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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.
Easily, they know the number of potential customers in the areas covered by their limited rollout and set their expectations based on that.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
In focus groups I am sure "everyone" wants google fiber.
In real life, it costs 2x as much as a typical cable internet connection and while it may be 50x as fast, most of the 50x is not really available. Netflix actually streams just as fast or faster on some cable companies per Nexflix's data.
I live in an area that has it and I did not sign up because I don't need to pay ~$500 more a year for the infrequent times where I actually use more than a standard connection.
You all can go on about how YOU use a bunch of data but most people are not you. Most people don't download multiple GB of data every day from servers that will serve content faster than 50mbps. Most people brows the web, check e-mail, watch YouTube and stream Netflix. This can all be done for half the cost with the same experience.
I signed up for fiber in my town. I had to pay $3,000 and that was a steal compared to the $17,000 my neighbour was quoted for it. The issue is licensing costs and though they had to run a really long fiber line for me all of the poles were already licensed. My neighbour on the other hand was nearer to several junction boxes, but none of the poles between him and the junction boxes were licensed. Now the actually internet speeds I can subscribe to are nowhere near what Google is advertising. At least not yet. However I do get a syncronisys connection which is one of the main benefits in my mind. It's so much better than the 10Mbps ADSL connection I used to have. Not in the download speed as this is the same as my fiber connection. It's the 10Mbps I get upload wise. I can get 100Mbps if I want to pay $200 / month. However that isn't yet justifiable to me. What is justified is the reduced latency and the fact I don't have to subscribe to shitty cable companies. I am also now living too far for ADSL to be sufficient. I would be limited to 3Mbps, or 6Mbps bonded connection. It's really cheap, but I want at least 8-10Mbps down.
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
They go to the flyover states because there's a lot less red tape shit to put up with. That, and reduced chance of unions. I work telecom and I can't fucking stand CWA.