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You're being downvoted, and I have no idea why. It is embarrassing. It's not just embarrassing, it's fucking embarrassing. Google Stadia could have been enorm

You're being downvoted, and I have no idea why. It is embarrassing. It's not just embarrassing, it's fucking embarrassing. Google Stadia could have been enormously successful. What killed it? The same thing killing all manner of innovation in this country - poor broadband Internet service. But... oh God, if only... if only Google had something they could use... something they could do to solve this problem!? Oh... wait, yeah. They have their own fucking fiber ISP! Google could have ponied up money and started building out their fiber infrastructure massively, dumping whatever loads of cash were required, and they could easily have eaten up huge chunks of metro and suburban areas in America and might even be one of the leading ISPs in the nation. But this speaks to the utter weakness and spinelessness of Google leadership up and down the entire chain. If you're stupid and/or naïve enough to think Comcast and Spectrum and Verizon and Charter and AT&T are just going to let you waltz in and steal their customers (and yes, these ISPs do think this way - you are THEIR customer - to be milked of money), you should never have entered into the ISP business in the first place. You have to throw sharp elbows. You have to gouge out eyes. You have to break bones. ISPs are ruthless. If Google had been willing to sacrifice some of their profits for the past 12 years and bribe - sorry, """""""lobby""""""" all the necessary local, county, state, and federal officials - they could have moved in on all the shitty ISP's territories, laid down a ton of fiber, and might even have a majority control of Internet access both residentially and commercially. But Google has long suffered from two overlapping problems: fear of failure and intolerance for anything less than instant success. The road to becoming America's best ISP will be a long, hard, miserable, expensive one for any company... but when you've got literally billions of dollars of cash at your disposal, you could throw the shit away on short-term dipshit Wall Street investors... or you could build something that would last for 50+ years and generate an enormous amount of revenue in a decade or two. Too bad they're focused on short-term dipshit Wall Street investors.

pkulak 4y ago
If you're a manager, why the hell are you going to risk your career trying to get the last guy's project to work? There are two incentives in corporate America: start a project to get the praise for something new, and kill a project to get the praise for saving money. Is it any wonder projects keep popping in and out of existence?
colejohnson66 4y ago
> You're being downvoted, and I have no idea why. Because calling people's job choices "embarrassing", no matter how right you may be, isn't a good starting argument against the people in those jobs. Not to mention that it comes off as pretentious.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  No, Google upper management is a bunch of incompetent clowns, and they should rightly be called out for it. Working at Google today, you better be in just for the 200k salary, because your options there are to sell ads or work on a product that's going to be shut down in a week.
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    What major projects get shut down in the same week and what ads do you think they are selling?
- cbozeman 4y ago
  Cole, do you know what working at Google is fast becoming like? It's like going to Harvard. You don't want to advertise that you went to Harvard. People who attended Harvard not only admit this, they don't even actively proclaim they went to Harvard any longer. Why is that? Because a bunch of really shitty people have sullied the reputation. It isn't that way with Google for the general public, but the SV folks know that Google of 2022 is nothing like Google of 2012, and certainly nothing like Google of 2002. My great fear is that it won't be much longer before saying you work at Google in say, 2025-2032 is like saying you work at Hewlett-Packard or IBM in 2022. The prestige is long gone.
  - zen_1 4y ago
    Where would you say the prestige is now?
    - maerF0x0 4y ago
zeruch 4y ago
"fear of failure and intolerance for anything less than instant success...focused on short-term dipshit Wall Street investors" A nice distillation of most of SV these days.
throwaway991122 4y ago
Full disclosure: I work at AT&T but not directly on fiber. My views are my own and do not represent my employers. Scaling fiber is hard and expensive. It’s a labor intensive process to get all the permits and get people to go and dig trenches and wire up homes. In sparsely populated areas you have the cost of laying lots of fiber and not ever having the hope of recovering your investment. In densely populated areas you need to relay cable and rewire apartments and homes. It’s a slow along and the USA is a really BIG place. I’m not privy to the politics but Google has oodles of $$. They could lobby effectively if they were interested. Lobbying happens - and like anything else its a tool to use. Google would use it against competitors if they were able to. so ISPs use it. They could have bought 5g spectrum. They could have started something like Starlink instead they play around with balloons. They had the $$ to muscle into that. So, the only thing I can guess is that they aren’t / weren’t interested in the ISP business to begin with. The Fiber misadventure was just that - something they thought they could easily scale, tried it and got out when they understood the reality on the ground. Also- I don’t think working for Google is embarrassing. They deprecate products quickly before they become a ball and chain on your bottom line. Working for Google remains as prestigious as ever.
wruza 4y ago
started building out their fiber infrastructure massively, dumping whatever loads of cash were required, and they could easily have eaten up huge chunks of metro and suburban areas in America and might even be one of the leading ISPs in the nation. Haha, imagine them shutting it down eventually.
DesiLurker 4y ago
>If Google had been willing to sacrifice some of their profits for the past 12 years Sad thing is they did not even have to do that. all they had to do was put some lobbying effort in empowering municipalities to do their own broadband and the rest would take care of itself. ISP monopolies have been kneecapping municipal broadband effort right and left and just some push from otherside would have cleared up the way for some competition. But they did not, as you said, its classic short term thinking and 'not my problem' syndrome. What really troubles me is that Google & FB have sucked up almost all of ad market but none of that revenue is trickling back into society except for these 'promotion packet' side hustles.

pkulak 4y ago

If you're a manager, why the hell are you going to risk your career trying to get the last guy's project to work? There are two incentives in corporate America: start a project to get the praise for something new, and kill a project to get the praise for saving money. Is it any wonder projects keep popping in and out of existence?

colejohnson66 4y ago

> You're being downvoted, and I have no idea why. Because calling people's job choices "embarrassing", no matter how right you may be, isn't a good starting argument against the people in those jobs. Not to mention that it comes off as pretentious.

ohgodplsno 4y ago
No, Google upper management is a bunch of incompetent clowns, and they should rightly be called out for it. Working at Google today, you better be in just for the 200k salary, because your options there are to sell ads or work on a product that's going to be shut down in a week.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  What major projects get shut down in the same week and what ads do you think they are selling?
cbozeman 4y ago
Cole, do you know what working at Google is fast becoming like? It's like going to Harvard. You don't want to advertise that you went to Harvard. People who attended Harvard not only admit this, they don't even actively proclaim they went to Harvard any longer. Why is that? Because a bunch of really shitty people have sullied the reputation. It isn't that way with Google for the general public, but the SV folks know that Google of 2022 is nothing like Google of 2012, and certainly nothing like Google of 2002. My great fear is that it won't be much longer before saying you work at Google in say, 2025-2032 is like saying you work at Hewlett-Packard or IBM in 2022. The prestige is long gone.
- zen_1 4y ago
  Where would you say the prestige is now?
  - maerF0x0 4y ago

zeruch 4y ago

"fear of failure and intolerance for anything less than instant success...focused on short-term dipshit Wall Street investors" A nice distillation of most of SV these days.

throwaway991122 4y ago

Full disclosure: I work at AT&T but not directly on fiber. My views are my own and do not represent my employers. Scaling fiber is hard and expensive. It’s a labor intensive process to get all the permits and get people to go and dig trenches and wire up homes. In sparsely populated areas you have the cost of laying lots of fiber and not ever having the hope of recovering your investment. In densely populated areas you need to relay cable and rewire apartments and homes. It’s a slow along and the USA is a really BIG place. I’m not privy to the politics but Google has oodles of $$. They could lobby effectively if they were interested. Lobbying happens - and like anything else its a tool to use. Google would use it against competitors if they were able to. so ISPs use it. They could have bought 5g spectrum. They could have started something like Starlink instead they play around with balloons. They had the $$ to muscle into that. So, the only thing I can guess is that they aren’t / weren’t interested in the ISP business to begin with. The Fiber misadventure was just that - something they thought they could easily scale, tried it and got out when they understood the reality on the ground. Also- I don’t think working for Google is embarrassing. They deprecate products quickly before they become a ball and chain on your bottom line. Working for Google remains as prestigious as ever.

wruza 4y ago

started building out their fiber infrastructure massively, dumping whatever loads of cash were required, and they could easily have eaten up huge chunks of metro and suburban areas in America and might even be one of the leading ISPs in the nation. Haha, imagine them shutting it down eventually.

DesiLurker 4y ago

>If Google had been willing to sacrifice some of their profits for the past 12 years Sad thing is they did not even have to do that. all they had to do was put some lobbying effort in empowering municipalities to do their own broadband and the rest would take care of itself. ISP monopolies have been kneecapping municipal broadband effort right and left and just some push from otherside would have cleared up the way for some competition. But they did not, as you said, its classic short term thinking and 'not my problem' syndrome. What really troubles me is that Google & FB have sucked up almost all of ad market but none of that revenue is trickling back into society except for these 'promotion packet' side hustles.