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

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

#261

Post by diminoten »

bsder wrote: post #140
samelawrence wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> This is a business plan. It is, but not because they have a plan beyond it, though. Cox/Time-Warner/etc. basically shook down Google for money a couple of years ago. Google backed down and the last-mile ISPs thought they won. Google, of course, was extremely unhappy to painfully discover that there was insufficient competition if the ISP's decided to play dirty and block their ads. So, Google now looks at the ISP's…

But it is profitable, isn't it? Google keeps telling everyone that they're not going into the fiber business to lose money.

I think what's more important is that they're willing to spend money on fiber that they could spend elsewhere to get better returns. Returns on being an ISP probably aren't as good as returns on other kinds of infrastructure, at least up front.

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

#262

Post by nl »

hyperpape wrote: post #227
rayiner wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "capture" part of the phrase necessarily means corruption. It's where incumbents control the regulatory process to keep competitors out. Unintended consequences from regulation is not "capture." In every city I've studied, incumbents are bound by the same requirement to build-out their network as potential competitors. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but the only one that comes to mind is Google Fiber: the…

I've never felt that implication.If companies engage in effective (but legal) lobbying to benefit themselves at the public expense, that's regulatory capture even if it's not literally corruption. I guess it could be an argument about what corruption means, but I think that people underestimate how dysfunctional the legislative and regulatory processes can be even without any legal violations.

Self interested lobbying is different to regulatory capture.

Even Wikipedia says:

Regulatory capture is a form of political corruption that occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special concerns of interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.

I don't think I could say it better. Regulatory capture is different to lobbying because the regulatory agencies act in the interest of the company instead of the public. Lobbying is when the company puts forward its own interest.

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

#263

Post by mrgriscom »

mbreese wrote: post #46
daigoba66 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my market (Atlanta) it's not even really about the speed. Granted Comcast is far more expensive per mbps than Google Fiber. It is "fast enough" except that Comcast will cap data usage to about 300 GB per month before charging fees.

Maybe they are targeting area that have data caps? Perhaps that's one reason why Google hasn't announced anything in the Bay Area.

Google said that any fiber project in CA is basically a non-starter due to all the hoops they'd have to jump through to comply with CA's environmental impact assessment laws.

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

#265

Post by rjbwork »

ubertaco wrote: post #192

Sadly, though, the Atlanta rollout only goes as far north as Sandy Springs and Smyrna. No love for those of us up here in Cherokee county. Hopefully it'll at least scare Comcast and AT&T into stepping up their game. I'd be really thrilled if it straight-up killed Windstream.

But also no love for places near Atlanta like Decatur, Avondale Estates, College Park. They're just gonna go for the core + rich northern suburbs. It's a business decision and I get it, but hopefully they'll expand out to those areas soon. To many of those communities in the southern unincorporated areas of fulton/dekalb and southern near-suburbs, free "high speed" internet will be a HUGE boon to the younger generations.

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

#266

Post by chrismcb »

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…

While I agree that Page has more goals than pure financial gain, I don't see how those other goals really play into fiber. More bandwidth to Americans means more potential money for Google. No one else was increasing the bandwidth, so google is trying to jump start the process. But they are doing it purely for financial gain. It is just a bonus that it also benefits consumers. But isn't that how free markets are supposed to work?

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

#267

Post by blueskin_ »

samelawrence wrote: post #113
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…

Steal even more of your personal data, I'm sure.

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

#268

Post by ericd »

rayiner wrote: post #180
enjo wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the opposite of anti-competitive from my perspective.

Dumping a product on the market at below-cost in order to force your competitors out of business is classic anti-competitive conduct.

Downvotes seem unwarranted, this is the definition of "predatory pricing", which is just a company using the profits from one business to undercut in another with the intent of forcing competitors out of business.

Though I don't know that it really applies here - they're unlikely to drive TWC-Comcast out of business by pricing low in just a few areas. It's more of a concern when it's a large monopolistic company doing it to regional competitors to maintain their monopoly.

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

#269

Post by javert »

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…

> locked up the market, injected their own lobbyists into Washington

Ergo, it was not a free market and it was not laissez-faire capitalism.

In a free market, i.e. laissez-faire capitalism, anybody is free to do whatever they want as long as they don't initiate the use of force, including the government, so you could not get into the situation you describe in the first place.

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

#270

Post by javert »

nickik wrote: post #208
rayiner wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dumping a product on the market at below-cost in order to force your competitors out of business is classic anti-competitive conduct.

Thats the kind of idiotic arguments that were put forth during the early progressivist movment. It used to be that anti-competitive meant actually doing something bad, the progressiv transformed it to 'companys who might do something bad in the future'. How about we use common sence and let competition work its way until we actually OBSERVE bad effects instead of condemming a company because they might do something b…

You are right but it's deeper than that. "Anti-competitive" is not even a valid concept.

Companies are supposed to do everything they can to beat their competition. That is simply called "being competitive."

It's kind of like the word "progressive" as in "the Progressive movement." It's a linguistic deception that started out as a kind of dishonest propoganda.

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