Hacker News Reader

Comment by elteto | Hacker News Reader

I'm still salty about Google Fiber. So much potential and Google just... gave up on it? Google giving up on things is basically a meme now, but back then I couldn't really understand why. Customers raved about it, everyone loved it. You could see the entrenched ISPs in an area magically drop their prices whenever Google Fiber came into town. Then they started facing regulatory hurdles thrown by the incumbents and it felt (or I felt) at that point that they just didn't want the fight. I couldn't understand, this absolute behemoth of a company, just laying down and giving up.

View on HN

It seemed like they'd given up in 2016 with the announcement to stop expansion. But it seems like they've got the ball rolling again, probably at a slower pace. They announced last year that they're expanding into 22 new areas.

Recently here in Charlotte NC they have rolled out access to 5 and 8 Gbps connections. More than I have need for (I don't want to upgrade to > 1 Gbps networking haha), but great to see the investment.

I’m kind of in the same boat. I average around 1.2Gbps and I’m not sure why I would upgrade to anything faster.

Is that symmetric?

Most of their plans (1, 5, 8) have symmetrical speeds. The "2 Gig" plan is asymmetrical with 2 Gbps down and 1 Gbps up.

I always thought of things like Fiber, Fi, Auto, etc as more "pressure" projects. AT&T is the only service provider in the area and charging $50/mo for up to 20mbps download? Bring in Fiber, and within a few weeks of announcing AT&T introduces a 1Gig plan for $60/mo. I watched this happen in the wild. But the thing here is that anyone being on the internet benefits Google because how much control they have over it. Same goes for phones/android. Auto increases maps (even 3rd parties buying data from Google maps and using it in their own map system).

But it is bittersweet. Because it only works if people buy into the google product but then google often does a rugpull. I think most people are probably better off but there are definitely casualties.

If you think about why Google was doing Google Fiber, it was to increase users' bandwidth, not really to take over home internet service. Their announcement of city selection resulted in incumbents in those selected areas doing rollouts even before Google could get site selection done. At that point, the mission was accomplished, and Google didn't need to do anything.

But, they can't really do that trick a second time, so everybody else is slowly waiting for the existing lines in the ground / on the poles to deteriorate to the point where incumbents have to rollout new stuff.

But at the same time, they always have struggled in finding alternative verticals to make money from, outside of search and ads. That’s why I always thought their end goal with Fiber was to own the pipe and whatever else was at the other end. They could have become a major ISP in the USA.

But broadband can't generate Googly margins and they failed to find breakthroughs to reduce fiber costs.

Cloud also can't generate Googly margins but they're willing to invest in that.

Cloud margins are pretty big. Or they should be given what they charge.

Google already works at a cloud level. I wouldn't be surprised if Google cloud isn't part R&D for internal systems.

I think the costs were just too much to expand as rapidly as they wanted. They experimented with "nanotrenching" in Louisville, burying cable directly in 2-inch-deep channels directly in the road surface, which ended up in disaster [1]; shortly after, they "paused" expansion, fired their CEO, and went through layoffs.

1: https://gizmodo.com/when-google-fiber-abandons-your-city-as-...

I lived in Louisville when this happened, and met the guy who came in second place for Louisville portion of Google Fiber.

1. Yes, the microtrench became a disaster, because the material they used to cover the drench stuck to people's tires when it was hot outside and it pulled up. Paving over it would have solved the problem

2. Google chose to hire a lawyer to run the project. The second place guy had installed fiber his entire life, had personal relationships with the people that owned the right of ways to connection poles (ISP). The ISP folks did not like the lawyer and did not work with him and that's why it really died. (according to mr. second place)

> Yes, the microtrench became a disaster, because the material they used to cover the drench stuck to people's tires when it was hot outside and it pulled up. Paving over it would have solved the problem

Paving it over would mean digging the trench deeper, meaning it's no longer a "nanotrench" (Google's experiment) but a "microtrench" (a very popular method of fiber deployment). These are trenches that are cut down below the road surface (12-24 inches), filled in, and paved/sealed on top to match the road surface. For this you need conduit, filler material, asphalt sealant, and a bit more labor.

That was the point they decided to give up on wires and invested in SpaceX with the intent of blasting the internet into space. Like.. that'd be faster than dealing with the government at every single pole within disputed territory like they had been. Getting the incumbent to come out at a pre-agreed time to be there and check the site before they worked or assist, for example. So they took a moonshot instead.

Seems like its starting to work?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com