Google Fiber Is Losing Its Second CEO in Less Than a Year (businessinsider.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google Fiber, the high-speed internet service operated by Alphabet, has lost its second CEO in less than a year. Gregory McCray is stepping down from the CEO job of Access, the Alphabet subsidiary that houses the Fiber unit, Google confirmed to Business Insider on Monday. The change is the latest shake-up at Access, which announced in October that it would stop rolling out its 1 gigabit per second wired broadband networks to new cities and focus on newer, wireless options, such as the Webpass wireless service it acquired last year. The Access group also had layoffs towards the end of 2016 and shifted hundreds of other employees to different units within Google earlier this year. Alphabet CEO Larry Page said in an emailed statement to Business Insider on Monday that the company is "committed to the success of Google Fiber" and was looking for new leader for the business.

Comments

With good reason!

[Gravis Zero]

This guy didn't have nearly enough fiber in his diet. ;)

Where do I submit my resume?

[Oswald McWeany]

Can I be the next CEO please Larry?

Even if I only last a year I will earn more than I make in a lifetime as a programmer.

Just install it

[theurge14]

I'm in Austin (the 2nd city served by Google Fiber) and I still can't get it in my home.

If Google can't get this done, who can?

Re:Just install it

[Oswald McWeany]

I'm in Austin (the 2nd city served by Google Fiber) and I still can't get it in my home.

If Google can't get this done, who can?

Alphabet?

Re:Just install it

[Anonymous Coward]

City governments. But then people would need to actually pay attention to local government.

Doesn't work. Existing duopoly providers (Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, etc) have bought all the state legislators, and they pass laws saying that cities can't build their own infrastructure.

Did Google expect Fiber to succeed?

[dysmal]

Look at the history of projects that Google has started and killed off when they don't meet expectations. I can't say i'm shocked that Fiber stalled and appears to be dieing. Current Fiber customers should be nervous because if/when Google decides to kill this project i have the utmost confidence in Google to shaft these people.

Did Google leadership really expect Fiber to succeed? Or did the most recent CEO step down because he realized that Fiber (like almost every other product) is "beta" and they'll kill it on a whim when they decide to go in yet another direction?

Re:Did Google expect Fiber to succeed?

[known_coward_69]

They built a lot of hype in the first few markets and got cheaper deals from the town to use the utility poles. Then the ISP's wised up and fought their sweetheart deals they shouldn't have received in the first place.

What do they expect?

[Chas]

Laying fiber is a time and labor intense job. Hence, EXPENSIVE.
And they found out just HOW expensive.

So now they're going to "concentrate on wireless". Yay. "Google FIBER is concentrating on WIRELESS".

Basically it sounds like they did a cost projection and figured out that they weren't going to have ANYTHING close to the penetration they'd initially planned. So Alphabet yanked most of their funding. So the company is running in maintenance mode. Working at supporting the few markets they have and flogging a small group of techs for ideas on how to expand coverage in those areas so they don't have to do anything more than maybe spend a few million on upgraded wifi access points.

It's depressing. But the mere threat of them moving into Chicago prompted my cable company to offer gigabit service at a reasonable price. So I guess they accomplished SOMETHING.

Fiber is dead, all hail our cableco masters!

[elrous0]

I knew when Verizon stopped pushing FIOS that fiber was dead. Google loves splashy launches, but they quickly grow tired of anything involving day-to-day maintenance and long-term commitments. Google has the attention span of a methed-up squirrel.

On the upside, cablecos are now the only option for high speed internet for most people in the U.S. And they have pretty much unbreakable monopolies. Isn't that WONDERFUL?
 

Re:Fiber is dead, all hail our cableco masters!

[Shatrat]

Fiber is not dead. AT&T and VZ slowed their deployments, but they're both in the middle of upgrading their GPON network hardware and they'll be supporting what they still have. Their main obstacle to deploying more is that they're betting on 5G and wireless fixed access, and don't want to invest money in their wireline plant when they can invest that money in a network that supports both homes and mobile phones. Personally I think that wireless with never be as good as fixed, and it won't even be 'good enough' for the majority of users as 4k, VR, cloud-based everything starts becoming the norm.

AT&T and VZs competition which do not have a mobile network, Centurylink, Frontier, Windstream, and the cable companies, are cheerfully deploying GPON networks. There are also lots of small companies and municipal networks being built every day.
It's not going to happen overnight because of the cost, but it's happening and the US is actually well ahead of Europe when it comes to fiber. Europe is mostly betting on vectored VDSL2 and G.fast to get them through the next few years.

With Net Neutrality dying

[rsilvergun]

they might start showing some more interest. Originally Google Fiber was probably a hedge against the ISPs. They lost interest when the Obama admin sided with them. Kinda like how Valve dropped the Steam box when the Microsoft Store flopped.