13 ms·

Google ditches its free WiFi service in South Africa, three months after launch

207 points by infodocket 7y ago

judge2020 7y ago
"ditches" definitely not the word that should describe this (this is towards the article and not the HN submitter since it's the article's title); it could lead those who don't click to think it's another project Google has shut down. > “We are transferring our Station operations in South Africa to Think WiFi who will now carry out the project independently,” a spokesperson told Business Insider SA. > “We'll work with Think Wifi on a plan to transition the service to them, and continue to support them until the end of 2020. We remain committed to looking for ways to make the internet more accessible to users around the world.”
- xeromal 7y ago
  If I hand my child over to someone else to raise forever, I'm ditching them. :p
  - booi 7y ago
    A 3 month old at that
  - pcdoodle 7y ago
    wtf?
  - cma 7y ago
    But if you sell a car to a new owner, you aren't ditching it in the woods.
    - xeromal 7y ago
      If you owned it for 3 months, I'd think you were nuts.
    - daveFNbuck 7y ago
      Notice that you had to add "in the woods" to make it clear that ditching is negative here.
  - chii 7y ago
    bad analogy. There's no parent/child relationship between this service and google. As long as the service is continued, there's no issue as to who is owning and operating it. Using children makes it seem like google is providing essential operational expertise to keep the child alive, and the child would die if stopped.
    - xeromal 7y ago
      Nah, my analogy between a kid or a car is that if you get thing that is meant to be decently long term, car at least a year or a kid at least 18 years, you wouldn't give up in 3 months. There's not many things a person would own or have that giving up in 3 months wouldn't see like ditching it. Even giving up a cell phone in 3 months is pretty daft
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      > Using children makes it seem like google is providing essential operational expertise to keep the child alive, and the child would die if stopped. In the same way that when a child is adopted, it instantly dies?
    - rvnx 7y ago
      When you are Google, you have millions in funding, almost unlimited engineering ressources, political connections and many good reasons why a project would be successful (journalists, audience, users, accounts, etc) Once you transfer the responsibilities; all of the support that kept the project stay afloat disappears. It's not sustainable anymore, there is much limited growth, all the business model for exploiting data for advertising cannot exist anymore, etc. Well, it's dead you know.
    - jbc1 7y ago
      Products often die when transferred to another organisation. They never say that they will die in the announcement. See https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ It's entirely reasonable for people to assume this is basically Google shutting down the free WiFi service but with extra steps.
    - tmpz22 7y ago
- zapita 7y ago
  In all likelihood the “transfer” is just a way for Google to save face and avoid yet another “Google kills project” news cycle. Good on the editors for not falling for it.
  - Covzire 7y ago
    Another possibility is that the legal landscape was more hostile than Google anticipated and they essentially got squeezed out.
    - bootlooped 7y ago
      Isn't "this didn't go the way we thought it would and we're not willing to fight for it" the reason why all their products die?
      - beatgammit 7y ago
        No, it seems their products die because there's more prestige in launching a product than maintaining one.
        libria 7y ago
        "This went poorly because we care far more about launch than execution" is really the same spirit as the gp's paraphrase.
        spicyramen 7y ago
        Many products from Google die because is a bottom up company: many ideas that make it into products come from Engineering directly, (guys who wants o solve challenging problems), to later find out that the business analysis was poor...and an internal performance system that advocates for launches
        justinclift 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
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wyxuan 7y ago
I don't really know why Google, a company, is doing what should be done by the government with no clear benefit to the bottom line. This is not to say they shouldn’t do this, but if you look at it that way, it shouldn't be surprising at all. If they really wanted to help they probably should have teamed up with the government to ensure that there is government buy in to the program.
- qeternity 7y ago
  More people using web -> more ad revenue for Google
  - doggydogs94 7y ago
    I guess that didn’t happen here.
  - nothrabannosir 7y ago
    "Commoditize your complements." Covered by Joel Spolsky in an oldy but goody: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ (2002!)
    - mmahemoff 7y ago
      Small companies grow their market share. Big companies grow their market.
- manigandham 7y ago
  It's pretty cheap and offers branding, data, ad impressions, and the opportunity to upsell other Google services. The government is very ineffectual in these areas, if it even exists beyond a name. These services will never happen without big companies starting them. At least Google tried, and it looks like they're able to hand it off to another company that can keep it running now.
- thrower123 7y ago
  The South African government would have to be capable of managing some kind of project competently, which they demonstrate they are not able to do on a regular basis.
craftinator 7y ago
Google gets just a little bit shittier, every day. Amazing.
hadlock 7y ago
We need a catchy verb for when Google abandons yet another service... De-google? "South Africa's free Wifi service 'de-googled' as Google abandons yet another product"
- jaimex2 7y ago
  Microsoft had a brilliant one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogled Time to bring it back I say.
silentsea90 7y ago
I appreciate that Google tries new things, but I don't get why their success rate seems to fall far short of Amazon.
- asperous 7y ago
  I think they way they see it is they are a company of scale. Scale is what they are good at (if anything). So they shutdown lots of small successes to try and focus on the huge wins.. things like youtube, gmail, google docs, etc. things millions of people use.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    This is a reasonable perspective on their actions, but it then it still belies a huge glaring problem in Google fundamentally lacking the ability to understand which projects have the potential for scale at the desired level. It seems a standard part of a typical SV pitch deck to address the potential market and growth opportunities. Sure, they're wildly optimistic most times, but VC knows this and can price it in. But it almost seems like Google doesn't have the internal filtering mechanism necessary to perform this same function.
- nmfisher 7y ago
  > I appreciate that Google tries new things, but I don't get why their success rate seems to fall far short of Amazon. From the ground up, Amazon is focused on customers. Its mission statement is literally "to be Earth's most customer-centric company." Compare with Google: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." Google just isn't a customer-focused company. It seems many people who've tried to deal with their front-facing staff directly (AdWords, Pixel, Cloud, etc) have experienced this. They don't need to be, because search/ads are a licence to print money.
- tjpnz 7y ago
  From what I've heard Amazon has a more data driven approach to product development. They're still prepared to take risks, but do it in a more controlled fashion. There's no Amazon Stadia yet (for example) but there is Lumberyard and various services catered towards game developers on AWS. If they do decide to launch something similar in future they will at least have some understanding of the industry they're getting into.
justlexi93 7y ago
SA doesn't have the resources to offer the poor free Wi-Fi so they will miss out. And there is also the ongoing problem of cable theft so maybe google won't chance it here.
- nostrebored 7y ago
  What do you mean? Redirect the billions lost to state capture each year and free wifi to a few townships would be nothing.
  - tibbydudeza 7y ago
    And do what with it ????. Folks just want's the basics ... a job to feed their family and decent education for their kids to escape the cycle of poverty. I don't see how free Wifi is going to help with this one.
    - samatman 7y ago
      You don't see a connection between Internet access and a decent education?
    - onion2k 7y ago
      You don't see how access to WiFi would improve education? Seriously?
    - Kuraj 7y ago
      Access to the Internet is a basic need. Apart from access to education that other commenters pointed out, a lot of jobs will only accept digital CVs now.
m0zg 7y ago
This is how it works: 1. Googler wants a promo. They know they need to "launch" to get promo. They can't get a promo if they just improve or maintain something that already exists. 2. Googler gets together with other googlers and puts together something they could launch. Nobody cares if it makes any sense. 3. The thing launches. Googler gets their promo. It is now pointless to spend any effort on maintaining something that you can't "launch" again. Googler moves on. 4. Project dies and gets shut down after a while because no sane person would touch maintenance work with a 10 foot pole. 9 out of 10 projects at Google go through this lifecycle, pretty much verbatim. This is why you have three different Google-provided messsengers on Android, and why stuff launches with great fanfare and then quickly runs out of steam. You get the behavior you reward. This is what Google rewards.
- abrookewood 7y ago
  "You get the behavior you reward. This is what Google rewards." From what I have heard, I think you're right. Promotions and kudos flow from launching new products & services, but not in maintaining them.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    Yes, it convinces me there needs to be a 3rd stage to the old axiom: 1) Ideas are easy but 2) execution is hard and (new) 3) Maintenance is boring and lacks prestige but you'll fail without it.
- amznthrowaway5 7y ago
  Well if Google tried rewarding maintenance work, would people who do hard maintenance work and reduce tech debt actually be rewarded? Instead I think the result would be people gaming the new system and doing nothing while claiming to solve hard maintenance problems. Managers, as usual, would reward the wrong people. At least with the current system, google gets something kinda measurable.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Managers are only very tangentially involved with "rewarding" employees at Google. They do not promote them: it's the responsibility of the employee to apply for a promo, though manager has to support. And promotion decision is not made by the manager either: it's made by a committee that has never even seen the employee and knows nothing about their work other than what they choose to put in their "promotion packet", as well as peer feedback. IOW your manager can torpedo your promo chances, but they can't unilaterally "promote" or "reward" you per se, aside from some fractional bump in the yearly perf score. So employees have to support the assertions they make in the promo packet with evidence. I suppose you could support the assertion that you've done great maintenance work on something that's valuable to the company, and show off the metrics, PRs (or "CL"s in Google terminology), monetary impact, and things of that nature. But Google culturally doesn't really give a shit about this kind of thing, even if it's otherwise impactful. A few people manage to do well maintaining code at scale, but by and large my advice to Nooglers would be to stay as far away as they can from anything that's not contributing to a launch in some _easily quantifiable and attributable_ way. Or even if it does contribute to a launch, stay away from things they personally can't take credit for. Otherwise you'll end up working on something that someone else "started", and that someone will take credit when it's done.
jugg1es 7y ago
What does recomplex mean?
- nebulous1 7y ago
  typo, should be complex
ineedasername 7y ago
I just can't think of any reason why, if I were building any sort of business (tech or otherwise) I would incorporate google services (apart form google search ads, perhaps) into any aspect of it that I would deem "essential" or even "important". Even Drive & the associated sheets/docs/etc I look at with an eye towards "be ready to mass download the lot of it on short notice" As an example, about two years ago they were building something that looked poised to compete with MS Power BI and Tableau. Not mature enough at that point, but promising. I poked around and saw potential for what it could offer if I pushed it forward in my work place, but I quickly realized it was a very risky career prospect: It might not work quite so well and sure, that's fine, we'd be trying it out on that possible basis. But it might work just fine, and we migrate some clunky "enterprise" reporting over, decommission some old iron, and then... ::Poof::! Google's system is gone, end-of-lifed with a 90 day notice and then I'm left holding the bag because Google is not a reliable partner for anything outside a narrow core of the selections.
- davewasthere 7y ago
  Do you mean Google Data Studio, or something else?
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    It might have been that... They had a few similar forays into that sort of thing and at least one change of branding for the same offering when they gave it an overhaul, so I'm not sure. It may even still be around, but I just didn't have confidence in it's long term viability to push it organizationally over Tableau and ::shudder:: Cognos. (Cognos was mandatory, it was built on top of the the semantic layer of data from an ERP. A year later we realized we needed Tableau for truly modern data presentation, and used the semantic layer underlying Cognos as the primary data source for it, so it actually turned into a decent compromise. Now my push is for true data mining pipeline/ml development and deplo capabilities. Something like Alteryx, but there's a few solar industry-specific tools I'm looking at instead.
- dboreham 7y ago
  Yes. Been there, won't do that ever again.
njacobs5074 7y ago
This seems to be a part of the Google Station project (product?) being shut down world-wide [1]. TBH, while I'm all for projects that provide public uplift, it's clear that Google was never doing this completely out of the goodness of their hearts. Moreover, providing things for free here needs to be balanced with building services that provide a path out of the endemic unemployment that crushes so many people and communities. [1] https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/338928-google-pulling-out-of-free-wi-fi-project-in-south-africa.html https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/338928-google-pullin...
deleted 7y ago
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QueridoGuy 7y ago
i always think that Google and Microsoft are the worst when it comes to projects. They make good concept projects, but their problem is that they don't do full commitment. Much like Google Duo or Google Allo. Their problem was, while it's good to have those apps, they never made commitments into pushing them for consumers to like or even recognize. instead, they kept their hangout when they could either migrate fully, or just migrate the core from the new app. Microsoft did that with many projects too but their problem was different. That's why i believe the last good time google did something good was from when they announced their very first pixel. At least Microsoft is doing great job currently with their open source approach.
roseway4 7y ago
A huge pity. Langa, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Delft, Elsies River, and Philippi are poor, underserviced areas. It’s unlikely they benefit from the fiber to the home that the rest of Cape Town has (nor could many of their residents afford it). What they do have are cellphones and a free wireless service would likely benefit many. I can’t see any commercial value from continuing the service in these areas: Exactly why a wealthy tech company /should/ be considering this service. It’s quite possible the new operators will retreat to the formerly white (and rich) suburbs and center of Cape Town. * I’m a South Africa ex-pat living in the U.S.
reaperducer 7y ago
I still remember when Google promised to bring free wifi to all of the poor neighborhoods in Chicago. Amid a big frenzy of local media and politician hoopla it said was going to put access points on every streetlight. Then Google found out that when the street lights turn off, there's no power to run the access points. So it just walked away.
- numlock86 7y ago
  > Then Google found out that when the street lights turn off, there's no power to run the access points. Uh? Duh! What did they expect? A switch in every street light? (Which also would need to be controlled in some way ...)
  - krasin 7y ago
    Google operated city-wide public WiFi in Mountain View for many years. So, it's not like they didn't have any experience. I would also like to point out that most cities have a utility electrical grid to power traffic lights and the like. While I imaging some south cities could get away with solar-powered traffic lights, it's unlikely that Chicago is one. I don't know anything about this Google+Chicago experience (even though I currently work at Google), but I would bet the issue was not as simple as "they found out that street lights turn off".
    - ignoramous 7y ago
      > Google operated city-wide public WiFi in Mountain View for many years. So, it's not like they didn't have any experience. Google has been operating free WiFi in India at 400+ locations since 2016 and claim they've got a 8 million userbase [0]. > ...but I would bet the issue was not as simple as "they found out that street lights turn off". I'd be very surprised if this was true. It seems more plausible to me that news.yc has anti-Google bias. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation/railways/google-says-free-wifi-available-at-400-railway-stations/articleshow/64492865.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation...
Animats 7y ago
Lesson: never bet your business on a Google product other than ads.
- toper-centage 7y ago
  Considering how easily you can get banned from Google ads, you should also prepare for that scenario.
kkarakk 7y ago
Amazon, SpaceX and OneWeb are all doing satellite based internet service(or atleast trying to push in that direction. I wonder why project loon/whatever google calls it's think tanks now discarded that as an idea? seems like a thing purpose built for the google brand - huge idea, requires massive funding, literally no government can prevent you from beaming internet at it's citizens without a satellite killer(which they can't deploy without intl negative attention) 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/22/fast-internet-via-satellites-is-the-next-big-thing-in-the-space-race.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/22/fast-internet-via-satellites...
- vineyardmike 7y ago
  Huge idea requiring massive Capex seems more like an amazon thing (AWS, fulfillment centers, etc) than a google thing.
chilldsgn 7y ago
I suspect they're withdrawing due to infrastructure issues. We also have frequent power cuts (in my area it's up to 4 hours a day with no electricity) and loads of cable theft. Some of the cell towers even get shut down because people steal the hardware, the batteries that keep them operational. Heck, we've even had cases of people stealing fibre cables, because they thought they were worth more than copper. *I am a South African living in South Africa.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  Unfortunately, this is the downward spiral of having bad actors. I kinda wish we lived in a world where communities could self-regulate and expel bad actors to let the ones who want to work together to achieve something can thrive.
  - eklavya 7y ago
    Do you mean law and order?
  - buro9 7y ago
    It's more the downward spiral created by inequality and poverty. Address that and you can have nice things safely.
    - shard972 7y ago
      I mean are we to believe the inequality is worse now than under apartite?
  - zapzupnz 7y ago
    When you see the inequality in South Africa, when even people working good jobs still get paid only in single digits (which in Rands comes to /nothing/), where things cost so damn much — you might have a slightly more sympathetic take on why people do what they do to survive.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ptah 7y ago
slightly misleading as they are handing it over to someone else to run, not completely stopping it
alexmingoia 7y ago
I’m surprised none of the comments mention widespread increases in 4G coverage and decreased cellular broadband costs as a factor in shutting down the program worldwide. At least here in Myanmar free WiFi is no longer needed at cafes and the like as most people now have access to affordable cellular broadband at 4G speeds. I know it’s a similar situation in India where Google was operating the program.
satya71 7y ago
It's being shuttered in India as well [1]. [1] https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/google-to-close-station-which-provides-free-public-wifi-in-railway-stations/article30841811.ece https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/google-to-close...

207 points by infodocket 7y ago

judge2020 7y ago

"ditches" definitely not the word that should describe this (this is towards the article and not the HN submitter since it's the article's title); it could lead those who don't click to think it's another project Google has shut down. > “We are transferring our Station operations in South Africa to Think WiFi who will now carry out the project independently,” a spokesperson told Business Insider SA. > “We'll work with Think Wifi on a plan to transition the service to them, and continue to support them until the end of 2020. We remain committed to looking for ways to make the internet more accessible to users around the world.”

xeromal 7y ago
If I hand my child over to someone else to raise forever, I'm ditching them. :p
- booi 7y ago
  A 3 month old at that
- pcdoodle 7y ago
  wtf?
- cma 7y ago
  But if you sell a car to a new owner, you aren't ditching it in the woods.
  - xeromal 7y ago
    If you owned it for 3 months, I'd think you were nuts.
  - daveFNbuck 7y ago
    Notice that you had to add "in the woods" to make it clear that ditching is negative here.
- chii 7y ago
  bad analogy. There's no parent/child relationship between this service and google. As long as the service is continued, there's no issue as to who is owning and operating it. Using children makes it seem like google is providing essential operational expertise to keep the child alive, and the child would die if stopped.
  - xeromal 7y ago
    Nah, my analogy between a kid or a car is that if you get thing that is meant to be decently long term, car at least a year or a kid at least 18 years, you wouldn't give up in 3 months. There's not many things a person would own or have that giving up in 3 months wouldn't see like ditching it. Even giving up a cell phone in 3 months is pretty daft
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    > Using children makes it seem like google is providing essential operational expertise to keep the child alive, and the child would die if stopped. In the same way that when a child is adopted, it instantly dies?
  - rvnx 7y ago
    When you are Google, you have millions in funding, almost unlimited engineering ressources, political connections and many good reasons why a project would be successful (journalists, audience, users, accounts, etc) Once you transfer the responsibilities; all of the support that kept the project stay afloat disappears. It's not sustainable anymore, there is much limited growth, all the business model for exploiting data for advertising cannot exist anymore, etc. Well, it's dead you know.
  - jbc1 7y ago
    Products often die when transferred to another organisation. They never say that they will die in the announcement. See https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ It's entirely reasonable for people to assume this is basically Google shutting down the free WiFi service but with extra steps.
  - tmpz22 7y ago
zapita 7y ago
In all likelihood the “transfer” is just a way for Google to save face and avoid yet another “Google kills project” news cycle. Good on the editors for not falling for it.
- Covzire 7y ago
  Another possibility is that the legal landscape was more hostile than Google anticipated and they essentially got squeezed out.
  - bootlooped 7y ago
    Isn't "this didn't go the way we thought it would and we're not willing to fight for it" the reason why all their products die?
    - beatgammit 7y ago
      No, it seems their products die because there's more prestige in launching a product than maintaining one.
      - libria 7y ago
        "This went poorly because we care far more about launch than execution" is really the same spirit as the gp's paraphrase.
        spicyramen 7y ago
        Many products from Google die because is a bottom up company: many ideas that make it into products come from Engineering directly, (guys who wants o solve challenging problems), to later find out that the business analysis was poor...and an internal performance system that advocates for launches
        justinclift 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

wyxuan 7y ago

I don't really know why Google, a company, is doing what should be done by the government with no clear benefit to the bottom line. This is not to say they shouldn’t do this, but if you look at it that way, it shouldn't be surprising at all. If they really wanted to help they probably should have teamed up with the government to ensure that there is government buy in to the program.

qeternity 7y ago
More people using web -> more ad revenue for Google
- doggydogs94 7y ago
  I guess that didn’t happen here.
- nothrabannosir 7y ago
  "Commoditize your complements." Covered by Joel Spolsky in an oldy but goody: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ (2002!)
  - mmahemoff 7y ago
    Small companies grow their market share. Big companies grow their market.
manigandham 7y ago
It's pretty cheap and offers branding, data, ad impressions, and the opportunity to upsell other Google services. The government is very ineffectual in these areas, if it even exists beyond a name. These services will never happen without big companies starting them. At least Google tried, and it looks like they're able to hand it off to another company that can keep it running now.
thrower123 7y ago
The South African government would have to be capable of managing some kind of project competently, which they demonstrate they are not able to do on a regular basis.

craftinator 7y ago

Google gets just a little bit shittier, every day. Amazing.

hadlock 7y ago

We need a catchy verb for when Google abandons yet another service... De-google? "South Africa's free Wifi service 'de-googled' as Google abandons yet another product"

jaimex2 7y ago
Microsoft had a brilliant one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogled Time to bring it back I say.

silentsea90 7y ago

I appreciate that Google tries new things, but I don't get why their success rate seems to fall far short of Amazon.

asperous 7y ago
I think they way they see it is they are a company of scale. Scale is what they are good at (if anything). So they shutdown lots of small successes to try and focus on the huge wins.. things like youtube, gmail, google docs, etc. things millions of people use.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  This is a reasonable perspective on their actions, but it then it still belies a huge glaring problem in Google fundamentally lacking the ability to understand which projects have the potential for scale at the desired level. It seems a standard part of a typical SV pitch deck to address the potential market and growth opportunities. Sure, they're wildly optimistic most times, but VC knows this and can price it in. But it almost seems like Google doesn't have the internal filtering mechanism necessary to perform this same function.
nmfisher 7y ago
> I appreciate that Google tries new things, but I don't get why their success rate seems to fall far short of Amazon. From the ground up, Amazon is focused on customers. Its mission statement is literally "to be Earth's most customer-centric company." Compare with Google: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." Google just isn't a customer-focused company. It seems many people who've tried to deal with their front-facing staff directly (AdWords, Pixel, Cloud, etc) have experienced this. They don't need to be, because search/ads are a licence to print money.
tjpnz 7y ago
From what I've heard Amazon has a more data driven approach to product development. They're still prepared to take risks, but do it in a more controlled fashion. There's no Amazon Stadia yet (for example) but there is Lumberyard and various services catered towards game developers on AWS. If they do decide to launch something similar in future they will at least have some understanding of the industry they're getting into.

justlexi93 7y ago

SA doesn't have the resources to offer the poor free Wi-Fi so they will miss out. And there is also the ongoing problem of cable theft so maybe google won't chance it here.

nostrebored 7y ago
What do you mean? Redirect the billions lost to state capture each year and free wifi to a few townships would be nothing.
- tibbydudeza 7y ago
  And do what with it ????. Folks just want's the basics ... a job to feed their family and decent education for their kids to escape the cycle of poverty. I don't see how free Wifi is going to help with this one.
  - samatman 7y ago
    You don't see a connection between Internet access and a decent education?
  - onion2k 7y ago
    You don't see how access to WiFi would improve education? Seriously?
  - Kuraj 7y ago
    Access to the Internet is a basic need. Apart from access to education that other commenters pointed out, a lot of jobs will only accept digital CVs now.

m0zg 7y ago

This is how it works: 1. Googler wants a promo. They know they need to "launch" to get promo. They can't get a promo if they just improve or maintain something that already exists. 2. Googler gets together with other googlers and puts together something they could launch. Nobody cares if it makes any sense. 3. The thing launches. Googler gets their promo. It is now pointless to spend any effort on maintaining something that you can't "launch" again. Googler moves on. 4. Project dies and gets shut down after a while because no sane person would touch maintenance work with a 10 foot pole. 9 out of 10 projects at Google go through this lifecycle, pretty much verbatim. This is why you have three different Google-provided messsengers on Android, and why stuff launches with great fanfare and then quickly runs out of steam. You get the behavior you reward. This is what Google rewards.

abrookewood 7y ago
"You get the behavior you reward. This is what Google rewards." From what I have heard, I think you're right. Promotions and kudos flow from launching new products & services, but not in maintaining them.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  Yes, it convinces me there needs to be a 3rd stage to the old axiom: 1) Ideas are easy but 2) execution is hard and (new) 3) Maintenance is boring and lacks prestige but you'll fail without it.
amznthrowaway5 7y ago
Well if Google tried rewarding maintenance work, would people who do hard maintenance work and reduce tech debt actually be rewarded? Instead I think the result would be people gaming the new system and doing nothing while claiming to solve hard maintenance problems. Managers, as usual, would reward the wrong people. At least with the current system, google gets something kinda measurable.
- m0zg 7y ago
  Managers are only very tangentially involved with "rewarding" employees at Google. They do not promote them: it's the responsibility of the employee to apply for a promo, though manager has to support. And promotion decision is not made by the manager either: it's made by a committee that has never even seen the employee and knows nothing about their work other than what they choose to put in their "promotion packet", as well as peer feedback. IOW your manager can torpedo your promo chances, but they can't unilaterally "promote" or "reward" you per se, aside from some fractional bump in the yearly perf score. So employees have to support the assertions they make in the promo packet with evidence. I suppose you could support the assertion that you've done great maintenance work on something that's valuable to the company, and show off the metrics, PRs (or "CL"s in Google terminology), monetary impact, and things of that nature. But Google culturally doesn't really give a shit about this kind of thing, even if it's otherwise impactful. A few people manage to do well maintaining code at scale, but by and large my advice to Nooglers would be to stay as far away as they can from anything that's not contributing to a launch in some _easily quantifiable and attributable_ way. Or even if it does contribute to a launch, stay away from things they personally can't take credit for. Otherwise you'll end up working on something that someone else "started", and that someone will take credit when it's done.

jugg1es 7y ago

What does recomplex mean?

nebulous1 7y ago
typo, should be complex

ineedasername 7y ago

I just can't think of any reason why, if I were building any sort of business (tech or otherwise) I would incorporate google services (apart form google search ads, perhaps) into any aspect of it that I would deem "essential" or even "important". Even Drive & the associated sheets/docs/etc I look at with an eye towards "be ready to mass download the lot of it on short notice" As an example, about two years ago they were building something that looked poised to compete with MS Power BI and Tableau. Not mature enough at that point, but promising. I poked around and saw potential for what it could offer if I pushed it forward in my work place, but I quickly realized it was a very risky career prospect: It might not work quite so well and sure, that's fine, we'd be trying it out on that possible basis. But it might work just fine, and we migrate some clunky "enterprise" reporting over, decommission some old iron, and then... ::Poof::! Google's system is gone, end-of-lifed with a 90 day notice and then I'm left holding the bag because Google is not a reliable partner for anything outside a narrow core of the selections.

davewasthere 7y ago
Do you mean Google Data Studio, or something else?
- ineedasername 7y ago
  It might have been that... They had a few similar forays into that sort of thing and at least one change of branding for the same offering when they gave it an overhaul, so I'm not sure. It may even still be around, but I just didn't have confidence in it's long term viability to push it organizationally over Tableau and ::shudder:: Cognos. (Cognos was mandatory, it was built on top of the the semantic layer of data from an ERP. A year later we realized we needed Tableau for truly modern data presentation, and used the semantic layer underlying Cognos as the primary data source for it, so it actually turned into a decent compromise. Now my push is for true data mining pipeline/ml development and deplo capabilities. Something like Alteryx, but there's a few solar industry-specific tools I'm looking at instead.
dboreham 7y ago
Yes. Been there, won't do that ever again.

njacobs5074 7y ago

This seems to be a part of the Google Station project (product?) being shut down world-wide [1]. TBH, while I'm all for projects that provide public uplift, it's clear that Google was never doing this completely out of the goodness of their hearts. Moreover, providing things for free here needs to be balanced with building services that provide a path out of the endemic unemployment that crushes so many people and communities. [1] https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/338928-google-pulling-out-of-free-wi-fi-project-in-south-africa.html https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/338928-google-pullin...

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QueridoGuy 7y ago

i always think that Google and Microsoft are the worst when it comes to projects. They make good concept projects, but their problem is that they don't do full commitment. Much like Google Duo or Google Allo. Their problem was, while it's good to have those apps, they never made commitments into pushing them for consumers to like or even recognize. instead, they kept their hangout when they could either migrate fully, or just migrate the core from the new app. Microsoft did that with many projects too but their problem was different. That's why i believe the last good time google did something good was from when they announced their very first pixel. At least Microsoft is doing great job currently with their open source approach.

roseway4 7y ago

A huge pity. Langa, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Delft, Elsies River, and Philippi are poor, underserviced areas. It’s unlikely they benefit from the fiber to the home that the rest of Cape Town has (nor could many of their residents afford it). What they do have are cellphones and a free wireless service would likely benefit many. I can’t see any commercial value from continuing the service in these areas: Exactly why a wealthy tech company /should/ be considering this service. It’s quite possible the new operators will retreat to the formerly white (and rich) suburbs and center of Cape Town. * I’m a South Africa ex-pat living in the U.S.

reaperducer 7y ago

I still remember when Google promised to bring free wifi to all of the poor neighborhoods in Chicago. Amid a big frenzy of local media and politician hoopla it said was going to put access points on every streetlight. Then Google found out that when the street lights turn off, there's no power to run the access points. So it just walked away.

numlock86 7y ago
> Then Google found out that when the street lights turn off, there's no power to run the access points. Uh? Duh! What did they expect? A switch in every street light? (Which also would need to be controlled in some way ...)
- krasin 7y ago
  Google operated city-wide public WiFi in Mountain View for many years. So, it's not like they didn't have any experience. I would also like to point out that most cities have a utility electrical grid to power traffic lights and the like. While I imaging some south cities could get away with solar-powered traffic lights, it's unlikely that Chicago is one. I don't know anything about this Google+Chicago experience (even though I currently work at Google), but I would bet the issue was not as simple as "they found out that street lights turn off".
  - ignoramous 7y ago
    > Google operated city-wide public WiFi in Mountain View for many years. So, it's not like they didn't have any experience. Google has been operating free WiFi in India at 400+ locations since 2016 and claim they've got a 8 million userbase [0]. > ...but I would bet the issue was not as simple as "they found out that street lights turn off". I'd be very surprised if this was true. It seems more plausible to me that news.yc has anti-Google bias. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation/railways/google-says-free-wifi-available-at-400-railway-stations/articleshow/64492865.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation...

Animats 7y ago

Lesson: never bet your business on a Google product other than ads.

toper-centage 7y ago
Considering how easily you can get banned from Google ads, you should also prepare for that scenario.

kkarakk 7y ago

Amazon, SpaceX and OneWeb are all doing satellite based internet service(or atleast trying to push in that direction. I wonder why project loon/whatever google calls it's think tanks now discarded that as an idea? seems like a thing purpose built for the google brand - huge idea, requires massive funding, literally no government can prevent you from beaming internet at it's citizens without a satellite killer(which they can't deploy without intl negative attention) 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/22/fast-internet-via-satellites-is-the-next-big-thing-in-the-space-race.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/22/fast-internet-via-satellites...

vineyardmike 7y ago
Huge idea requiring massive Capex seems more like an amazon thing (AWS, fulfillment centers, etc) than a google thing.

chilldsgn 7y ago

I suspect they're withdrawing due to infrastructure issues. We also have frequent power cuts (in my area it's up to 4 hours a day with no electricity) and loads of cable theft. Some of the cell towers even get shut down because people steal the hardware, the batteries that keep them operational. Heck, we've even had cases of people stealing fibre cables, because they thought they were worth more than copper. *I am a South African living in South Africa.

WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
Unfortunately, this is the downward spiral of having bad actors. I kinda wish we lived in a world where communities could self-regulate and expel bad actors to let the ones who want to work together to achieve something can thrive.
- eklavya 7y ago
  Do you mean law and order?
- buro9 7y ago
  It's more the downward spiral created by inequality and poverty. Address that and you can have nice things safely.
  - shard972 7y ago
    I mean are we to believe the inequality is worse now than under apartite?
- zapzupnz 7y ago
  When you see the inequality in South Africa, when even people working good jobs still get paid only in single digits (which in Rands comes to /nothing/), where things cost so damn much — you might have a slightly more sympathetic take on why people do what they do to survive.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago

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ptah 7y ago

slightly misleading as they are handing it over to someone else to run, not completely stopping it

alexmingoia 7y ago

I’m surprised none of the comments mention widespread increases in 4G coverage and decreased cellular broadband costs as a factor in shutting down the program worldwide. At least here in Myanmar free WiFi is no longer needed at cafes and the like as most people now have access to affordable cellular broadband at 4G speeds. I know it’s a similar situation in India where Google was operating the program.

satya71 7y ago

It's being shuttered in India as well [1]. [1] https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/google-to-close-station-which-provides-free-public-wifi-in-railway-stations/article30841811.ece https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/google-to-close...