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GF suffers the same fate of every other Google initiative: new exec decides it can't advance his career so it's starved to death in favor of something shinier.

GF suffers the same fate of every other Google initiative: new exec decides it can't advance his career so it's starved to death in favor of something shinier. Google won't save us any more than Musk will. It's billionaires launching cars into space and fighting for personal wealth at the detriment of the rest of the society.

conanbatt 9y ago
> It's billionaires launching cars into space and fighting for personal wealth at the detriment of the rest of the society. What?
- ipsin 9y ago
  "launching cars into space" is a reference to the recent launch of a Tesla into space. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falcon-heavy-roadster-orbit-asteroid-belt-elon-musk-mars https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falc...
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    I know that, but to the detriment of society?
    - core-questions 9y ago
      Sometimes it feels like some folks will only be happy when life is completely hive-like, when there is nothing to differentiate anything from anything else, everything is grey, nothing is whimsical, and nobody can put their mark on the world.
    - username223 9y ago
      I don't completely agree with this argument, but... All of that money came from somewhere. Do you wonder why most of your local retailers went out of business, and you can't visit a local bookstore or camera shop anymore? It's related to why Jeff Bezos has so much money that he has nothing better to do than shoot stuff into space. Preferably, he will shoot bigger stuff farther than Elon Musk, Richard Branson, or Paul Allen. It could also be used somewhere else. Is shooting suicidal volunteers at Mars really the best use of billions of dollars?
      - Dylan16807 9y ago
        "the best use" is a horrible standard that leads to shaming 99.99% of charities for not being literal perfection. Solving difficult engineering problems is usually good for the world.
      - conanbatt 9y ago
        If anything, shooting cars into space makes them spend money they have on people that dont have money and build the car. Adam Smith directly says vanity is what took down feudalism. We surely dont want our billionaires to not even spend the money they have!
        username223 9y ago
        Please see "I don't completely agree with this argument..." Printing money and setting it on fire would employ printers and firefighters. I'm not sure Billionaire Space Wars are a net harm to society, but they're pretty silly.
clhodapp 9y ago
> It's billionaires launching cars into space and fighting for personal wealth at the detriment of the rest of the society. I would entertain an argument that Google Fiber hasn't actually helped society very much but I have a hard time buying that it's been harmful... At worst, it's driven the other players in the regions it's in to offer more bandwidth for less money. At best, it headed off rising a trend of ISPs deceiving the public about what was possible in an effort to suppress speeds and tightly meter bandwidth...
Bartweiss 9y ago
> billionaires launching cars into space Can you help me understand the ire over that launch? It's standard that new rockets are tested with a dummy payload to avoid destroying something valuable. Typically that's steel plates, but the Falcon Heavy was going to go up with a useless payload regardless. Saturn I-IV did the same, and V only had a payload because it was a module test and a launch test rolled into one. I suppose the Tesla took up some extra man-hours fitting the car for launch, and the rocket wasn't aimed somewhere it would be destroyed (though I can't tell whether they usually are). But seeing this spun as "SpaceX won't save us, they're just shooting cars into space!" is baffling to me; it was some personal wealth spent on adding spectacle to a totally normal rocket launch.
- pmarsh 9y ago
  Most likely due to the same troll farms that paint the narrative that SpaceX wastes tax payer money. Now who would not want a new private American company to succeed in revitalizing the industry and increasing competition. Hmm, I can think of a few. It used to be "NASA is a bloated waste of tax payer money let private Enterprise in." And now the same people who said that, have been convinced that private industry is stealing.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    > the same people who said that This part doesn't match my experience? "NASA is a waste" is, broadly, a conservative/Republican stance. Almost everyone I've seen outraged about the Tesla launch was noticeably left of the average Democrat. I don't think a narrative of "they hated the public version, now they hate the private version" holds up for the people I've seen. Granted, there's a second group on the left who hated NASA before and SpaceX now. But that narrative is usually "space exploration is a waste when people are going hungry", with not much concern about public/private status.
    - stcredzero 9y ago
      "NASA is a waste" is, broadly, a conservative/Republican stance..."space exploration is a waste when people are going hungry" It's definitely now also a Far Left talking point. Larry Wilmore basically went back to the old 60's, "Why is there poverty, and we're putting men on the moon?" There's a scene somewhere where he's telling Bill Nye to STFU about his Science. This brings to mind Phillip DeFranco's t-shirt about substituting feelings for facts.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
endtime 9y ago
This is incorrect. Access is an Alphabet subsidiary separate from Google and its CEO reports to the Alphabet executive team. The people working on it are incentivized for it to succeed, and the next person up is Larry Page.
- cbhl 9y ago
  I believe you mean that the next person up is Ruth Porat. /s
  - endtime 9y ago
    Actually, you prompted me to check, and Dinni isn't listed as having a manager, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But I certainly wouldn't deny Ruth's ability to influence Access's direction. :)
stcredzero 9y ago
GF suffers the same fate of every other Google initiative: new exec decides it can't advance his career so it's starved to death in favor of something shinier. Apparently, "Don't be Evil" doesn't cover internal company politics. I remember at a previous job, there was this hefty trans-atlantic data link the company was leasing. All the VPs coveted it, so the political machinations basically resulted in no-one using it, ever, all the while we were paying not-insignificant funds for it.
tedsanders 9y ago
This would be an insightful comment if it provided evidence rather than conjecture. As it stands, it contributes nothing to my understanding of Google Fiber.
sumedh 9y ago
> It's billionaires launching cars into space and fighting for personal wealth at the detriment of the rest of the society You conveniently ignored Musk almost went bankrupt after 3 failures initially at space x.

conanbatt 9y ago

> It's billionaires launching cars into space and fighting for personal wealth at the detriment of the rest of the society. What?

ipsin 9y ago
"launching cars into space" is a reference to the recent launch of a Tesla into space. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falcon-heavy-roadster-orbit-asteroid-belt-elon-musk-mars https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falc...
- conanbatt 9y ago
  I know that, but to the detriment of society?
  - core-questions 9y ago
    Sometimes it feels like some folks will only be happy when life is completely hive-like, when there is nothing to differentiate anything from anything else, everything is grey, nothing is whimsical, and nobody can put their mark on the world.
  - username223 9y ago
    I don't completely agree with this argument, but... All of that money came from somewhere. Do you wonder why most of your local retailers went out of business, and you can't visit a local bookstore or camera shop anymore? It's related to why Jeff Bezos has so much money that he has nothing better to do than shoot stuff into space. Preferably, he will shoot bigger stuff farther than Elon Musk, Richard Branson, or Paul Allen. It could also be used somewhere else. Is shooting suicidal volunteers at Mars really the best use of billions of dollars?
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      "the best use" is a horrible standard that leads to shaming 99.99% of charities for not being literal perfection. Solving difficult engineering problems is usually good for the world.
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      If anything, shooting cars into space makes them spend money they have on people that dont have money and build the car. Adam Smith directly says vanity is what took down feudalism. We surely dont want our billionaires to not even spend the money they have!
      - username223 9y ago
        Please see "I don't completely agree with this argument..." Printing money and setting it on fire would employ printers and firefighters. I'm not sure Billionaire Space Wars are a net harm to society, but they're pretty silly.

clhodapp 9y ago

> It's billionaires launching cars into space and fighting for personal wealth at the detriment of the rest of the society. I would entertain an argument that Google Fiber hasn't actually helped society very much but I have a hard time buying that it's been harmful... At worst, it's driven the other players in the regions it's in to offer more bandwidth for less money. At best, it headed off rising a trend of ISPs deceiving the public about what was possible in an effort to suppress speeds and tightly meter bandwidth...

Bartweiss 9y ago

> billionaires launching cars into space Can you help me understand the ire over that launch? It's standard that new rockets are tested with a dummy payload to avoid destroying something valuable. Typically that's steel plates, but the Falcon Heavy was going to go up with a useless payload regardless. Saturn I-IV did the same, and V only had a payload because it was a module test and a launch test rolled into one. I suppose the Tesla took up some extra man-hours fitting the car for launch, and the rocket wasn't aimed somewhere it would be destroyed (though I can't tell whether they usually are). But seeing this spun as "SpaceX won't save us, they're just shooting cars into space!" is baffling to me; it was some personal wealth spent on adding spectacle to a totally normal rocket launch.

pmarsh 9y ago
Most likely due to the same troll farms that paint the narrative that SpaceX wastes tax payer money. Now who would not want a new private American company to succeed in revitalizing the industry and increasing competition. Hmm, I can think of a few. It used to be "NASA is a bloated waste of tax payer money let private Enterprise in." And now the same people who said that, have been convinced that private industry is stealing.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  > the same people who said that This part doesn't match my experience? "NASA is a waste" is, broadly, a conservative/Republican stance. Almost everyone I've seen outraged about the Tesla launch was noticeably left of the average Democrat. I don't think a narrative of "they hated the public version, now they hate the private version" holds up for the people I've seen. Granted, there's a second group on the left who hated NASA before and SpaceX now. But that narrative is usually "space exploration is a waste when people are going hungry", with not much concern about public/private status.
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    "NASA is a waste" is, broadly, a conservative/Republican stance..."space exploration is a waste when people are going hungry" It's definitely now also a Far Left talking point. Larry Wilmore basically went back to the old 60's, "Why is there poverty, and we're putting men on the moon?" There's a scene somewhere where he's telling Bill Nye to STFU about his Science. This brings to mind Phillip DeFranco's t-shirt about substituting feelings for facts.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

endtime 9y ago

This is incorrect. Access is an Alphabet subsidiary separate from Google and its CEO reports to the Alphabet executive team. The people working on it are incentivized for it to succeed, and the next person up is Larry Page.

cbhl 9y ago
I believe you mean that the next person up is Ruth Porat. /s
- endtime 9y ago
  Actually, you prompted me to check, and Dinni isn't listed as having a manager, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But I certainly wouldn't deny Ruth's ability to influence Access's direction. :)

stcredzero 9y ago

GF suffers the same fate of every other Google initiative: new exec decides it can't advance his career so it's starved to death in favor of something shinier. Apparently, "Don't be Evil" doesn't cover internal company politics. I remember at a previous job, there was this hefty trans-atlantic data link the company was leasing. All the VPs coveted it, so the political machinations basically resulted in no-one using it, ever, all the while we were paying not-insignificant funds for it.

tedsanders 9y ago

This would be an insightful comment if it provided evidence rather than conjecture. As it stands, it contributes nothing to my understanding of Google Fiber.

sumedh 9y ago

> It's billionaires launching cars into space and fighting for personal wealth at the detriment of the rest of the society You conveniently ignored Musk almost went bankrupt after 3 failures initially at space x.