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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

I wish Palo Alto could get out of their limited and never very awesome metro fiber business (run by the city, like their other utilities) by getting Google as a partner. For Google, it would make sense from a marketing perspective -- if I got 1Gbps fiber at home in PA due to Google, I'd be more positively inclined toward the company in general (for working, M&A, other products, whatever).

San Francisco, I have zero hope for due to the totally dysfunctional city government, but Palo Alto, Mountain View, maybe EPA (for political reasons), Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino all seem pretty sanely governed.

If EPA had Google Fiber, I'd probably brave the (moderate, now) security risks, air quality, and floodplain.

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CA makes it impossible unfortunately. I wish you were right, but this state is setup to allow every crank to block any sort of development.

How does California make it impossible? State PUC, or just NIMBY culture?

I've posted this elsewhere, but take a look at the California Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), which is overlaid on top of the national version (NEPA). I've worked on projects in CA that hit CEPA problems, and the level of bureaucracy can be really hideous.

NIMBY stuff doesn't help either: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/face... ; that's primarily about housing, but there's a strong "People united against everything" front.

This: http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2011/11/15/no-att-lightspeed-inter... is about San Francisco, but Palo Alto is not exactly known for its developer-friendly environment either.

Jseigler's done a great job of it, but you can ask Google themselves - CA's CEQA process is hell on earth. From the horse's mouth, so to speak:

"Many fine California city proposals for the Google Fiber project were ultimately passed over in part because of the regulatory complexity here brought about by CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act] and other rules. Other states have equivalent processes in place to protect the environment without causing such harm to business processes, and therefore create incentives for new services to be deployed there instead."

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/04/google-fib...

San Francisco, I have zero hope for due to the totally dysfunctional city government

Are you voting in municipal elections? If not, you're part of the problem, not the solution.

I don't live or work in San Francisco, and would mostly choose a moderately quick and only fairly painful death to that option.

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