9 ms·

This announcement needs a little bit of translation from the marketing language it's written in: > And thanks to the hard work of everyone on the Access team,

This announcement needs a little bit of translation from the marketing language it's written in: > And thanks to the hard work of everyone on the Access team, our business is solid: our subscriber base and revenue are growing quickly, and we expect that growth to continue. "We're not yet profitable." > We have refined our plan going forward to achieve these objectives. It entails us making changes to focus our business and product strategy. Importantly, the plan enhances our focus on new technology and deployment methods to make superfast Internet more abundant than it is today. "Building fiber infrastructure in cities isn't a viable business model." > For most of our “potential Fiber cities” — those where we’ve been in exploratory discussions — we’re going to pause our operations and offices while we refine our approaches. "We're not going to build out any more cities using this approach." > In this handful of cities that are still in an exploratory stage, and in certain related areas of our supporting operations, we’ll be reducing our employee base. "We're winding down Google Fiber operations and putting it on life support." > As for me personally, it’s been quite a journey over the past few years, taking a broad-based set of projects and initiatives and growing a focused business that is on a strong trajectory. And I’ve decided this is the right juncture to step aside from my CEO role. "I'm getting out of this while it still looks good." -- That's too bad. Google Fiber has put a lot of needed pressure on existing telecommunications mega-corps to improve their services. I really wanted to see it take off well enough to result in some major improvements to infrastructure around the country, but having worked for an ISP in a previous lifetime, I was skeptical that they'd be able to do it profitably. Last-mile fiber is expensive, expensive, expensive. I'm sure Comcast and Time Warner and friends are all breathing a sigh of relief.

sparky_ 10y ago
^ That's a great translation. RIP Google Fiber.
meshko 10y ago
Thanks, nice job. I must say I am more saddened by the way Google chose to word it than by the fact that they are killing it.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Google have been spewing gratuitously specious numbers for some years now. A piece in VentureBeat from 2012: http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/20/google-skews-google-plus-statistics/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/20/google-skews-google-plus-s... "This post on Google+ statistics is a billion* times better than any other post" But what concerns me most is that Google is touting these meaningless statistics in the hopes that journalists will misunderstand them and report that Google+ is seeing rapid growth. The bottom line is, those 60 percents, 80 percents and 90 million registered users are just there to mask the fact that Google doesn’t want to tell us how many people are actually using Google+. (Disclaimer: I helped lift the lid on actual G+ usage numbers.)
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    what's the trend on G+ usage? Any chance that in the near future we'll be able to search for anything with a '+' sign in it and get a relevant answer rather than some G+ page?
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      I haven't run a re-assessment, and I'm not aware that Stone Temple Consulting (who'd greatly expanded sampling based on my methods) have, though Eric Enge's mentioned doing so. There are a few sources which track online social network usage, and my experience has been that G+ trends are down, sufficiently enough that they've fallen off the survey's entirely. If you wan to trac total posting activity and trends per year, a Google search on "this site:plus.google.com" restricted by year should give a rough idea of how the relative quantity of English-lanugage posts are trending. I'm suggesting this as a nonsemantic, high-frequency, English word not likely to be biased strongly by annual trends. (Alternatively "upon" and "thus" are suggested by another person who's done similar research.) My informal sense is that people are tending to defect from the system. I'm very hesitant to apply personal impressions though due to the enormous sampling bias implied.
      - jacquesm 10y ago
gwern 10y ago
As usual, the news leaked out well in advance as rumors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12364270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12364270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12362830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12362830
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
interurban 10y ago
It certainly does sound like a riff on the "our incredible journey" format.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  I suspect this is not a coincidence. It looks to me like a coded message written by a real person trying to get a press release past a bunch of PR flacks.
paulsutter 10y ago
This is why I read the comments first, just avoided another painful article. Do people who communicate in spin-speak start to think that way on the inside too?
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  I sometimes wonder about that too.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  Oh that's an interesting question. When I speak a different languages I switch to thinking in that language (this goes for human and computer languages). If I talk with a Russian friend, I think in Russian. When use a functional programming language I switch to thinking in functional concepts (maps, folds, list comprehension, closures). When in an OO language think about composition and so on. So when they write that stuff I imagine for an hour they switch to "CEO mode" and think in those concepts, write things down. Then they become themselves [+]. Also the best propaganda is propaganda that is internalized, people often brainwash themselves, because it makes things easier and is much more effective than pretending to speak one thing but think another. [+] One can argue there is no such thing as "oneself" and we are all just a sequences of such personas or roles we play. But that's for a philosophical aside.
  - josephpmay 10y ago
    That's absolutely fascinating, because I personally always think the same "way." Are you aware of any research on this subject?
    - executesorder66 10y ago
      I always think in the language I am currently speaking/listening to. And I'm pretty sure everyone else does. As for programming languages, I myself haven't done functional programming, but I'd imagine if I did, I would temporarily discard any OO programming knowledge I have, while busy coding something in a functional way. Because OO concepts are mostly irrelevant in that case, so why would you be thinking about them?
kaspm 10y ago
It's possible that > As for me personally, it’s been quite a journey over the past few years, taking a broad-based set of projects and initiatives and growing a focused business that is on a strong trajectory. And I’ve decided this is the right juncture to step aside from my CEO role. could mean "I've been fired because although we're spinning this as a market failure, I didn't have any viable plans to make it successful" Usually if they are voluntarily stepping aside, they've got the next thing lined up.
- disillusioned 10y ago
  That was the same thing that happened and the same positioning they used for Tony at Nest, right?
rdtsc 10y ago
Thanks. When I read those thing it is like they are written in a different language. Reading it I got a positive vibe even -- oh look we are growing and are about to just deploy some amazing new technology. The stepping down part was a surprise at the end a bit. Corporate-speak is a funny thing. I guess it is in a way a test or a filter for good SVPs and CEOs -- can they speak in this language (they better). Talking honestly and plainly would sound so harsh and negative probably.
- sverige 10y ago
  I have come to the conclusion that the difference between directors and VPs is that VPs have better platform skills. The difference between VPs and officers is the ability to spew this kind of corporate bs without thought on the fly in front of a crowd.
dredmorbius 10y ago
Pretty much exactly the interpretation a Googler posted earlier: https://plus.google.com/+PeterKasting/posts/TJwzGb5dt1W https://plus.google.com/+PeterKasting/posts/TJwzGb5dt1W "We have refined our plan! "We're going to push technology, remain a leader, enhance our focus, and in general optimize our synergistic long-term 'outside the box' thinking for high-impact de-risking of our core vertical integrations for enhanced customer satisfaction. "Oh, and practically speaking, all these positive things are happening because we're stopping investment and reducing our headcount, and our CEO is stepping aside." The shit's not even selling on the inside.
- orangecat 10y ago
  The shit's not even selling on the inside. Googlers are quite good at translating executive messages. I wish I could see the internal memes for this.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    You have to wonder why they bother with the newspeak though, it seems to pointless.
  - spiderfarmer 10y ago
    I'm almost sure that by now, a Googler is inspired to train an AI to translate PR messages to what they really are.
    - mark-r 10y ago
      I think this is an area where humans will have an advantage for some time to come. Would be a fun experiment though.
bobsil1 10y ago
"Advancing our amazing bet" = "Pausing our struggling bet"
- jacquesm 10y ago
  "bailing out of this losing bet"
bsder 10y ago
> I'm sure Comcast and Time Warner and friends are all breathing a sigh of relief. Not really. I read this as "Google no longer regards wireline providers as an existential threat as everybody is on mobile." Google fiber was never about profit; it was about preventing Comcast et al. from cutting Google off from users
- lifeformed 10y ago
  Right after Google announced they were pulling out of Portland, Comcast immediately raised prices and added a data cap to existing plans.
  - Super_Jambo 10y ago
    Just because google fiber had a side effect of helping consumers doesn't mean it was googles motivation.
    - ethanbond 10y ago
      What reason did google have to believe Comcast was going to "cut off" access to users?
      - hydrogen18 10y ago
        Comcast and the other ISPs are ever going to "cut off" access to anything. What they have done and will continue to do is to make it extraordinarily difficult to use other companies services that replace their own. For example, many ISPs today are now putting in bandwidth caps. They claim that they only affect the top 1% of users. This may be true today, but once 4k 60FPS content becomes the norm. those bandwidth caps will affect everyone.
        ethanbond 10y ago
        I agree with the first point which is why I asked. On the second point, the fact is that while bandwidth caps will affect everyone, so will everyone streaming 4K video. That seems like a self defeating argument.
joosters 10y ago
Plus, anyone who self-describes their actions as 'amazing' should never be trusted.
HNSucksAss 10y ago
Yep, another company reneges on fiber. There's no more FIOS, and now this. It's off to create a half-assed, wireless cop-out. And the U.S. stays in the past.
philfrasty 10y ago
"I'm getting out of this while it still looks good." MADE MY DAY xD
avip 10y ago
Now that's a professional TL;DR. Thank you. Is there already a good TLDRAAS out there?
- web007 10y ago
  http://smmry.com/about http://smmry.com/about is the closest I've seen, but can't do the same kind of translation from corpspeak to plain language.
jacquesm 10y ago
That title sure doesn't match the payload.
- prodigal_erik 10y ago
  Not for the first time. The title of the announcement killing Reader was "an update on Reader".
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    There ought to be a gallery of such examples.
    - alxndr 10y ago
      This tumblr account serves as a log of the language used in acquisitions: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
exelius 10y ago
> I'm sure Comcast and Time Warner and friends are all breathing a sigh of relief. They were never worried in the first place. Their network architects are not idiots or anything; they know the economics of what Google was trying to do and they knew it wouldn't turn into anything threatening unless Google was willing to sink over $20 billion into it. Their attitude has been "worst case, we buy the infrastructure from Google when they lose patience with it". Problem is, Google's business approach of coming to market with market-leading technology wasn't a novel approach here. Telecoms and cable companies have always worked closely with the innovators in their market -- and the limiting factor is often hard materials science, so Google didn't have the technology advantage they were used to. > Last-mile fiber is expensive, expensive, expensive. Last-mile anything is expensive. Maintenance is a bitch because all sorts of crap happens up on those poles -- wind, tree branches, ice, animals chewing the cables (squirrels will chew on almost anything), other vendors breaking your setup on accident... My guess is that Google didn't account for a lot of that crap and their maintenance costs were way higher than they expected.
- Pigo 10y ago
  Since Google Fiber started we got a fiber network in my area from Cincinnati Bell that allowed me to kick Time Warner in the nuts. It was more satisfying than the ending to Breaking Bad. I've saved money and gotten all the speed it promised. I don't know how much Google's example was involved in bringing this to us, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
  - exelius 10y ago
    I'm sure it had some impact in generating market demand for higher speeds; because the reason nobody offered gigabit to the home was that customers value 100 mbps Internet at something like $60/mo and only value gigabit Internet at $75/mo. But it costs the ISPs a lot more to provide gigabit, so the numbers just don't work out. If Google helped to push the "willingness to pay" for gigabit Internet access up a bit, the ISPs are likely grateful for the help.
    - Pigo 10y ago
Ajedi32 10y ago
At least "Importantly, the plan enhances our focus on new technology and deployment methods to make superfast Internet more abundant than it is today." sounds promising. Maybe Google "Fiber" is going to be replaced by some new technology which achieves similar results but is easier to deploy.

sparky_ 10y ago

^ That's a great translation. RIP Google Fiber.

meshko 10y ago

Thanks, nice job. I must say I am more saddened by the way Google chose to word it than by the fact that they are killing it.

dredmorbius 10y ago
Google have been spewing gratuitously specious numbers for some years now. A piece in VentureBeat from 2012: http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/20/google-skews-google-plus-statistics/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/20/google-skews-google-plus-s... "This post on Google+ statistics is a billion* times better than any other post" But what concerns me most is that Google is touting these meaningless statistics in the hopes that journalists will misunderstand them and report that Google+ is seeing rapid growth. The bottom line is, those 60 percents, 80 percents and 90 million registered users are just there to mask the fact that Google doesn’t want to tell us how many people are actually using Google+. (Disclaimer: I helped lift the lid on actual G+ usage numbers.)
- jacquesm 10y ago
  what's the trend on G+ usage? Any chance that in the near future we'll be able to search for anything with a '+' sign in it and get a relevant answer rather than some G+ page?
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    I haven't run a re-assessment, and I'm not aware that Stone Temple Consulting (who'd greatly expanded sampling based on my methods) have, though Eric Enge's mentioned doing so. There are a few sources which track online social network usage, and my experience has been that G+ trends are down, sufficiently enough that they've fallen off the survey's entirely. If you wan to trac total posting activity and trends per year, a Google search on "this site:plus.google.com" restricted by year should give a rough idea of how the relative quantity of English-lanugage posts are trending. I'm suggesting this as a nonsemantic, high-frequency, English word not likely to be biased strongly by annual trends. (Alternatively "upon" and "thus" are suggested by another person who's done similar research.) My informal sense is that people are tending to defect from the system. I'm very hesitant to apply personal impressions though due to the enormous sampling bias implied.
    - jacquesm 10y ago

gwern 10y ago

As usual, the news leaked out well in advance as rumors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12364270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12364270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12362830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12362830

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

interurban 10y ago

It certainly does sound like a riff on the "our incredible journey" format.

danieltillett 10y ago
I suspect this is not a coincidence. It looks to me like a coded message written by a real person trying to get a press release past a bunch of PR flacks.

paulsutter 10y ago

This is why I read the comments first, just avoided another painful article. Do people who communicate in spin-speak start to think that way on the inside too?

maxxxxx 10y ago
I sometimes wonder about that too.
rdtsc 10y ago
Oh that's an interesting question. When I speak a different languages I switch to thinking in that language (this goes for human and computer languages). If I talk with a Russian friend, I think in Russian. When use a functional programming language I switch to thinking in functional concepts (maps, folds, list comprehension, closures). When in an OO language think about composition and so on. So when they write that stuff I imagine for an hour they switch to "CEO mode" and think in those concepts, write things down. Then they become themselves [+]. Also the best propaganda is propaganda that is internalized, people often brainwash themselves, because it makes things easier and is much more effective than pretending to speak one thing but think another. [+] One can argue there is no such thing as "oneself" and we are all just a sequences of such personas or roles we play. But that's for a philosophical aside.
- josephpmay 10y ago
  That's absolutely fascinating, because I personally always think the same "way." Are you aware of any research on this subject?
  - executesorder66 10y ago
    I always think in the language I am currently speaking/listening to. And I'm pretty sure everyone else does. As for programming languages, I myself haven't done functional programming, but I'd imagine if I did, I would temporarily discard any OO programming knowledge I have, while busy coding something in a functional way. Because OO concepts are mostly irrelevant in that case, so why would you be thinking about them?

kaspm 10y ago

It's possible that > As for me personally, it’s been quite a journey over the past few years, taking a broad-based set of projects and initiatives and growing a focused business that is on a strong trajectory. And I’ve decided this is the right juncture to step aside from my CEO role. could mean "I've been fired because although we're spinning this as a market failure, I didn't have any viable plans to make it successful" Usually if they are voluntarily stepping aside, they've got the next thing lined up.

disillusioned 10y ago
That was the same thing that happened and the same positioning they used for Tony at Nest, right?

rdtsc 10y ago

Thanks. When I read those thing it is like they are written in a different language. Reading it I got a positive vibe even -- oh look we are growing and are about to just deploy some amazing new technology. The stepping down part was a surprise at the end a bit. Corporate-speak is a funny thing. I guess it is in a way a test or a filter for good SVPs and CEOs -- can they speak in this language (they better). Talking honestly and plainly would sound so harsh and negative probably.

sverige 10y ago
I have come to the conclusion that the difference between directors and VPs is that VPs have better platform skills. The difference between VPs and officers is the ability to spew this kind of corporate bs without thought on the fly in front of a crowd.

dredmorbius 10y ago

Pretty much exactly the interpretation a Googler posted earlier: https://plus.google.com/+PeterKasting/posts/TJwzGb5dt1W https://plus.google.com/+PeterKasting/posts/TJwzGb5dt1W "We have refined our plan! "We're going to push technology, remain a leader, enhance our focus, and in general optimize our synergistic long-term 'outside the box' thinking for high-impact de-risking of our core vertical integrations for enhanced customer satisfaction. "Oh, and practically speaking, all these positive things are happening because we're stopping investment and reducing our headcount, and our CEO is stepping aside." The shit's not even selling on the inside.

orangecat 10y ago
The shit's not even selling on the inside. Googlers are quite good at translating executive messages. I wish I could see the internal memes for this.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  You have to wonder why they bother with the newspeak though, it seems to pointless.
- spiderfarmer 10y ago
  I'm almost sure that by now, a Googler is inspired to train an AI to translate PR messages to what they really are.
  - mark-r 10y ago
    I think this is an area where humans will have an advantage for some time to come. Would be a fun experiment though.

bobsil1 10y ago

"Advancing our amazing bet" = "Pausing our struggling bet"

jacquesm 10y ago
"bailing out of this losing bet"

bsder 10y ago

> I'm sure Comcast and Time Warner and friends are all breathing a sigh of relief. Not really. I read this as "Google no longer regards wireline providers as an existential threat as everybody is on mobile." Google fiber was never about profit; it was about preventing Comcast et al. from cutting Google off from users

lifeformed 10y ago
Right after Google announced they were pulling out of Portland, Comcast immediately raised prices and added a data cap to existing plans.
- Super_Jambo 10y ago
  Just because google fiber had a side effect of helping consumers doesn't mean it was googles motivation.
  - ethanbond 10y ago
    What reason did google have to believe Comcast was going to "cut off" access to users?
    - hydrogen18 10y ago
      Comcast and the other ISPs are ever going to "cut off" access to anything. What they have done and will continue to do is to make it extraordinarily difficult to use other companies services that replace their own. For example, many ISPs today are now putting in bandwidth caps. They claim that they only affect the top 1% of users. This may be true today, but once 4k 60FPS content becomes the norm. those bandwidth caps will affect everyone.
      - ethanbond 10y ago
        I agree with the first point which is why I asked. On the second point, the fact is that while bandwidth caps will affect everyone, so will everyone streaming 4K video. That seems like a self defeating argument.

joosters 10y ago

Plus, anyone who self-describes their actions as 'amazing' should never be trusted.

HNSucksAss 10y ago

Yep, another company reneges on fiber. There's no more FIOS, and now this. It's off to create a half-assed, wireless cop-out. And the U.S. stays in the past.

philfrasty 10y ago

"I'm getting out of this while it still looks good." MADE MY DAY xD

avip 10y ago

Now that's a professional TL;DR. Thank you. Is there already a good TLDRAAS out there?

web007 10y ago
http://smmry.com/about http://smmry.com/about is the closest I've seen, but can't do the same kind of translation from corpspeak to plain language.

jacquesm 10y ago

That title sure doesn't match the payload.

prodigal_erik 10y ago
Not for the first time. The title of the announcement killing Reader was "an update on Reader".
- jacquesm 10y ago
  There ought to be a gallery of such examples.
  - alxndr 10y ago
    This tumblr account serves as a log of the language used in acquisitions: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

exelius 10y ago

> I'm sure Comcast and Time Warner and friends are all breathing a sigh of relief. They were never worried in the first place. Their network architects are not idiots or anything; they know the economics of what Google was trying to do and they knew it wouldn't turn into anything threatening unless Google was willing to sink over $20 billion into it. Their attitude has been "worst case, we buy the infrastructure from Google when they lose patience with it". Problem is, Google's business approach of coming to market with market-leading technology wasn't a novel approach here. Telecoms and cable companies have always worked closely with the innovators in their market -- and the limiting factor is often hard materials science, so Google didn't have the technology advantage they were used to. > Last-mile fiber is expensive, expensive, expensive. Last-mile anything is expensive. Maintenance is a bitch because all sorts of crap happens up on those poles -- wind, tree branches, ice, animals chewing the cables (squirrels will chew on almost anything), other vendors breaking your setup on accident... My guess is that Google didn't account for a lot of that crap and their maintenance costs were way higher than they expected.

Pigo 10y ago
Since Google Fiber started we got a fiber network in my area from Cincinnati Bell that allowed me to kick Time Warner in the nuts. It was more satisfying than the ending to Breaking Bad. I've saved money and gotten all the speed it promised. I don't know how much Google's example was involved in bringing this to us, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
- exelius 10y ago
  I'm sure it had some impact in generating market demand for higher speeds; because the reason nobody offered gigabit to the home was that customers value 100 mbps Internet at something like $60/mo and only value gigabit Internet at $75/mo. But it costs the ISPs a lot more to provide gigabit, so the numbers just don't work out. If Google helped to push the "willingness to pay" for gigabit Internet access up a bit, the ISPs are likely grateful for the help.
  - Pigo 10y ago

Ajedi32 10y ago

At least "Importantly, the plan enhances our focus on new technology and deployment methods to make superfast Internet more abundant than it is today." sounds promising. Maybe Google "Fiber" is going to be replaced by some new technology which achieves similar results but is easier to deploy.