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Google Fiber To Cut Staff In Half After User Totals Disappoint, Says Report (dslreports.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from DSLReports: Sources claim that Google Fiber has been disappointed with the company's overall number of total subscribers since launching five years ago. A paywalled report over at The Information cites a variety of anonymous current and former Google employees, who say the estimated 200,000 or so broadband subscribers the company had managed to sign up by the end of 2014 was a fary cry from the company's original projection of somewhere closer to 5 million. Google Fiber has never revealed its total number of subscribers. A report last October pegged the company's total broadband subscribers at somewhere around 120,000, though it's unclear how many of those users had signed up for Google Fiber's symmetrical 5 Mbps tier, which was originally free after users paid a $300 installation fee. Disappointed by sluggish subscriber tallies, The Information report states that last month Alphabet CEO Larry Page ordered Google Fiber boss Craig Barratt to cut the total Google Fiber staff in half to roughly 500 people. That's a claim that's sure to only fuel continued speculation that the company is starting to get cold feet about its attempts to bring broadband competition to a broken duopoly market.
I'll sign up anytime, any day! Get me out of Comcast and I'll be happy!
Where is Padme?! What's going on?!
Maybe creating an old-school highly capital investment-intensive utility is a little harder than it appears for the new high-tech industry geniuses.
That's some pretty strong fiber. So there are worse things than just getting fired.
I don't know how you can be dissapointed in your subscriber numbers while simultaneously restricting your rollouts and walking back planned rollouts even in areas with high demand.
Cutting the staff in half sounds like too severe of a punishment.
Can't subscribe if it ain't available!
This sounds like Google Fiber is not a successful venture and is getting ready to go the way of the other failed Google projects. The really bad news isn't so much that you/me/we don't have a shot at getting Google Fiber. The really bad news is that the incumbents ISPs and ILECs are going to be emboldened by this and likely raise their rates and monopolistic practices to another level.
to the needs of the overwhelming amount of customers who don't care for more than 100 Mbit, and so you only offered a whopping 1 Gbit to a price that most people are not interested in paying for an Internet connection, be it a full Gbit or not. Offer the 100 Mbit at a fair price, and you will see more customers.
I'm in an alleged Google Fiber City and I can't get it!
The sign up/announcement process is also shit. My suburb originally wasn't on the list, even now it's not on the main list communities, only when a downtown address is put on the list.
Fiber doesn't need to be cutting staff, it needs to be increasing staff to increase awareness--I don't know anybody who actually likes either Com-Crap or AT&T. But nobody knows when/if it will ever actually be available for a given address because google is keeping plans and community details a secret.
Every company tries to do it, but the best defence against totalitarianism is human incompetence. Most ISPs are crap at it, and the greatest threat is from the black boxes.
Google's core business OTOH is monitoring people's behaviors, so of course I'm not going to trust them as an ISP.
...But I'm really starting to think internet-as-a-municipal-utility is the answer here.
Well, except for the whole direct government control of my data thing.
Most people are so used to Internet Service being the Monopoly of the Cable provider that they are not aware of alternaties in the few areas where Fiber is available. Not to mention that Cable actually does compete in those few areas where there is legitimate competition from Fiber
See subject & take a read people: Larry Page snuffs out âtoo expensiveâ(TM) Google Fiber project http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
APK
P.S.=> I just stumbled upon it myself & haven't read it but in case I've been misled by a bogus headline? It's looking that way - financial infeasibility/poor ROI etc. - et al... apk
About three months ago fiber rolled out to our area and my apartment complex already paid the install fee. However I have not switched yet. Why?
1) Already in a contract with telecom company.
2) There is zero reason to trust an 'evil' company like Google from harvesting my data. Yes, most ISPs do it. But Google is one of the worst privacy whores on the planet.
3) Pricing is not that competitive. 1GB service is nicely priced, but most of my devices are 100mb and I don't use that much internet. 100mb service is not much cheaper than 1gb service, but it's still a bit more than what I'm paying and still bit more than I need. 25mb service is a sweet spot, $15 is about $20 less than I pay now and is slightly faster. I would consider this if not for #1 and #2. 5mb service I guess technically I already have since the apartment already paid the install. Maybe once my telecom contract ends I ought to just use it for the remaining ~2 years.
4) Not allowed to host servers. This is a big issue for me. If I'm going to pay for 1gb internet, why the hell can't I host a server on it? With ip6 and such high bandwidth we really need to get rid of this draconian rule. If it were removed, I would totally consider buying the 1gb service regardless of 1, 2, and 3...
Third time this week. I'm reading through slashdot comments on my mobile and get a popup ad with a "data:text/html;base64" url. Here's a couple screen grabs:
http://imgur.com/a/E4fuR
first photo shows the URL. second photo shows that chrome thinks the page is still on slashdot's website. The ad pops up and fills the screen on it's own, without me clicking on anything (so it's on some sort of setTimeout or something). It won't let me use the back button either. This crap is very invasive. Slashdot should not be showing these sort of ads
I have heard from friends in Google Fiber cities that local cable companies magically raise bandwidth and slash prices to undercut or underwhelm the effect of Google Fiber. Perhaps a historical mapping of bandwidth / price where Google Fiber has forced incumbents to compete would be useful. I guess it depends on what Google Fiber's goals are. If it is increasing bandwidth and lowering cost they should measure the effect on the competition.
Of the 23 homes on my street I'm confident I saw 12 installations since GF started hooking us up in April. I'm pretty sure it is more, probably approaching 75% if not more. And I've seen the trucks all over the subdivision in the last 4 months. I can stand on the second level of my home and easily pick up 10 GF wireless signals. So in my KC suburban subdivision the uptake seems pretty significant from what I've seen. I have TV, internet, and phone through GF. I hope they can keep it up as the service has been outstanding. I've had no outages or problems and they have been quick to respond to questions and requests.
Been waiting here in Overland Park, KS for over year since they announced it. Their build-out is slow.
... in Brazil, Google would have bandwidth problems.
Except the burden of entry appears to be too high for the largest company in the world.
Oh, you don't offer it in my area?
> They should have been far more aggressive in getting their service in as many places as possible.
Maybe. Or maybe if it didn't sell well in Kansas City, and it didn't sell well in Austin, and it didn't sell well in Provo - it doesn't sell well. More cities would have been more fail.
Kind of like politicians in places that have been 100% controlled by one party, representing one viewpoint, for decades and it hasn't worked, places like Detroit, Chicago, etc. While campaiging the same politicians stand up there and point to the same problems, while supporting the same "solutions" that they've been doing for 30 or 40 years. If it's not working, maybe it's not going to work; maybe try something else.
It may be very wise for Google to say "well, that didn't work, we'll try something else" rather than doing more failure faster.
I think Google underestimated just how corrupt the United States is and ran into significantly more red tape than they had expected to. ATT, Comcast, et all have literally decades of experience in fending off competition through legislated monopolies. Throw in the fact that cities, counties, and states have allowed corporations to own the infrastructure and their hands are tied. It doesn't matter how much you want google fiber and how much you want competition in your area... if you dont have access to the infrastructure you are screwed. And that is what is happening here.
With the politicians unwilling to utilize eminent domain to open up the infrastructure they are basically just fucking their constituents and holding back innovation and their local economy.
The top or the bottom?
Watch out, there are Llamas!!
Awesome, you won a reward! What was it?
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Scams hosted by CloudFlare.
I got something similar about Google awards or some such crap from Google
It loaded a pop up that the only option was to click OK.. It stopped safari from allowing me to close the page without clicking that OK button.
Only way around it was to close the browser then open a new url from the iphone search tool.. Only then I could close that page off!!
It said I was the Lucky Aussie of the day!!
To solve this in the long run I had to install Adblock.. Sorry slashdot your ad network has failed you, no more ads for me!!
This sort of crap is exactly why Adblock is vital to being safe I the net.. Think of it like a franger for when you visit the whore that is the Internet!!
I think Google could accomplish more if they were to deliver cheap/fast wholesale connections to areas and let locals roll out last mile connections. Ton's of WISPs and local fiber ISPs would get those connections out there right quick.
Third time this week. I'm reading through slashdot comments on my mobile and get a popup ad with a "data:text/html;base64" url. Here's a couple screen grabs:
http://imgur.com/a/E4fuR
first photo shows the URL. second photo shows that chrome thinks the page is still on slashdot's website. The ad pops up and fills the screen on it's own, without me clicking on anything (so it's on some sort of setTimeout or something). It won't let me use the back button either. This crap is very invasive. Slashdot should not be showing these sort of ads
Confirmed. I've seen it multiple times in the past few weeks on my Android phone's Chrome browser.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Hiding the URL with base64 URI is plain malware.
Slashdot is arguably in violation of the CFAA if they are hosting or complicity loading that code.
To confirm, you mean you've seen it while viewing slashdot, correct?
Third time this week. I'm reading through slashdot comments on my mobile and get a popup ad with a "data:text/html;base64" url. Here's a couple screen grabs:
http://imgur.com/a/E4fuR
first photo shows the URL. second photo shows that chrome thinks the page is still on slashdot's website. The ad pops up and fills the screen on it's own, without me clicking on anything (so it's on some sort of setTimeout or something). It won't let me use the back button either. This crap is very invasive. Slashdot should not be showing these sort of ads
Not only this, but fucking auto fucking refresh is still fucking annoying us, and if you click Older >> at the bottom of the page, it takes you to the older articles but very frequently puts you at the bottom of the page (wtf?), and the big ads at the top take so long to load that the comments I'm reading are often jumping around as the ad finally loads and adjusts the page height, etc. Ugh.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Maybe they should offer the service in places of major metropolitan areas to compete with the big boys, instead of having some gay ass hipster contest and putting the service in selected areas of bum fuckt Egypt ?
I'm wondering if Google ever really planned to do more than a handful of city-wide Google Fiber rollouts. I think that they were more concerned about scaring the phone and cable companies into upgrading their broadband speeds than really becoming a serious competitor as an ISP. Now that many areas in the US have faster speeds, they are more likely use bandwidth intensive Google services like YouTube, and probably download more paid content from the Play stores. Even if they decide to purchase that content elsewhere, Google is still serving those users ads!
With the money that Google has in the bank, they could have installed broadband in 25 mid-size cities by now. At this point, they'll probably abandon their plans to expand soon be looking for a buyer for the few cities where they actually installed service.
You're right the NSA as a body has far more pressing concerns, but the problem is information collected is open for personal abuse by pubic servants. The eavesdropping on American soldiers phoning their loved ones shows some public servants *ARE* very much interested in "how drunk Motard got at the bar last night":
... Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer. ... "Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'," Faulk told ABC News.” http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/...
... State police auditors claim that local investigators had been using the system to run checks on contractors and door-to-door solicitors in direct violation of IDACS policy, and continued to do so even after being warned.” http://rense.com/general26/top...
US:
“Inside Account of U.S. Eavesdropping on Americans,” Brian Ross, Vic Walter, Anna Schecter. ABC Nightline, 2008-10-09 “"Calling home to the United States, talking to their spouses, sometimes their girlfriends, sometimes one phone call following another," said Faulk.
“Cop Suspected of Using Database to Plan Murder of Ex-wife.” http://rense.com/general26/top...
“FBI Files Sold to Mob and International Criminals by Nevada Attorney General's Office Employee and Former FBI Agent.” http://rense.com/general26/top...
“The Highland, Indiana, police department had its access to the state's FBI database suspended due to misuse.
‘Political Candidates Probed by Police Chief in Eastpointe, Michigan.’ http://rense.com/general26/top...
“Police Investigated for Using Database to Target Organizers of Sheriff-Recall Campaign” http://rense.com/general26/top...
“Butler County Prosecutor's Office Uses Database to Smear Prosecutor's Political Opponent” http://rense.com/general26/top...
“Police Lieutenant Charged With Abusing Database to Influence Elections” http://rense.com/general26/top...
“Cop Fired for Abusing Database, Chief Accused as Well.” http://rense.com/general26/top...
“Amid Concerns, FBI Lapses Went On.” Jeffrey Smith and John Solomon, Washington Post, 2007-03-18. “FBI counterterrorism officials continued to use flawed procedures to obtain thousands of U.S. telephone records during a two-year period when bureau lawyers and managers were expressing escalating concerns about the practice” http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
“School Spies on Students at Home With Webcams: Suit,” Teresa Masterson, NBC, 2010-02-18. “A Philadelphia-area school official confronted a student with photographic evidence that he was doing bad things at home. She got her evidence by activating the webcam on the laptop in his house, a lawsuit claims. Lower Merion School District officials are spying on students and their families inside their homes with Web cameras
I think Google finally realized (or knew all along, like many other companies have) that wireless technology is the future of consumer broadband. Supporting a wire going out to every single customer just doesn't make sense if you can do the same thing cheaper and more reliably over thin air.
Google never seemed serious with glacially slow roll-outs in older neighborhoods while fiber-ready suburbs with qualified subscribers were left wanting.
I live in Portland, OR. Yes we have a high concentration of techies with spare cash. We even made our state change some laws to accommodate Google Fiber. That law made us lose millions in recurring tax revenue from the likes of Comcast. That was more than a year ago. We still do not have Google Fiber. And now this? You have to be freaking kidding me!
News for NERDS, you're supposed to be chained to a desktop PC - mobile is far too hip to be square.
Also from what I've heard they could have developed out a good commercial business, but didn't pursue that, at least in KC. I don't know if they have any now.
I am a property owner and paid to have both of my rentals have the service and am in the queue. On tenant got it a few months before he died (long wait) and my other house which is waiting is on whatever the cable is. Because it hasn't been installed in over two years, I will have to carry the cost to keep it there since my tenants had to go with the regular service.
I'd go the other way or replace people and make a business of this rather than killing it by laying off help that probably is needed.
Huge fail by the alphabet folks.
Oh and for submitting this to Slashdot fuck you too. your capcha thing fucked up.
If they hadn't offered their service in areas that already had other decently fast option available and instead focused on under served areas... I bet they would have seen a lot more subscribers....
If this is true, is anyone surprised? Google abandon everything that doesn't quickly live up to their own hype.
They built the initial infrastructure with scalability in mind and no longer need 90% of the staff used to launch? I know there are some PM's on here.
They should be lobbying Congress & local govs to eliminate red tape to allow more competition.
There is a reason why there is a duopoly.
Ignoring the pop-up, I'm not sure why you willingly subject yourself to that torture.
Go install Avantslash on your server and read Slashdot on your phone that way.
Not only will your eyes thank you for it - but your data cap will too.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Cutting staff in half just because the results are disappointing...
Is professional misconduct punished by drawing and quartering or something?
...we have 4 major ISPs that all charge the same exorbitant rates. It will come as a shock to no one that they are also the 4 major television providers in Ontario.
Seems that plan is to deliver Internet using Artemis pCell technology:
http://www.wired.com/2016/08/google-wireless-faster-route-home/
I don't even use the mobile site on my mobile devices. Maybe that's because I recall as commonplace desktop monitor screens that had ~1/6 the pixel depth/width that my phone has.
(Yes, size is a thing--but so is resolution.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I have two solutions for you (I use both): Noscript and Ublock Origin. These are the 2 best Firefox plugins ever made.
You great fairies!
They'd probably have a lot of uptake in Philadelphia if they hit Comcast where they live. The only options are DSL or Comcast in large swaths of center and university city. They'd certainly get a lot of students signing up that are tired of paying comcast 60+ a month for service that craps out frequently.
Ok I'm tired of this BS. The report from last October cites an article that cites a report by Bernstein Research. However, I can't find the actual report anywhere. DOES ANYONE ACTUALLY HAVE A COPY OF THIS REPORT?! I'd like to know what their methodology for guesstimating the Google subscriber rate since Google doesn't actually publish it.
Next the only source talking about cutting back the size of the Google fiber team is The Information who is citing anonymous sources. There is no confirmation of any of this. In fact, Light Reading is citing a "knowledgeable source" that says the claim is BS.
OMG this is journalism now days? Why do we need to confirm anything? Let's just parrot it!
The problem is the quasi-monopolies (i.e. industries with very few players but very high barriers to entry)—but in the other direction.
I'm a Google Fiber user, but in this area, the moment that Google Fiber announced, the two other providers both suddenly rolled out gigabit fiber plans at around $70/mo. after years of charging about that for 5-20 megabit plans. Their customers all switched to the new plans while waiting for Google Fiber to build out (took many months) and as a result didn't go through the hassle of switching to Google Fiber once it was available, since they already had an affordable gigabit plan with their current provider.
Basically, Google encountered the power of monopolies in exactly the classic sense. They found out that it was very difficult to enter an existing monopoly-served market because the large interests are able to instantly match whatever the new kid on the blog was offering.
It also demonstrates the power of competition—as soon as *someone* was offering $70/month gigabit fiber, all players in the area were. But sadly, it is the new kid on the block that suffered most by incurring the costs of trying to enter at a lower price point without realizing the expected benefits.
As an aside, I also imagine that were, hypothetically, to pull out of this area, those gigabit fiber plans from the others would suddenly and magically "disappear" again.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
In the end only a few hyper broadband addicts need or want fiber. The costs for many people is just too much to justify it. This is one reason Verizon and Google focused on more affluent areas to begin the fiber push. However, cable has basically created enough speed for less money for most users. It then becomes a question of how much are people willing to pay for a service that does not create the saturation of subscribers needed for the service. Google is finally realizing this.
MUNICIPAL FIBER!
There's no other way. Verizon stopped rolling out fiber years ago. In fact they've sold off some of their FIOS business. Verizon is all about wireless, that's where the cash cow is. So it's no surprise that Google would follow suit. Each wants the low hanging fruit. The only way we are going to get fiber is if municipalities roll it out themselves.
No, FI is an attempt to do the same thing to the wireless industry that Google Fiber is attempting to do to the broadband industry. Push the sluggish US providers to start providing services on par with the rest of the 1st world at similar prices rather than sharging an arm and a leg for lower speeds and capabilities.
Google Fiber is available in my metro area. The problem - roughly 80% of the population lives outside city limits. Google Fiber is only available within city limits. Google made business decisions to save their money on infrastructure to not offer it outside the city limits. There's not really anything we can do about that. I have no idea if they did their research or not, but the reason that most people live outside city limits is that property is ridiculously expensive within the city limits and most metro residents are simply priced out of living there. I guess they didn't get enough millionaires to buy it there. If they weren't smart enough to realize that desperately poor people who make up the other main group of residents within city limits weren't likely to buy much either, then maybe they need to look at their people who made the decisions to offer what they offered where they offered it. As far as I can tell nobody in my county of residence can get Google Fiber, which is a real shame because I'm sure a lot of us would get it if we could. And I do truly mean that as far as I know ZERO county residents where I live can get Google Fiber. ZERO. We can't buy what you won't sell to us, Google.
Not surprised, still waiting for connection here in Salt Lake even though they have announced availability (only City Center after two years), and price compared to what I had in Dublin Ireland is a lot higher, not that cheap compared to the rest.
Thought the price would be cheaper.
It's bad enough that I have to take extraordinary measures to keep them from sniffing my panty drawers as it is.
Why would I knowingly give them access to every place I go, think about going everything I type then erase evey single thing I do online down to my typos.. why would anyone anywhere ever think that's a good idea for themselves, their careers, their privacy, their personal life, their autonomy over the course of their life ?
Yeah, people aren't jumping on the Google is my ISP! bandwagon. Huh.. why'd that happen?