Google Fiber reduces staff by 50% | Hacker News Reader

Google Fiber reduces staff by 50%

multichannel.com

28 pointsrakibtg16 comments

Linked FTA: "However, a source with direct knowledge of the situation has now responded to Light Reading about the report by saying these claims of drastic job cuts at Google Fiber are false." (emphasis mine)

http://www.lightreading.com/gigabit/gigabit-cities/google-fi...

That's interesting. I give The Information the benefit of the doubt because of its established cred. But Light Reading, which I haven't read before, seems to at least be the kind of industry trade pub that would have useful contacts. The lack of non-official response seems strange, as according to the original report, this alleged action was initiated one month ago:

> But that’s only part of the story. Last month, Alphabet CEO Larry Page ordered Google Fiber’s chief, Craig Barratt, to halve the size of the Google Fiber team to 500 people, said the second person close to Alphabet. (The Google Fiber unit is now known as Access.)

Both accounts of the situation could be correct. The executive staff could be working on a layoff that will happen in the near future.

I like the title on the original article, "Alphabet to Cut Google Fiber Staff In Half". Makes me wonder if I get to keep one arm and one leg, or if I will have to learn to walk on my hands instead.

Not really. They'll keep your front half.

Well, that's disappointing. Maybe if they'd done more installs and less PR...

Webpass is only for multi-unit buildings with rooftop line of sight to a Webpass node. They put a directional antenna on the roof. Webpass needs a 30-unit building built after 1995 before they will pay for the install, although they'll do a 10-unit building if paid. But if you're in a large multi-unit building in a big city, there's probably already some kind of network connection. (Probably Comcast, though.)

Maybe Sonic can buy up the remnants of Google's fiber operation. Sonic is plugging away in SF, wiring the Richmond and Sunset districts with gigabit fiber. Next, the Castro.

There is also proper fiber, not just the LOS wireless. They use both depending on building/area.

I live in a newish area. New enough that the house has fiber instead of copper. However, it wasn't until recently that AT&T started offering 1gbps service at $70/mo.

Prior to that, AT&T offered 6mbps service implemented using DSL over fiber complete with a DSL modem. So I was stuck with Comcast.

I like to think Google Fiber saying they were coming helped push AT&T into doing something with the fiber. For that, I've benefited from Google Fiber.

To AT&T: WTF? You had nice fiber in the area for years and the best you could do was emulate POTS?! Better late than never I guess.

Can we please have a less definitive title? This is rumor/clickbait masquerading as established fact.

What did Google miss in attempting to drive the Fiber program.

Reading some of the executives from other companies, they were surprised by their price points after installation. Frontier / Verizon FiOS had just gone through a country wide installation, was there no one to poach for knowledge?

Or was it another play by Google to get some sort of bureaucratic favor or other item.

Bureaucratic favor was basically the whole plan, if you look at their spats with AT&T and their lobbying with various local governments. In Austin, for example, they wanted access to AT&T poles at rates only available to telecoms, but they didn't want to have to register as a telecom, which would subject them to additional regulation. (Regulations that their competitors like AT&T and Comcast have to follow.)

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/why-att-says-it-c...

I think it's because it acquired webpass and has more people than it needs.

But I am very surprised about less than expected subscriber growth. But what do they expect when they're only in small cities and are unable to get into big cities, where the potential for growth is much higher?

I wonder if there really is a big appeal for 1Gbps fiber for most people right now. I want fiber badly but i know that many more reasonable perople are perfectly fine with their 50-200Mbps cable/DSL connections and see no reason to upgrade. Also when it comes to getting Fiber to the building and distributing costs, almost nobody is willing to pay that until they absolutely have to.

So weird how they announced a big build out in San Jose and then backed out very soon after.

So...we've trusted Google with robotics, fibre and RSS. There, they failed. Sometimes understandably, sometimes less so.

We continue to trust them with the monetisation of content, i.e. advertising, email and search.

Is this fine? If society's necessities fall in the shade of the government's "immortality umbrella," are we okay with email sitting alongside paint manufacturing? Or is the real problem that ISPs don't fail often enough?

Now, as for email? Yes, email is important, but the root of control in email is DNS; the whole system is setup so that it's cheap and easy to own a second-level domain. Do that. If you own your own second level domain and you host it with google, it's easy enough to move it elsewhere if google shuts down their email. If you host your email on a second level domain you don't control? you are at the mercy of the owner of that domain, be that owner profit-seeking or not.

Personally, I think the domain system is actually pretty good right now. If you want a domain more officially controled by the government, you can get a .us second-level domain, if you are from the same country as I am, for rather less than a dollar a month.

That, and read up on the registrar/registry setup. Your email, at least the parts of your email I couldn't re-create over the course of a lazy afternoon with some open-source software, really does have some heavy government involvement.

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