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Google Fiber to pay nearly $4M to Louisville in exit deal
- notjustanymike 7y agoThat's not much at all
- OrgNet 7y agobetter then $47, I guess, if all you think about is money
- shmerl 7y agoInstead, they should build their network there, as promised. Though $4M are peanuts in comparison with costs of building it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ryacko 7y ago“The payments, to be made over 20 months, will cover removing fiber cables ” WISPs should be allowed access to the fiber network instead of removing it.
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoThe fiber isn't salvageable. Google did an "experimental" deployment which turned out to be utter trash. The short summary is they dug tiny little trenches in the road, and filled the gap above the fiber with foam. Vehicles, snow plows, and construction happened, which all happens to fairly efficiently rip the guts of their network out. That's why Google is leaving: They don't want to redeploy the entire network from scratch.
- ryacko 7y ago/Some/ of the fiber might be salvageable.
- ClassyJacket 7y agoThis is true - I've seen the pictures and it wasn't pretty. But surely the lead ins to the houses (the fibre in people's front yards) is useful still? That is, after all, the costliest part of a fibre rollout.
- StudentStuff 7y agoOn side streets I heard the quality of workmanship dropped even further, from micro-trenches with cabling a few inches below the road surface to cables that were barely covered and eventually becoming tripping hazards.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoPossibly Caused by shoddy work by contractors as well - I have heard documented horror stories of contractors cutting the ends off telegraph poles to make emplacing new poles quicker.
- Dylan16807 7y ago> That's why Google is leaving: They don't want to redeploy the entire network from scratch. I don't think the "from scratch" part really matters here when they were a percent or two done at most, and they have to pay to fix the roads anyway. It's more that they don't want to deploy a network at all.
- MertsA 7y agoThe reason why Google is pulling out is because they tried nano trenching the fiber into the street and sealing over the top of it with a rubber like sealer and they had major problems with that sealer bonding to the road. It would peel up and get destroyed as cars went over it. Google is backing out because their existing plan all needs to be removed and replaced and the road surface needs to be fixed. Giving a WISP access to that fiber would just be a cop out for Google to avoid fixing the issues that they caused.
- jamisteven 7y agoThe actual reason, the core of this, has nothing to do with micro-trenching and everything to do with them not being allowed to use the existing network of utility poles due to bigger telco's lobbying the governments against it, and winning. AT&T, Comcast etc were fighting tooth and nail to not allow Google on their poles, which led to google attempting micro-trenching as a proof of concept.
- jonathankoren 7y agoAt the same time, I don’t think that if you were truly serious, you’d do your deployment with a completely unproven technique.
- StudentStuff 7y agoGoogle could have attached to the poles, the city even fought AT&T to let them on the poles without a proper CLEC license: https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/metro-government/2017/08/16/judge-throws-out-at-t-suit-against-citys-google-fiber-proposal/573863001/ https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/metro-go... In return, Google did not use said pole attachment rights, damaged roads and left broken infrastructure & promises.
- rayiner 7y agoIncorrect historical revisionism. Google was always allowed to use the utility poles. It lobbied Louisville to get a special law passed that would allow it to not only use the utility poles, but relocate other peoples’ wires to make space on the poles while putting up their own. (Ordinarily, the owner of the lines does the relocation.) AT&T challenged that law in court.[1] The city defended the law at its own expense, and won fairly early in the process (on a motion to dismiss). AT&T did not appeal. That was two years ago. According to the article, Google didn’t even start nano-trenching and signing up people for “fiber hoods” until October 2017, after the lawsuit was already over.[2] [1] AT&T did not challenge Google’s right to use the utility poles, only the law allowing Google contractors to relocate AT&T’s equipment and wires in the process. These laws are probably a good idea on the whole, but given the shoddy work Google’s contractors evidently did with the city’s streets, maybe AT&T’s complaint wasn’t so dumb after all. [2] The whole concept of “fiberhoods” is another concession to Google that other providers do not get. Almost everywhere, franchise agreements require universal coverage of the city, not just build-out in places with demonstrated demand. Moreover, Google wasn’t required to pay for various additional concessions that Charter had to pay in Louisville, like wiring up government buildings and providing public access channels and a studio for government use. Those provisions are routine for cable franchises, but Google Fiber categorically refuses any deal that has them.
- metaphor 7y ago$3.84mil over 20 months + $150k donation to a local non-profit. Hard to see how this isn't an easy exit for Google. Glad it isn't my city. Two years of eye sores and random road construction to patch up neighborhood streets sounds like a real pain, to say the least.
- self_awareness 7y ago"451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time." Thanks European Union!
- shard972 7y agoJust get a VPN and get around the great firewall of Europe.
- quickthrower2 7y agoThe firewall is on the server, not the "Europe" end.
- NotSammyHagar 7y agoThe commentor is almost certainly making a sarcastic comment that the european data standards act as a firewall conceptually since some companies block europeans from accessing their services because they don't want to do gdpr.
- ClassyJacket 7y agoA VPN that makes you appear American would still work in that case.
- OkGoDoIt 7y agoMore like thanks crappy content provider who would rather block users instead of have a reasonable privacy policy.
- ladberg 7y agoEhh, the site is local news for Louisville. They might not be consciously doing anything against GDPR, just decided that the cost to make sure they're GDPR compliant isn't worth the minuscule number of added viewers.
- evancox100 7y agoIf you look at the map at the end, they really didn't get very far in rolling it out, just a few neighborhoods (11,000 households). Works out to about $400/house, which seems reasonable.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- abledon 7y agoI bet the owners of those houses could sell them to IT/steaming/gamer minded folks for a higher price than average.
- dajohnson89 7y agoI'm sure it happened several times, and the buyers are now screwed.
- WorldMaker 7y agoNot really, the fiber installs were faulty and will be removed in repairing the street damage. This really was a worst possible case effort by Google in that the fiber infrastructure isn't usable by anyone only a few months after it was "installed".
- mattsfrey 7y agoWhy can't they just leave the infrastructure there in case somebody else decides to utilize it at some point?
- kkarakk 7y agoit's not "infrastructure" it's small cuts in the road(which is the reason why it failed). if they left it as is, it would probably turn into potholes that the city would have to fix
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jonathankoren 7y agoBecause their infrastructure failed. Nature is forcing it out of its tiny trench and on to the roads, where it’s getting cut by cars. You can see the state of it in the link below. https://gizmodo.com/when-google-fiber-abandons-your-city-as-a-failed-experi-1833244198 https://gizmodo.com/when-google-fiber-abandons-your-city-as-...
- chrisseaton 7y agoWow that's not what you expect when you think of Google engineering. In some other photos the actual fibre is now above the ground.
- WorldMaker 7y agoIt's the new picture of Google Engineering for at least some of us now. It's very hard to trust a company that failed this spectacularly, doing something so clearly very dumb.
- noxxten 7y agoThis. I was thrilled when Google announced Louisville would be getting service. Louisville is a relatively tiny city in comparison, and not long after the announcement both AT&T and Time Warner/Spectrum lowered prices AND raised speeds. AT&T dramatically increased their own fiber rollout too. When I first started hearing about the micro/nano trenching issues... I was really shocked Google would be so careless and downright stupid. After being allowed to use the poles, they chose to trench? In a city that not only regularly floods, but has near-constant road construction? Never mind how little quality control they imposed on the contractors to trench the lines, half of them appear to have been laid on the ground and half-ass covered with some dirt. It's an absolute disgrace of civil engineering, particularly from such a large and engineering-centric company. Also, just as an aside, now that Google has completely abandoned Louisville and we're left with Spectrum and AT&T in most areas... Both have raised prices, and it appears that AT&T is starting to slow it's fiber rollout in some areas.
- beaker52 7y ago451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact digitalteam@wdrb.com or call 502-585-0811.
- self_awareness 7y agoPrepare to be downvoted into nothingness!
- jrockway 7y agoHow much should a small local news organization in Louisville, KY be expected to pay to comply with laws on random other continents? I think they made the right choice here.
- swarnie_ 7y ago> random other continents Europe.... its not Antarctica.
- jstanley 7y agoIt would cost less to just ignore the foreign law than to "comply" by blocking foreign users.
- ceejayoz 7y agoIn the short-term, sure. In the long-term, that might lead to your staff being arrested for contempt of court the next time they go on vacation to Europe.
- peteretep 7y agoAre they harvesting my personal information? If so they should be dealing with it properly
- luckylion 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- eddieone 7y agoNice looking roads are more important than the internet?
- notzuck 7y agoThis article doesn't say that. Maybe read it again.
- vectorEQ 7y agoif ppl run over the cables, you end up with shitty roads and no internet.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoPotholes ripping a $2000 exhaust of cars and being sued are :-)
- nulbyte 7y agoGoogle isn't bringing the internet to Louisville. So yes, nice roads are better than the internet that Google isn't providing us.
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- sonnyblarney 7y agoFunny to see how hard physical reality hits the Valley types, which is saddening because G has very smart people, it'd be wonderful for them to continue working on real world problems maybe it'd change their culture a little bit as well. Their surpluses have to go somewhere, and the FANGs are sitting on a lot of cash they might be able to put to better use than simply by managing it like a hedge fund.
- souterrain 7y agoWhen I read “exit deal” I tend to think about an agreement being reached to terminate a contract. This is an incorrect assumption. This is only Google making the City of Louisville whole for damage to their road infrastructure.
- nulbyte 7y agoThis is a market exit, wherein Google is making Louisville Metro whole for damage done to our roads while rolling out a service to a tiny fraction of the metro only to give up and walk out.
- soverance 7y agohaha Google seems to do this with a ton of projects. Make it half way and give up. They do it so publicly so often there's a whole Wikipedia page for every project they've started and killed. Just got another one to add to the list.
- teambayleaf 7y agoGoogle is just a bunch of groups who try to push their own product so that they can get a good review. If they manage to get an initial positive result and have some publicity, then the project is basically done. No one has interest in it anymore.
- disqard 7y agoFrom Google's blog post [0]: "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." That's exactly what the shareholders want to hear. Capitalism's myopic focus on "maximizing shareholder returns" will usually choose the cheaper option over doing the Right Thing. [0] https://fiber.googleblog.com/2019/02/louisville_7.html https://fiber.googleblog.com/2019/02/louisville_7.html
- taormina 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon... Also found https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- chrisseaton 7y agoIsn't there already conduit in these cities to put the fibre in? In my part of the UK the existing phone lines run in conduits underground and you can add a new line in there fairly easily. If they don't have conduit I wonder if they could run the line in the sewers, which already run to most houses and are large?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- alexis_fr 7y agoGoogle specifically wanted to try a technology called nanotrenching. They just dig 5cm. It didn’t work because it serms any road engineer knows the seal won’t hold, and cars will wreck the cables very fast. https://www.techrepublic.com/google-amp/pictures/photos-how-google-fiber-is-using-shallow-trenching-to-outbuild-its-gigabit-rivals/ https://www.techrepublic.com/google-amp/pictures/photos-how-...
- mcv 7y agoYou'd think they could test that on a limited scale before rolling it out in an entire city.
- xori 7y agoWhen you're Google, a city is a limited scale.
- stevetodd 7y agoThey did the microtrenching for my neighborhood in Provo and it seems to be working alright. One difference in my location from what the linked pictures show is that they put the trench right between the the asphalt and the cement of the curb. They also used a small conduit to house the fiber. We’ll see what a few more years brings, but so far so good.
- Supermighty 7y agoThe only reason Google tried the nanotrenching is because AT&T fought them tooth and nail on using the telephone polls.
- deadmetheny 7y agoI do appreciate Google's bold and visionary dedication to bringing their model of starting up a project, half-assedly supporting it, and subsequently abandoning it when it becomes a little bit hard out of the software world and to the physical world.
- ordinaryperson 7y agoMy large regional cable provider recently tripled the cost of modem rental to $15/month so I bought my own. Opened the next bill but instead of seeing a $15 drop it was the same. Thought it was an error but no, they just unilaterally raised prices on a bunch of other services. What can I do? There's no other option for me. I get there are Byzantine local and state regulations that make last-mile internet unprofitable or a low-margin, commodity business, which is presumably why Ruth Porat and other bean counters at Google killed this effort. But improving America's internet is a social good that Google could invest its massive profits into; instead leadership would prefer to build repression-enabling tools to compete in China.
- irrational 7y agoYears ago when I thought of Google I thought of their search engine. Then I thought about them in terms of their successful software like Google Maps, Docs, Chrome, etc. Then I started to become more aware of what they were up to and thought of them in terms of their new motto, "Be Evil". Now I mainly think about Google in terms of a company that kills products and initiatives. I can't think of a single other company that has less of an ability to follow through than Google. Their newer motto should be "When the going gets tough, quit."
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoMicrosoft is rapidly approaching "When the going gets tough, quit" territory. Windows Mobile was a vastly superior operating system, but it was dropped because it was only in third place. Android is still catching up to it's feature set. They've just more or less abandoned Cortana, relegating it to Office and an integration for other voice assistants. Edge, which while buggy beat Chrome on power consumption and performance more often than not, has been dropped for a reskin of Chrome. Which is to say, Microsoft no longer appears to want to compete with anyone in any market where there is a leading competitor that isn't them.
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoThe big difference is that Microsoft is abandoning things that barely anyone likes or uses so they go unnoticed when gone. Google on the other hand abandons things that lots of people like and would love to keep using.
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoI would argue there were vastly more Windows Mobile users than Google Reader users, more than likely (in some countries, WinMo had a 10% or greater market share for a while), and I would love to keep using my Windows phone, but I'm going to leave it behind when security updates end this December.
- telchar 7y agoMicrosoft has been there for a while now. In this way I think Google is the new Microsoft.
- chappi42 7y agoGood to see Google spending the money to fix the damage to city streets. Kudos!
- tungwaiyip 7y agoIf any utility work need to dig perpendicular to the trench, wouldn't cut the fiber right away?