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Fiber infrastructure is expensive.

Did they invest a lot on fibre infrastructure? There are only in a couple of smallish cities and towns and most of their service deployment is based on existing infrastructure, AFAIK. Maybe I have missed something...

They're tracking to spend upwards of $3-$3.5 billion in 2016 on Google Fiber. They're likely spending a fair sum on infrastructure as well as everything else.

(from Q4 2015)

"In the earnings announcement this week, Alphabet (the parent company of Google) shared that most of it’s $869 million in capital spend on “Other Bets” went to Google Fiber, according to CFO Ruth Porat, and that Google Fiber would continue to be a driver of CapEx spending going forward."

https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2015/Q4_google_earnin...

That is capital spending. They have lost more than $600mn (on $166mn of revenue), without including the $280mn in capex and the $145mn in stock-based compensation.

would it be valid to say G put more than $1B (657+280+145) in its R&D? that would be way ahead than most fed agencies including darpa for just 1 Q.

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