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Saying Goodbye to Louisville
- Zecar 8y agoI fully expect my ATT Fiber to go up in price or down in transfer allotment as a result. What a shame.
- yohannparis 8y agoAnd this is why public sector or PPP are better than private sector for necessities. You expect access to Internet to be stable like water or electricity, but clearly that wasn't the case with Google.
- EpicEng 8y agoHas this happened anywhere else where the ISP wasn't Google?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- haasted 8y agoIt's quite a leap from having an ISP (unusually) shut down its service in an area to concluding that internet connectivity should be a public utility. Surely there must be some middle ground.
- qeternity 8y agoIt's funny because the best arguments for internet being a utility have nothing to do with government reliability (or lack there of) but rather economic arguments like natural monopolies. It seems like OP just has an anti-market agenda.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoBoth perspectives support each other. Natural monopolies are one thing, but if you want people to have stable and reliable Internet - as most tech companies do - then it's best when Internet access is not something companies are allowed to differentiate on.
- weberc2 8y agoIt would be like concluding that water is best handled by the private sector because Flint, MI.
- wycy 8y agoThe middle ground, or the average of two positions, isn't necessarily any more correct than either of the two original positions. It's the argument to moderation fallacy.
- WorldMaker 8y agoIt's not that big of a leap: Silicon Valley mindset believed it get dive in to physical infrastructure, "disrupt it", and make a difference. Turns out it couldn't, because of the natural monopolies that are already controlled by incumbents with little incentive to do better, and because it turned out physical infrastructure is "harder" than they wanted to deal with. You can't "disrupt" the power company, and you can't "disrupt" the water company. Not without a giant warchest to rebuild pipes and electric lines. Not without causing a lot of accidental incidental damage. No one actually wants that, they want to pay their utility bills and move on with their lives. It's past time we admitted that internet service is in the same category.
- remir 8y agoCooperatives could be a good middle ground: they have to turn a profit, but the members have their say in how things are run.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoI can't even picture a scenario where another ISP just says "Hey, we're packing up shop, you've got two months to find a new Internet provider". I guess I suppose it's happened somewhere, sometime, but it certainly feels one of a kind. It's not a scenario I would have ever planned for, to say the least, but anyone who has service with Google is probably used to it.
- marcell 8y agoIs it that big of a deal? Most places have Comcast or similar. It takes maybe a week or two to set it up.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoIf the other ISPs are qualitatively worse (you mention Comcast here...), it's bound to make a lot of people very angry.
- dhimes 8y agoI read this as the Google fiber was terrible- many have probably already switched, and entrenched (pardon that) ISPs probably are better. Now, price-- that's another story.
- jetti 8y agoIt can be. A cursory search showed that the other fiber competitor in the area is AT&T. Google Fiber was $70/mo and AT&T is $80/mo and that was for the highest speed offered. With Google exiting the market, the fiber competition is gone and it allows AT&T to raise prices, if they want as there aren't any other options. It puts AT&T back into the fiber monopoly
- criddell 8y ago$70 wasn't a sustainable price. The competition can use Google's withdrawal as a fairly reasonable justification to raise rates to a sustainable level.
- crushcrashcrush 8y agoCan post-2010 Google execute on anything "all the way" through? Is there some sort of institutional ADD?
- csours 8y agoMove fast and oooh shiny!
- paxys 8y agoThis is what happens when you build two decades of company culture of rewarding employees for launching new products over boring old maintenance and iterative development.
- asark 8y agoI think part of it's because they almost exclusively hire people who will soon leave if they're told to do too much "boring" work and aren't allowed to half-ass it to get it done fast and move on to something more fun.
- sswaner 8y agoCan the Hacker News community ever forgive Google for shutting down Reader?
- WorldMaker 8y agoHas Google given the Hacker News community enough reasons to forgive them for shutting down Reader, yet?
- rifung 8y ago> Is there some sort of institutional ADD? I work at Google, opinions are my own. Obviously this is my personal take, but I don't think that's what it is. To me the issue is the performance/rewards system. Imagine you're someone high up and in charge of 10 projects, all asking for headcount/resources, while you have a limited amount to give. Presumably you're going to give more headcount/resources to the projects that are growing faster. If the differences in growth are substantial, maybe you'll decide to actually just let some projects die so their teams can be absorbed into the other projects with better prospects. Google's performance system is an attempt at being really objective, and it's hard to put a precise value on goodwill lost by discontinuing a product. Not only that, but the effects of discontinuing a product are felt company-wide as opposed to by an individual. Nobody is going to look up who decided to discontinue a product after all.
- bigfatfrock 8y agoWhat's going to happen with all of that now dark fiber sitting in Louisville, I wonder?
- owenmarshall 8y agoA two inch trench was cut on city streets, that fiber added, and then covered by a flexible rubber seal.[1] I can't imagine anyone would want to touch that "dark fiber". It was in terrible shape six weeks after they put it down, before winter hit the city. The picture on this article looks like it was taken relatively soon after installation [2] - I've seen streets where the rubber seal has expanded and curled up over top of the groove that was cut. [1]: https://9to5google.com/2019/02/07/google-fiber-closing-in-louisville/ https://9to5google.com/2019/02/07/google-fiber-closing-in-lo... [2]: https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix-exposed-fiber-lines-in/article_fbc678c3-66ef-5d5b-860c-2156bc2f0f0c.html https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix...
- thinkaway 8y agoDoes google fiber not work in cold weather? Seems all the cities are warmer than Louisville.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- owenmarshall 8y agoI'm sure Google Fiber works fine in cold weather, but fiber optic cables buried in city roads in a two inch trench covered with a flexible rubber gasket have demonstrably poor resiliency to snow, ice, salt trucks and freezing temperatures.
- mttjj 8y agoI'm in Kansas City and have Google Fiber. I don't really know how cold Louisville can get but I can tell you that we got pretty gosh darn cold (10-20 degrees below 0F) last week during the Polar Vortex freeze. And we're going to be flirting with those temps again this week. But to answer your question, I have not noticed any disruption or degradation of my service as a result of the cold temperatures. EDIT: As others have said, I think the problems in Louisville come more from shoddy installations thus making them more susceptible to extreme weather rather than 'fiber not working in cold weather'.
- dogecoinbase 8y agoThis decision has no impact on our operations in any of our other Fiber cities, where we continue to sign up and install new customers every day. This is just irresponsible of Google at this point. This entire project has no momentum and isn't going anywhere -- why are they still signing people up when it's obvious that they'll just cut them off eventually as well? In the meantime, they prevent any of these cities from taking control of their own connectivity. They should help the cities form nonprofits to run the fiber networks, then gently remove themselves from the situation.
- VectorLock 8y agoI'm curious how much physical infrastructure Google Fiber is leaving under streets. In Louisville were they using someone else's fiber or will there be actual dark strands under Louisville now?
- bri3d 8y agoThey're not leaving much fiber under the streets in Louisville, which is the whole reason they're pulling out - they attempted a low cost "microtrenching" strategy where they cut a small groove in the street pavement itself and tried to run the fiber through that. It was pretty much an abject failure and I doubt anyone will want the infrastructure as it's unlikely to function in even a few months. They're still "microtrenching" in other markets but at a much greater depth (6in rather than <3in) and with a different cover strategy (asphalt replacement over sealant rather than sealant only)
- VectorLock 8y agoThis microtrenching would be amazing if it could make its hands into people wanting to make open municipal networks, if it could actually work.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tracker1 8y ago
- maxxxxx 8y ago"For that, and many other reasons, we are deeply grateful to Mayor Greg Fischer, the City of Louisville and its residents for their partnership and spirit of innovation over the past two years." That's why we can't trust Google with anything critical. They view the world as an experiment they can quit anytime. Definitely don't buy a Google self driving car or anything else you expect to work in a few years. There is a good chance that businesses moved to Louisville because of Google Fiber and they are being shown the finger "Thanks for indulging us, we got what we wanted and you can go f... yourself".
- Operyl 8y agoOn the other hand, it seriously forced other ISPs to step up their game from what I hear. So not all is lost.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y agoAnd why wouldn't they step back their game if the competition does?
- Operyl 8y agoIt’s a bit harder to put the cat back in the bag. I’m assuming (and hoping) it’ll take a few years for that kind of degradation, and some new competition (or municipal service) could make its way in.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoI doubt they'll roll back speeds. Instead they'll increase the cost of the higher speeds significantly.
- Operyl 8y agoEven price increases can take some time to do, as you have people in 1-2 year contracts. I just hope that’s enough time for competition, or that it doesn’t happen.
- janvdberg 8y agoWhat was the problem? When I click the "encountered challenges" link I get a 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons (I am from the EU).
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoThis link makes it sound like their installation work was faulty and they were going to have to redo it all: https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix-exposed-fiber-lines-in/article_fbc678c3-66ef-5d5b-860c-2156bc2f0f0c.html https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix... Since that was only a few months ago, my guess is they decided to just pull out instead.
- pkaye 8y agoThe problem was some idiot at Google though burying a fiber optic cable 2 inches below ground was adequate protection.
- joshstrange 8y agoI never wanted to move to Louisville (from Lexington, KY) but fiber was a nice selling point. Now I'm just hoping our own Lexington MetroNet keeps chugging along so I can leave Spectrum when I buy a house.
- ProAm 8y ago> This decision has no impact on our operations in any of our other Fiber cities, ...yet. Just more evidence you cannot rely on Google for long term product outside of search.
- vsh 8y ago> product outside of search ...yet
- robben1234 8y agoI can't trust Google. Every time they build something good (Reader, Inbox) eventually they will kill it even despite users clearly opposing the decision. And those are just web pages, here they're denying of ISP whole town which was serviced before. So for example how can I use their e-sim provider Fi if I know for sure in one of my travels I will get a notification 'we are closing Fi next week. Find new provider.'. I use their Photos service extensively. But in a couple of years I know it will get closed too, once they fully used it's capacities for training internal ML models.
- hk__2 8y ago> Every time they build something good (Reader, Inbox) eventually they will kill it even despite users clearly opposing the decision. To be fair, users aren’t customers. People don’t have any right regarding your product if you give them for free.
- maxxxxx 8y agoThis is getting old.
- andrewla 8y agoThose are by analogy, but in the case of Fiber, which we're talking about here, the users are customers. So what rights do they have now?
- mmmmmmmmm 8y agoThey have the same rights they've always had. They'll just purchase internet from a different ISP.
- apexalpha 8y agoThank god we have GDPR in the EU so you absolutely can't use this argument anymore. It's both wrong and a failure to engage in a meaningful debate about one of the biggest companies of our time and how they treat and value their customers / users.
- 8y ago
- ACow_Adonis 8y agoThat's a lot of words to not actually tell you why they're pulling out of Louisville. "not living up to the high standards we set ourselves" is about as helpful as hearing over public transport intercom "there has been an incident".
- owenmarshall 8y agoAs they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. https://imgur.com/a/7lHiWZR https://imgur.com/a/7lHiWZR That's a picture of a road post-fiber install. The groove is where the fiber was placed. That black snaking rubber was what they sealed it with. Now imagine that, but across their entire service area.
- WhatIsDukkha 8y agoSource? If that's accurate, it's comedic anyone thought that would work.
- owenmarshall 8y agoI live here - that's almost exactly what it looks like outside my kid sister's apartment ;) For a local news source: https://www.wdrb.com/news/belknap-neighborhood-residents-concerned-over-sloppy-installation-of-high-speed/article_4bc2a61e-8640-57f0-aba9-3dd4cb3d39e5.html https://www.wdrb.com/news/belknap-neighborhood-residents-con... Here's an article proclaiming that this is how Google would "outbuild their rivals": https://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/photos-how-google-fiber-is-using-shallow-trenching-to-outbuild-its-gigabit-rivals/18/ https://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/photos-how-google-fibe... I cannot possibly oversell just how terrible the work was here. Yes, that is indeed a fiber optic cable two inches under a city street, covered only by expanding foam rubber. Yes, someone really did think "yeah, this'll be just fine."
- takeda 8y agohttps://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix-exposed-fiber-lines-in/article_fbc678c3-66ef-5d5b-860c-2156bc2f0f0c.html https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix... I guess they eventually said "screw it, we will just pull out"
- macinjosh 8y agoThis development implies that one should not rely on Google for anything. Even you're paying them for the service. They are so large they don't have to care about their users/customers.
- takeda 8y agoThis is sad news for me even though I'm not from Louisville. Backing out of existing market shows that it's even less likely now for them to enter new ones. The main issue is that current companies have extreme control over market thanks to regional monopoly. They can squeeze as much of money from users, because there is no real competition. When a new company enters specific region they can up their speeds, lower price (and even operate at a loss in that specific region), so a competitor will have to leave. The solution to this requires regulation, and basically a law should mandate to allow leasing infrastructure (the fiber) to others, of course not for free, but for a fee. Currently if we would have great scenario when we would have 10 ISPs available to choose from, we would need 10 fiber cables to every home. That means if someone chooses one, 9 of them are not used, and all the effort to lay the cable and getting permits was just waste of money. If this is expensive to even company that has "unlimited" amounts of money, like Google it's unrealistic to do for everyone else. Leasing the physical infrastructure is the key to bring competition back in that market.
- tylfin 8y agoThis is why I'll never use the Google Cloud. Sorry my business does not move as quickly as your decisions.
- sciurus 8y agoAlthough as always they have language giving themselves some wiggle room, most services in GCP would get at least a year of advance notice. From https://cloud.google.com/terms/ https://cloud.google.com/terms/ : 7.2 Deprecation Policy. Google will announce if it intends to discontinue or make backwards incompatible changes to the Services specified at the URL in the next sentence. Google will use commercially reasonable efforts to continue to operate those Services versions and features identified at https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation without these changes for at least one year after that announcement, unless (as Google determines in its reasonable good faith judgment): (i) required by law or third party relationship (including if there is a change in applicable law or relationship), or (ii) doing so could create a security risk or substantial economic or material technical burden. The above policy is the "Deprecation Policy."
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoThat is a wide enough loophole to drive a truck through. And it would apply to Fiber here as well, fixing the roads and fiber runs in Louisville would be a "substantial economic or material technical burden". Aka, it costs a lot of money, and they don't want to spend it.
- macintux 8y agoHeck, even the continuation scenario has a major caveat: “commercially reasonable efforts”. So they can easily decide not to stick with it for a year, or they can decide to continue to provide service without, say, any technical support.
- mberning 8y ago10 years ago I would have jumped at the chance to sign up for Google Fiber. Today they could not pay me to use the service.
- takeda 8y agoOh c'mon with the exaggeration. I would still use them (even if I had to pay), it doesn't take that much time to switch. The major issue though will affect most people in Louisville, since it's almost guaranteed that AT&T will increase its prices. Thanks to Google Fiber at least for limited time, people there enjoyed fast and relatively cheap internet access.
- Talyen42 8y ago"That’s because we were trialing a lot of things in Louisville, including a different type of construction method — namely, placing fiber in much shallower trenches than we’ve done elsewhere." Read as: We messed around with your street infrastructure using untested construction methods, and it didn't work very well so WE OUT PEACE. You know what they say, fail fast byeee!
- selectodude 8y agoMove fast and break stuff, up to and including your sidewalks and roads.
- itronitron 8y agoIf it isn't three feet underground it's going to get cut somewhere along the line.
- oh_sigh 8y agoDid google just waltz in and start tearing up the roads? No. Someone with authorization power in Louisville OKd the project. Do they deserve no blame?
- yingw787 8y agoI'm going to go out on a limb here and conjecture that this isn't a typical Google pullback like with todo list apps. There are significant financial/intellectual capital outlays required for nationwide-scale ISPs, in addition to operations and maintenance expenditures over time. Pulling back is a significant sign Google Fiber has already reached its high-water mark. Sadly, I think Google's pulling back because it more or less got what it wanted out of the telecoms in terms of network service, repealing net neutrality and regulatory capture increases Google's competitive moats, and because corporate lobbying may be cheaper, more flexible, and have greater returns: https://gizmodo.com/googles-parent-company-spent-more-on-lobbying-than-at-t-1822394224 https://gizmodo.com/googles-parent-company-spent-more-on-lob... On that note, here's a how-to on starting your own ISP: https://startyourownisp.com/ https://startyourownisp.com/
- samfriedman 8y agoOne thing missing from this post: why? After "Advancing our Amazing Bet", it became clear that the level of regulatory obstacles Google needed to overcome made it too cost-prohibitive to continue their rollouts. But what factors are forcing them to pull out of an already established market? Is the ISP environment so hostile as to squeeze even the biggest players out of town? Is Google slowly ramping down even existing Fiber operations? What's going on behind the scenes here? If the microtrenching issue is driving this, why can't Google of all companies put up the investment to re-do it right? There's failing an experiment, and then there's realizing something is sub-par and putting in the work and money to make it right for your customers. I feel like Google has misconstrued the two here.
- tanilama 8y agoSeriously. Google messed up REALLY bad on this one. It would really difficult for many customers to come up with a contingency plan under 2 months. Google should NEVER be trusted with other infrastructure projects going further. Infrastructure isn't some forprofit companies trial-and-error playground, it is about stability and promise to the local residents, it is not about money and certainly not an experiment.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoAt least they tried. Infrastructure such as fiber to the home should be the realm of governments, as everyone can benefit from it.
- tanilama 8y agoThey tried and blew away my trust in any of such innovative, pseudo-altruist initiative from silicon valley companies. The disruption their action might bring is much more than cancelling their internet service products. Can't really joke about their words that 'the last 2 months are on us', like it is something worthy of cheering up..
- lallysingh 8y agoIt should've been 6 months to a year. They blew a lot of use trust on this. They've been doing that a lot.
- WaltPurvis 8y ago>>It would really difficult for many customers to come up with a contingency plan under 2 months. Why? It's just an Internet connection. Customers can call the local cable company and be up and running in a matter of a few days. Might cost a bit more and be somewhat slower, but it's hardly an existential crisis.
- Thaxll 8y agoAnother good example of "smart engineering can't solve every problems".
- sudosteph 8y agoThis is even worse in a way. They specifically caused these problems because they believed their engineers were so smart that they could rely on their novel microtrenching technique to deploy the fiber for a fraction of the cost of the competitors. I just don't understand why they didn't spend more time testing it on their own resources before rolling out to actual customers in a major metro area. We've all seen potholes, roots coming through streets and sidewalks. Just crazy to think they thought this was ready to be deployed at scale...
- dragonwriter 8y agoIt actually seems like the problem was exactly that smart engineering wasn't applied; microtrenching was basically testing expensive (thouhh cheaper than alternatives, if it worked) infrastructure ideas in production without prior testing in sufficiently realistic conditions; it appears to have been an abject failure that left GF in a shutdown or start over position.
- axaxs 8y agoI'm from Louisville. From my perspective, I never expected to see Google Fiber, and I guess this confirms it. After reading about how all of KC moved so slowly after its initial deployment, it was telling when Fiber rolled out here that it only covered a tiny portion of our downtown-ish areas. This is not a high income area, nor is it all that dense population wise(then again, neither is the city). After the combination of the county/city, Louisville became a physically rather large city. I don't think it would have been worth the investment trying to cover it, and covering only a portion is only bound to irritate people. That said, I appreciate them in that they really lit a fire under TWC/Charter/Spectrum. If I remember right, we were 10down/3 up when fiber was announced (possibly 30 down, depending on when). Our base is now 200 down.
- andrewla 8y agoIt sounds like what they're saying is that they botched the installation and would have to redo it. It seems like the responsible thing to do here is to just go ahead and redo the installation. It can't be worse than the cost to expand to a new city; all they have to do is abandon their current infrastructure and replace it with the new (I know that "all" underestimates, but still). This is a case where to maintain customer trust, they should suck up the cost themselves rather than trying to recover it through the one-time customer fees that they used at rollout time.
- imjustsaying 8y agoI wonder how many of the people saying 'See? Can't trust google with anything' use Gmail accounts.
- CyanLite2 8y agoTLDR: Google isn't as good at paying off politicians as well as AT&T and other ISPs are.
- coryfklein 8y agoAm I the only one going to say it? Kudos to Google Fiber for actually trying to innovate in a stagnant industry. I'm no insider here, but I suspect the micro-trenching did go through internal testing which looked promising before they approved it for real city use. If the micro trenching had been successful we'd be cheering for Google for finding an innovative way to bring fiber to more people. Turns out it didn't work in their one trial city and since they discovered this at a time when Google Fiber is no longer expanding it is no surprise that they don't "re-open" Louisville and retrench the entire city. For a community that celebrates failure as a natural consequence of innovation, I'm surprised at all the negativity here. Not a mention of the 2 months of free gigabit internet they're giving to customers. Yea, Google Fiber is just a bunch of soulless profiteering corporate jackasses /eyeroll/.
- haylcron 8y agoI have family in Louisville and visit on a regular basis and have seen the issues firsthand. The microtrenching has caused and will continue to cause damage to the streets. The rubber sealant is commonly free from the trench and potholes form quickly. These are fixed by tax dollars and there is not a quick fix short of repaving every street. The community here isn’t digging on Google trying to innovate. The anger comes from a highly successful company taking a risk, seeing it fail, and just peacing out leaving others to clean up the mess.
- coryfklein 8y agoDid Google Fiber agree to do the road maintenance going forward? Sounds like the city council was probably the group that decided to shoulder the risk of damaged roads. If Google Fiber misrepresented their microtrenching then that would certainly be fraud and they would be liable for damages.
- ken 8y agoI celebrate failure of a project as a natural consequence of innovation. I don't see how failing a community is worthy of celebration. When I try a crazy new idea at work, and it fails, I don't just leave a mess and walk away. Come to think of it, I don't do that if it succeeds, either. Supporting your mess is part of professionalism. This is the key difference between doing research and providing a service. Are you serving the people or just the technology? Google is full of smart people who love technology and want to do research all day, but they're not very service-oriented. Should they be? Eric Schmidt said of Google Fiber, "It’s actually not an experiment; we’re actually running it as a business". I'm not seeing that here. They learned something valuable about a technology they're using, and they're leaving customers in the lurch.
- chappi42 8y agoWill Google repair the streets? Saw one picture with rubber gaskets coming out and it looked very bad :-(
- apexalpha 8y agoSo what happens to the infrastructure? There's fiber optics in the ground right? Do they give it to a local ISP?
- remir 8y agoSome of it could be re-used, but from what I understand, lots of fiber could become worthless because of the failure of their micro-trenching "experiment".
- owenmarshall 8y agoTo try and hijack the top post with some of the comments I've scattered across this thread: Google did a remarkably poor job in Louisville, and it's absolutely no surprise to me that they're giving up. Google's strategy was to build a FTTH network with microtrenching. In practice, this meant cutting a 2" deep groove in city streets, placing a fiber optic cable in it, and using an expanding rubber gasket material to cover the groove. This failed in spectacular fashion. One of the best pictures was this: https://www.wdrb.com/news/belknap-neighborhood-residents-concerned-over-sloppy-installation-of-high-speed/article_4bc2a61e-8640-57f0-aba9-3dd4cb3d39e5.html https://www.wdrb.com/news/belknap-neighborhood-residents-con... ... a fiber optic cable, barely buried under the surface of the road, exposed after a few freeze/thaw cycles. If you click on no other link about Google Fiber in Louisville, click on this one. This scene is repeated all over the city. There won't be much in the way of "dark fiber left behind" because most of the Google Fiber rollout was FTTH done ridiculously poorly. And for the customers? The only company competing for residential gigabit service is AT&T, which (wisely?) rolled out their service to high density apartment areas and wealthy condos; for most residents, Spectrum or Uverse DSL are the only real competitors. Some cites: https://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/photos-how-google-fiber-is-using-shallow-trenching-to-outbuild-its-gigabit-rivals/18/ https://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/photos-how-google-fibe... -- Microtrenching will save Google!! https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix-exposed-fiber-lines-in/article_fbc678c3-66ef-5d5b-860c-2156bc2f0f0c.html https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix... -- uh oh, things aren't so good... https://9to5google.com/2019/02/07/google-fiber-closing-in-louisville/ https://9to5google.com/2019/02/07/google-fiber-closing-in-lo... -- we give up, 2" of trench won't do it.
- Jhndb 8y agoFor my GDPR friends: >https://www.wdrb.com/news/belknap-neighborhood-residents-concerned-over-sloppy-installation-of-high-speed/article_4bc2a61e-8640-57f0-aba9-3dd4cb3d39e5.html https://www.wdrb.com/news/belknap-neighborhood-residents-con... https://outline.com/etFHuX https://outline.com/etFHuX >https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix-exposed-fiber-lines-in/article_fbc678c3-66ef-5d5b-860c-2156bc2f0f0c.html https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix... https://outline.com/nxZPBa https://outline.com/nxZPBa
- itronitron 8y agoGoogle Fiber has suffered from a lack of imagination, or just good ole' plain market analysis, in figuring out how to roll out fiber to larger areas around their 'fiber cities'. Google Fiber in Austin is limited to a very small area which oddly enough is probably not where most of the residential demand is. Somehow I doubt that they ever asked homeowners what they would be willing to pay for a fiber connection.
- genzoman 8y agoATT offers fiber internet in Louisville. After Google found out they wouldn't be the only provider offering the service, they bailed.
- taurath 8y ago"Its not up to our quality standards, so instead of fixing it we're going to pull out". What a corporatespeak way to say you're giving up on your customers.
- itronitron 8y agoIf I'm not getting an A, then I'm not taking your stupid class.
- officemonkey 8y ago"We would need to essentially rebuild our entire network in Louisville to provide the great service that Google Fiber is known for, and that's just not the right business decision for us." In other words, "we fucked up and so we bailed." Google is like the bad first husband you should have never married in the first place.
- 420codebro 8y agoGoogle is nothing more than confused SJW SREs crying about gender pronouns on internal mailing lists.