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Comment by samfisher83 | Hacker News Reader

Building infrastructure is hard. Even 100 years later we still have original AT&T (Verizon and AT&T) as the dominant telecommunications company.

Google also seems to just give up on a lot of its products: Google+ Hangouts Project Ara Google Buzz Google video Orkut Talk Meebo etc.

http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/visuel/2015/03/06/google-memori...

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I agree with some of this, but be reasonable.

It's silly to describe what happened to Google Video as "just giving up". They abandoned that specific product because it was getting no traction. Instead, they won the entire category for at least a generation by buying YouTube, working out all of its licensing issues, and integrating the best elements of Google Video's features and design. You'd be hard-pressed to argue they made was the wrong choice for anybody.

Meebo was practically an acqui-hire, never really a Google product.

DISCLAIMER: I'm a contractor who works at Google. My musings are my own and in no way represent the thoughts of any other entity.

I've dwelt on this quite a bit and have come to the conclusion that while Google is amazing at a lot of things it is not necessarily great for leveraging network effects - a domain handled much better by Facebook.

Google's core product is search, an awesome web utility. The next product often named is gmail - again, a utility. Then you have their Drive-oriented applications - Docs, Sheets, etc. which are all amazing... as standalone products that don't need other people to enhance its value.

The problem with G+, Hangouts (and other chat apps), and a variety of other products they have tried to develop is that they're trying to break into the social space - but the company isn't about social at it's core. While I appreciate that the company is trying to bring competition to the social space I think it should focus harder on areas where it has traditionally excelled - utilities that are convenient for individuals and made better by collaboration. If it wants to get into the social space it should break out a new company under Alphabet that can focus on that objective - but there's no reason to tie it directly to Google.

EDIT: I think Fiber can and will still play out strong, mind you.

Google's social projects were clones of models that were already successful. Buzz was a Twitter clone. G+ was a Facebook clone. A clone can get traction only if it's better than the original. That they were not apart from other factors.

I don't think it has anything to do with "core competency". Google was just the last (copycat) dog in the social game trying too hard to figure out what the cool kids want.

Yes, laying fiber line is hard. Which is why I think Fiber is pivoting. Look at this: https://webpass.net/blog/google-fiber-agrees-to-acquire-webp...

They do point-to-point wireless transmission. This is perfect for cities, where you can place these on rooftops instead of laying underground fiber.

I have webpass, it's quite good. However it's only available in large apartment complexes, and I'm not sure that will ever change given the nature of their approach.

building new infrastructure is much harder now than decades ago. It's been much easier for the companies to retain infrastructure

But everyone moving to fiber IS building new infrastructure. Sure, they're continuing to cash in on telephone wire and coax, but fiber is new infrastructure.

And Google discovered that you CAN'T just make money deploying Gigabit fiber for $60 a month. Getting even a 50 Mbps fiber circuit around here is hundreds of dollars a month.

Much (most?) "new" fiber is just companies lighting up existing dark fiber infrastructure.

The expensive part is "the last mile". I imagine laying down cable on the side of the I-70 is easier than laying fiber in Manhattan under the pavement, above the utilities, and above the subway system. Or finding space to put up those boxes to "land" the fiber optic cables for a neighborhood.

I know in some areas, whole towns are wired up with glass that isn't in use, but around here, I regularly see trenches being dug to run fiber. And nowhere near "to the home" yet even, but along major roads, to industrial parks, etc.

Actually, we don't have the original AT&T. They went bankrupt. Cingular Wireless bought the bankrupt assets and changed their name to AT&T. But yes, building infrastructure is hard.

Cingular is descendant of the original AT&T.

http://crooksandliars.com/files/vfs/2011/03/AT&T.jpg

Indeed. And there's the whole SBC part to the story as well. But the entity that was AT&T in the early 2000's still went belly up and was bought out largely for the logo and those three letters and a single ampersand :-)

The Entity that WAS AT&T became

Southwestern Bell - became AT&T inc by buying Ameritech, AT&T Corp. Pacific Telesis, BellSouth (all Baby Bells)

Bell Atlantic/NYNEX - merged to become Verizon buying GTE, MCI Worldcom along the way

US West - merged with Qwest, acquired and became CenturyLink

"the original AT&T" is those Baby Bells not just the empty shell that became AT&T Corp. (aka ATT Long Distance)

The takeaway is that the ORIGINAL AT&T split into 3 companies and swallowed GTE, MCI, Worldcom, and Qwest in the process. It ended up being a consolidation. 4 of the 7 baby bells are back together operating under the AT&T name, that's over half the old company.

In the early 2000's there was the "original AT&T", a separate wireless company called AT&T Wireless, then Cingular who was the wireless group/division of SBC (Southwestern Bell) and SBC themselves.

Consolidation started with Cingular buying AT&T Wireless. Then SBC bought AT&T and simply kept the AT&T brand. Eventually the Cingular brand went away and they went back to AT&T and AT&T Wireless.

Wheeeee! The AT&T of today is basically SBC with all the old assets rolled in. SBC bought AT&T, not the other way around.

Source: worked there through it all

> Google also seems to just give up on a lot of its products

Yes remember when the mantra was "don't be evil"? They also just let products linger w/o any or many improvements. Google voice is an example. Text to speech is in many cases totally worthless, even with clear speaking speakers.

I only read the Google Voice transcripts for comedic value. And if you approach it that way they're usually pretty funny.

"Hi Davy, thank you so much" becomes "Hey baby, I think so much". Brightens my day.

Which is especially odd given how good TTS is on Android, aka Google Assistant (nee Google Now). It easily outperforms Alexa, Siri, and Cortana. But clearly that's some other team...

I think “Don’t be evil” is way to amenable to mean “Don’t do what I personally don’t like”.

In this concrete example, I don’t think “Google cancelled a product” can be equated with “Google is evil”.

Well sure but it says "I don't care if you invested time and energy thinking this product would be around. Even though we make billions when it doesn't suit our business purpose we will make a decision that isn't in your interest but ours". And it's not like companies don't do this but they generally don't do it in the way that I have seen google do it with such callousness.

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