google invested in wireless technology, acquired companies and filed patents even before the Fiber announcement. Yet, here we are.