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Why Google Fiber Is High-Speed Internet's Most Successful Failure
Blair Levin and Larry Downes report via Harvard Business Review: In 2010, Google rocked the $60 billion broadband industry by announcing plans to deploy fiber-based home internet service, offering connections up to a gigabit per second -- 100 times faster than average speeds at the time. Google Fiber, as the effort was named, entered the access market intending to prove the business case for ultra-high-speed internet. After deploying to six metro areas in six years, however, company management announced in late 2016 that it was "pausing" future deployments. In the Big Bang Disruption model, where innovations take off suddenly when markets are ready for them, Google Fiber could be seen as a failed early market experiment in gigabit internet access. But what if the company's goal was never to unleash the disrupter itself so much as to encourage incumbent broadband providers to do so, helping Google's expansion in adjacent markets such as video and emerging markets including smart homes?
Seen through that lens, Google Fiber succeeded wildly. It stimulated the incumbents to accelerate their own infrastructure investments by several years. New applications and new industries emerged, including virtual reality and the Internet of Things, proving the viability of an "if you build it, they will come" strategy for gigabit services. And in the process, local governments were mobilized to rethink restrictive and inefficient approaches to overseeing network installations. The story of Google Fiber provides valuable lessons for future network transformations, notably the on-going global race to deploy next-generation 5G mobile networks. It seems, then, a good time to review the story of how the effort came into being, what it achieved, and what it teaches investors, consumers, and community leaders eager to ensure continued private spending on internet infrastructure.
Seen through that lens, Google Fiber succeeded wildly. It stimulated the incumbents to accelerate their own infrastructure investments by several years. New applications and new industries emerged, including virtual reality and the Internet of Things, proving the viability of an "if you build it, they will come" strategy for gigabit services. And in the process, local governments were mobilized to rethink restrictive and inefficient approaches to overseeing network installations. The story of Google Fiber provides valuable lessons for future network transformations, notably the on-going global race to deploy next-generation 5G mobile networks. It seems, then, a good time to review the story of how the effort came into being, what it achieved, and what it teaches investors, consumers, and community leaders eager to ensure continued private spending on internet infrastructure.
Without Google Fiber virtual reality and the Internet of things would clearly never have happened!
We would all still be stuck with no or little choice in ISP if Google hadn't mobilized local governments into rethinking restrictive and inefficient approaches to overseeing network installations!
I don't understand how any one could call it a failure.
People forgot that the main reason Google Fiber failed was because immediate legislation passed basically everywhere, as local fiber networks not owned by communications companies became illegal. The reason it is a $60 billion dollar industry is because they will do anything not to chew into their profit margins. There's a reason that 3 of the top 5 companies that top lobbying expenditures are in that business.
Just goes to show what a bunch of dedicated monopolies can do to halt progress and innovation in its tracks, also helps being a fat immovable b'stard.
Google Fiber, Project Fi - I've always looked at things like these as basically Google telling the telcos that, if they really had to, they could compete directly against them.
A problem for Google (exacerbated with the end of net neutrality) is that the telcos etc. who have the "last mile" to the actual people that Google depends on to survive, could choke off Google's air (this is the same reason why Google decided they needed their own mobile OS and bought Android and causing a break with their previously-happy relationship with Apple).
It's a matter of survival for Google that, if they had to, if all the telcos suddenly imposed fees on Google/advertisers since, hey, "you're making money off OUR customers", they could pour some of the money they have into making Google Fiber, Fi a full-blown competitor, as opposed to a "project".
It's a signal to the telcos "I could kill you if you make me need to, so let's just carry on with the status quo shall we?". Their very existence and the visible ability to scale up if they have to, is all Google really wants - all other benefits (improving internet access overall etc.) are bonuses.
and I've posted this on Slashdot before, but I'll post it again.
This article is spot on.
Before Google Fiber came to town, getting and using broadband in this area was painful. It was the "telephone company utility" model. Everything had to be done by phone, with tons of time on hold. Installation was workmen with a clipboard, scheduled weeks out. You'd get 5mbps for $$ or 10mbps for $$$ or 50mbps for $$$$, no higher tier than 50mbps without paying for "business service" at the level of $500-$1k monthly. And those were your choices from every carrier. You never reached more than 25-40% of advertised speed up or down. Service was terrible and unreliable and if there was an outage you could be offline for weeks waiting for a service appointment. Account changes or cancellations were a by-telephone nightmare that were virtually destined to go wrong each time. And technical questions about configuration, blocked ports, etc.? Good luck. It was all a black box to the customer service lines. Far easier to figure such things out empirically yourself.
Then, Google Fiber came to down. Installations scheduled online. Accounts administered online, everything from payment to plan selection and changes. Transparency in equipment and documentation. And either 5mbps for FREE, 100mbps for $ or 1gb for $$, what had previously been the 5 or 10mbps cost with other carriers. Installations done in just days, rather than weeks out, by friendly people in branded vans. You get 100% of advertised speed, 24 hours a day, sustained. Outages are virtually unheard of, but if a tree does come down and knock out a line, it's fixed in a couple hours, not weeks. A walk-in Google Fiber store where you can actually talk tech details and they understand everything you're saying. It was like we jumped from 1995 to the present in a single month.
And within weeks, every other carrier had boosted their minimum residential offering to 50mbps and were suddenly offering and deploying gigabit residential fast as they possibly could, at (interestingly enough) exactly the same price as Google. Service improved drastically and they suddenly started to talk tech in their ads.
It does basically feel like Google was tired of seeing their growth limited by a bunch of small timers trying to pick the pockets of the public, so they came in and said "OYA? We're Google. FU." and got everyone gigabit. And for the other carriers it became a case of "either play fair or get fucked." So they played fair and then Google was happy to back off. If they hadn't, I wonder if Google would have continued and just put them all out of business. My impression is that Google doesn't necessarily want to be in the broadband business, but that they want to make damn sure the public has access to legitimate contemporary "broadband" pipes.
I understand that Google has an interest in this, but I don't mind at all. I'm happy to let Google profit if I get rock-solid up/down gigabit fiber with online administration for what was previously the cost of flaky 10 megabit down/768k up copper administered by an idiot bureaucracy behind a 2 hour telephone wait.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW