This message is meant for exactly two groups: 1) Google, 2) other municipalities.
AT&T is telling Google that they'll play in any market Google commits to and drive the margins out of it. They want Google to stop doing this, and they're hoping to make Google question its financial model for this capital outlay. (I doubt it will faze Google.)
AT&T is warning other municipalities to not cut Google any sweetheart deals that they're not willing to extend to AT&T. This is a potent message for municipalities that are sitting pretty on financial or other perks they've extracted from AT&T or other telecoms. AT&T is warning them the gravy train stops when they let in Google.
Why, it's a clear message to the public as well, which states: AT&T is only ready to improve their service when threatened with competition. Otherwise forget it. At least one has to give them a credit that they had guts to admit it.
"This expanded investment is not expected to materially alter AT&T’s anticipated 2013 capital expenditures."
So, they've had the capability for a while now. They just didn't see any reason to bother with the hassle of deploying a newer technology when they could just keep maintaining U-verse over twisted pair, even if capex stayed the same for either choice. Which is an interesting choice.
To be fair, T's capex expenditures are massive, something like $5 billion per quarter or more. So to 'materially alter', it'd have to be like $3 billion a year or more.
Indeed. And there is the possibility that they just won't move on anything until FY 2014 or later. Though commandar brings up the point that even if they didn't have the capital themselves to deploy fiber, we _did_ give them the capital once and they squandered it.
Interesting how the economic impact of this isn't discussed. They very well could've done this years ago, and given the economy a boost. By not doing this, they hold back the American economy.
As a non-American, I can only imagine the class-action lawsuits...
Not only that, but the telcos were given massive federal subsidies which they were supposed to use to expand high speed internet connectivity and they never really followed through on their end of the deal.
For some companies, it is important to keep a good public image, and for some it's not. But it's always done to maximize their profits, not because of good intentions.
For example: Valve, Google and Facebook all try to be "good," since their target audience are often young, technology-oriented people who care about how good the company is.
But for some corporations, it doesn't matter what their users think. Majority of AT&T customers are average people, who know nothing about ISPs and slow Internet. They just want their "Skype-box" to work.
It only doesn't matter to some, when they managed to get a monopolistic control over the market (like happens to be the case with ISPs). I'm sure many average users are well aware about how bad is a slow Internet or a broken customer service.
My first thoughts exactly when I saw this post. Well actually my first thought was "Doesn't OP mean Google is laying fiber in Austin? Ooooooohh I get it...". I'm happy about this -- it means that Google's mission is coming along nicely. Screw AT&T.
Google never dreamed of becoming a telecom monopolist. It just wants faster, cheaper internet for everyone. Google wants more people online, more people googling, more people clicking on ads.
So AT&T's announcement? Exactly what Google wants. Well, this, or AT&T announcing it will sit on its hands while Google patiently erodes their subscriber base. Either one, really, is a win for Google. To use a chess analogy, AT&T (and friends) have been "forked."
I think you are correct that Google wants everyone to have fast and high bandwidth internet connections as it benefits their core search advertising business. Google Fiber is just one of many efforts including Chrome/V8 and Spdy.
However going head to head with AT&T in Austin will NOT help this effort. AT&T is signaling Google and, more importantly, other potential gigabit internet service providers that it will compete with you and thus reduce your margins in a very capital intensive (i.e. risky) business. Anybody considers something similar in another city will think again.
Does anyone think the timing is a coincidence? If not why is AT&T doing this?
I would speculate that AT&T cannot handle any more capital spending and the debt it would require. They can barely keep up with the spending on mobile and their landline business is dying. Internet service over their existing (i.e. paid for) infrastructure has got to be their best business (certainly on return on capital). Google Fibre does them no good.
> AT&T is signaling ... it will... reduce your margins
Yeah, that's what I took as your original point. I just think "reduced margins" is a completely empty threat to Google.
Say I sell widgets. Now, you sell widgets too, but your primary revenue stream is driven by "widget penetration," ie, the total number of widgets owned and used.
We have a price war. Who wins?
You do, because people having widgets is valuable to you, so you just give away widgets at cost. No, wait, you go farther. You split the increased revenue from your primary stream with your widget customers, you give people widgets UNDER COST.
And I'm sitting here, giving my widgets away for nothing, thinking, "He's going to rue the day he price warred with me. I have deeper pockets, so I can lose money longer."
But you're not losing money, you're increasing your revenues every day. My pockets can be 100 times deeper than yours, and I will still head, puzzled, straight to bankruptcy.
I mean, capital intensive, yeah, that'd matter for someone who didn't have cash to burn, but not Google.
Maybe this was where you were heading: No one can really join Google in this effort. Google cannot inspire a transformation then step back and let it happen. It now has to see it through, because the economics are unique to it, they don't apply to Joe Schmoe's neighborhood ISP. That might be true.
I don't think Google's strategy is to build these networks themselves but to demonstrate consumer demand and thus entice others to build them for them.
I can't imagine they actually want to spend tens, if not hundreds, of billions to wire even most US urban consumers with gigabit connections. This would radically change the nature of Google's financial position. Yes they would gain on search advertising but could it possibly justify the cost?
AT&T is seeking to demonstrate how competitive and thus unprofitable this business will be making it very difficult to justify the costs or even obtain financing. Sadly while this is good news for Austin it is probably bad new for everybody else hoping for a gigabit connection.
> However going head to head with AT&T in Austin will not help this effort. AT&T is signaling Google and, more importantly, other potential gigabit internet service providers that it will compete with you and thus reduce your margins in a very capital intensive (i.e. risky) business.
Lots of firms with an established role in a market "signal" things like that when a competitor is heading to market with a new product ahead of them. Fewer of them follow through effectively.
The situation is very special in capital intensive industries like this. When you have to invest and thus borrow huge sums of money to create a business everyone involved is keenly aware that competition can put the entire investment at risk. Many times in the past firms and whole industries have gone bankrupt (e.g. cars, airplanes, steel).
This is why capital intensive industries typically are dominated by a small number, often just one, of big firms. This has been well studied in a branch of economics called Industrial Organization.
> The situation is very special in capital intensive industries like this.
Sure, if Google didn't have the money lined up for Austin when they announced Austin, AT&T's signalling could jeopardize it, but, because its such a capital intensive industry (and because its not Google Fiber's first time around the block, either), that's unlikely.
What would jeopardize Google Fiber's longer term effort is if AT&T actually delivered something in Austin that made Google Fiber there unprofitable (and even then, it really only threatens Google Fiber if Google doesn't perceivea greater benefit to its other services from getting widespread affordable 1Gbps service to consumers than the loss from continuing to expand Google Fiber.)
> This is why capital intensive industries typically are dominated by a small number, often just one, of big firms.
Yes, because its hard for anyone to get the capital to make the outlay to compete, regardless of "signalling" by existing market players. Usually, anyone who has the capital has a less-risky way to invest it than trying to break into a capital-intensive industry with established players.
However, if a big player in another major industry with enormous resources to which the actions of the established players in the capital-intensive industry are a risk (as is the case with Google vis-a-vis the telecoms) is involved, there is a different story, as that player's interest in the industry extends beyond the gains that can be made in that industry. (Actually, that doesn't change the long-term trend of concentration, it just makes it more likely that the trend will be bucked in the short-term by the introduction of a new player.)
Agreed. On your first point, I particularly agree that it won't faze Google. While I'm sure they want every business unit to be a money-maker, I don't think Google is worried about the margins getting squeezed. I bet they've figured the value of just having more people on an unmetered high speed connection and might even be willing to lose money on the access. And I'd be particularly surprised if AT&T has a bigger appetite for price wars than Google :)
Yeah, if AT&T is trying to play some kind of "chicken game" with Google, they will lose, because Google doesn't care that much about the profits as they do about dramatically increasing the competition in the ISP market. In fact, higher valuer/buck is Google's goal in all of this. AT&T is falling right in Google's "trap", sort of speak (which is a good thing for us).
While Google may indeed have some thoughts that with all this popularity and head-start they could become a major ISP in US, their primary and original goal was exactly to get other companies to start offering Gigabit and affordable fiber connections, with no other limits or caps.
>Yeah, if AT&T is trying to play some kind of "chicken game" with Google, they will lose, because Google doesn't care that much about the profits as they do about dramatically increasing the competition in the ISP market.
The interesting thing is that AT&T's response is not going to help them, but the thing they actually could do is what Google would like them to do -- install gigabit fiber in other cities, that Google isn't in yet.
If Google installs fiber in a city and AT&T doesn't, that city belongs to Google. AT&T is going to lose the large majority of their customers in that city if they don't upgrade their network in response. But if AT&T does install gigabit fiber in that city, now they're in the position of having to make a large capital investment only to enter an aggressive price war. In either case, for that city, AT&T is screwed.
However, suppose AT&T decides instead to install gigabit fiber in, say, Chicago, or Hartford. Preemptively. Those cities immediately fall off the short list for the next Google Fiber rollout, because why put fiber in a city that already has it when there are so many that don't? So now AT&T owns the market in that city. They still had to make the capital investment, but at least now they stave off the subsequent price war. And if they do it in all the cities in their service area which would be good candidates, the next Google Fiber city ends up being in Verizon territory -- unless Verizon et al all do the same thing, in which case Google may just bow out having accomplished their goal.
Does it mean Google will attempt to become a mobile provider as well? At least they could bring some sense into the market by providing a service with no caps.
I think it's pretty clear that Google isn't interested in being a telecom themselves, but have been making moves to try to push for the telecom industry to get their collective act together.
They were instrumental, for example, in getting the FCC to force VZW to treat LTE service as a dumb pipe as a condition of the spectrum sale.
And while much has been made of T-Mobile recently going contract-free, Google was pushing that with the original Nexus years ago, and I had a no-contract, un-subsidized G2 through T-Mobile in... 2010?
Google already owns a ton of dark fiber, so it kind of makes sense for them to threaten the telecoms with competition to push things along. Building out a mobile network is a much bigger undertaking, so their pushes there have been -- and I suspect will continue to be -- a bit more behind the scenes in nature.
It's not just dumb pipes (ED: dark fiber) they also have YouTube which is ~15% of downstream traffic which they would be happy to stream inside there private network even with peering arrangements.
I was referring to the sale of the 700MHz C Block LTE band.
One of the conditions of the spectrum license was that VZW couldn't restrict what devices were allowed on the network and that they couldn't restrict what applications ran over the network.
VZW got hit with a $1.25M fine by the FCC last year for blocking tethering apps on LTE.
> Does it mean Google will attempt to become a mobile provider as well?
Google's been heavily involved in efforts centered around the use of spectrum "white spaces" for broadband, including for mobile devices; they aren't likely to become a traditional mobile provider, but...
I agree with this. If there was any money in the pipes we wouldn't see nearly as many mergers of broadband and content companies. We also wouldn't see content companies getting into broadband either. The nice thing about Google is that their interests as you said are mutually beneficial here. E.g. faster broadband means more money for Google via ad sales. This isn't true with Comcast or other carriers.
If this is a message to Google, then AT&T must be pretty stupid. It seems obvious that Google's goal is to get high-speed internet to people, because Google makes money when people use the internet, and they don't care who delivers the connectivity. Google is only doing it themselves because ISPs have not stepped up to the plate.
This is exactly the reason Google implemented fiber in the first place. Their intent is not to necessarily dominate the broadband networks, but simply to bring back competition to these oligopolies.
Now if only San Francisco could get some decent internet! I've been hoping for monkeybrains to expand further from the Mission so I can drop Comcast.
I think this is the kind of behavior Google wants from competitors. Ultimately companies like Google stand to make the most profit from an America with faster internet connections, and the slow overpriced connections are really making cloud related technologies like Google Drive lackluster.
Not sure if the message is that clear. If this were their stance they should have announced multiple cities today instead of piggy backing on the Google in Austin announcement.
Speed is not even the biggest thing here. Heck Verizon FiOS offers fiber to the home in NYC and has speeds of 300Mbit/s. I'm sure if they wanted to go to 1Gbit they could. As can AT&T in Austin.
The thing that's exciting about Google Fiber is what it represents -- reasonable cost, no bandwidth caps, net neutrality, etc. Google WANTS its customers to use the Internet as much as possible. The more HD videos people watch on YouTube and the more people surf the web the more ads they show and the more money they make. The opposite is true with AT&T -- they'll start metering and charging the second they can.
I'd take 100Mbit Google service over 1Gbit AT&T service any day of the week.
> Heck Verizon FiOS offers fiber to the home in NYC and has speeds of 300Mbit/s
Where? The entire time I've lived in NYC, in neighborhoods with population density between 30k to 70k people per square mile, I've never, ever, ever had FIOS available to me.
Sure, I've heard about the rare building that has it, but as far as I can tell, it's marketing with just enough actual deployment that we can't call it vaporware.
Yeah, agreed -- I've been waiting for about 5 years for it at my place in park slope and it only became available a couple months ago.
A while back they told me the fiber had been in the avenues for a long time, but the hinderance was running the fiber from the avenues to the back yard utility poles. Specifically, they needed to get permission and backyard access from every owner on the block to pull cable. Knowing how notoriously difficult it is to get a landlord to do anything in NYC, I imagine this was no easy scheduling task.
> Where? The entire time I've lived in NYC, in neighborhoods with population density between 30k to 70k people per square mile, I've never, ever, ever had FIOS available to me.
You likely lived in an MDU (multiple dwelling unit), i.e. an apartment. FiOS requires the building owner to enter into an agreement with Verizon. It doesn't cost the owner anything, but they have to let Verizon in the door, since Verizon deploys new equipment. Typically it's an MDU ONT (Optical Network Terminal) capable of delivering voice, data, and video over existing infrastructure in the building. In an older building, this typically means that the last 100-1000 feet of your data service is VDSL (over legacy two pair copper) or MoCA (effectively a capable modem over coax).
I suppose I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm on the UWS and my building got FiOS a few years ago. Started at 100Mbit, then upped it to 150 at half the price. They offer a 300Mbit service but it's $300 a month and even bandwidth-hungry I can't justify that. Some friends who live in Silver Towers (42nd St) also have it.
http://www22.verizon.com/local/new-york-fios/ Google search term: verizon fios nyc. Put Manhattan in the search box on the map. Looks like a few hundred buildings in a 1 mile radius from the center of Manhattan.
What? http://i.imgur.com/r6ZJny0.png Looking at that map, it's not clear at all that Manhattan doesn't have coverage. And this is only what's within a two mile radius of the center.
FiOS in NY is expanding very slowly (not just in Manhattan but in all 5 boroughs). Staten Island got more coverage than most, because it's less urban. Constructing in the middle of the city is always way more expensive, and Verizon is not rushing to do it.
Verizon has to do construction work to wire a building. You call them up if you want them to do a survey, board approves and they do construction at no cost.
>Heck Verizon FiOS offers fiber to the home in NYC and has speeds of 300Mbit/s.
Which is great if you're in NYC. There are huge portions of the country -- I'm familiar with the former Bellsouth territories personally -- where you can't get FiOS or U-Verse at all.
I'm in a metro area with ~250k people, and you might be able to get 6Mbs DSL from AT&T; many areas of the city top out at 3Mbs.
Even here in Northern Virginia, it's spotty. Alexandria is still a FiOS-free zone, for example. Verizon was planning on it for a couple of years, but then changed their mind. Their statement said, essentially, that they already had enough FiOS customers and didn't need any more, thanks but no thanks.
What I want is competition. I have U-verse, but why can't I have FIOS. Here in Frisco, TX it seems there are agreements between the providers to focus on certain neighborhoods have one or the other, but never both.
I want to choose who I connect to the internet through, just like I choose grocery stores, cell phone providers and just about anything else.
What's funny is, depending on which side of Frisco you are on, you do have that choice. In general, if you are west of the Tollway, you can get both services. Several other cities in north Texas are like that (Watauga, for instance, as well as Keller, north Fort Worth, far North Dallas).
What you are seeing, at least in Texas, is the historical division between what used to be GTE and Southwestern Bell. Back when those companies were regulated utilities, you are exactly right: the markets were divvied up between the two. Generally, Southwestern Bell got the big cities and GTE got the suburbs and rural areas. Inertia and a general unwillingness to rock the boat means that situation persists, though you can see some areas where it has melded.
I think it's too small to make any kind of judgement on that, first ATT networks were probably very good. That said, I'm sure they will keep up the quality
This makes little sense to me. Instead of building in the same market as Google, go build in another market with no competition! Why layout double the infrastructure when and get into a price war when you can do the same thing somewhere else and be able to charge more? That's my pro-business argument.
My pro-customer argument is that this is great for competition in Austin.
My I-live-in-SF argument is why isn't anyone doing this for us? I can't really think of another major city in the US outside of NY, Chicaco, or Boston where this would have the most impact. You have thousands of companies built on the Internet in SF. Lots of us techies live here. Please, give us a choice beyond Comcast!
Phone and Cable companies are increasingly becoming just ISPs; if Google Fiber starts to be successful in more cities, it threatens the highly profitable duopoly they have.
Consumer ISPs have long deployed their fastest technology in response to a competitor (typically, but not always a municipally funded competitor) deploying a fast network.
You need to remember, Comcast started charging Level 3 (who distributes some of Netflix's content) for peering. There's nothing illegal about this, but think about what it means is Comcast is now selling its customers to the content companies; you are no longer the customer but the product.
I wonder if they'll keep their current capping policy in place in Austin (I'm willing to bet they will not), or if they remove the caps nationally (I'm willing to bet they will not).
If they did, it'd take ~250 seconds at full throttle to use up your download limit. Provided they are charging for overage, this could be very profitable for them.
Sorry for the nitpick - By L3, I'm assume you mean Level 3 Communications, not L-3 Communications. Netflix uses the former's CDN services, I believe.
Competition in Austin hasn't solved any problems. There are three major providers in Austin: AT&T, TWC, and Grande. That there are "more options" hasn't meant anything to the general availabilities that any of these three companies offers. I can "choose" to get internet from TWC or AT&T, but absolutely none of the choices have substantial differences.
Honestly, this whole focus on "competition" is completely missing the point. It doesn't matter if you have one company, or two companies, or three companies, or ten companies offering the service. If there's a way, they're going to collude.
Because that would upset their competitors in other cities that they're not supposed to compete with. Google's already disrupted the Austin market so it's fair game now.
"AT&T’s expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives."
Did Google do the political work here and leave the door open for competition?
It's rich that ATT, successor company to Southwestern Bell, is complaining about alledged subsidies to another company to enable a fiber rollout.
Southwestern Bell and its sister baby bells were subsidized to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in the 90s in exchange for a promise to roll out a nationwide network of fiber to the home. Needless to say the network never materialized but the telecoms kept the money.
Yeah, it's kind of amazing. At one end of the spectrum, we have ultra-ethical companies like Tesla, who use government loans efficiently and pay them back ahead of schedule. At the other end, we have ethically and morally bankrupt companies like Southwestern Bell that took government funds with the promise of building a nation-wide fiber network, didn't do it, and pocketed the money.
Actually, I don't think you are being pedantic. The lineage is really important/interesting.
Here, in the Bay Area, the majority of the LEC lines belonged to Pacific Bell (You can almost always tell who the "real" company is by looking at the cable-vaults, the names of the holding company is written in engraved/raised metal that will last for 100+ years). The SF Giants Stadium was born as "PacBell Park"
Somewhere around 1997/1998, SBC Acquired all of Pacific Bell - so 100% of the PacBell LEC lines became SBC lines. Your Phone Bill now read "SBC", and a few years later, PacBell Park became SBC Park.
Then, in 2005, SBC acquired AT&T, and, because AT&T had a stronger global brand, they changed their name to be "AT&T", even though AT&T was now just one component of the larger SBC.
What's really confusing, is somewhere around 2003/2004, LEC competition was deregulated a bit, and the 2003 AT&T starting offering Local Phone services in the Bay area.
So, you ran into scenarios where you would get a visit from both AT&T and SBC trying to sell you local phone services. I actually purchased a pretty good sized Long Distance/Data/LEC package from AT&T for around $15K MRC for our office buildings in Sunnyvale.
The reason this is confusing, is that when SBC acquired AT&T, you now had two classes of AT&T customers, those with SBC legacy facilities, and those with AT&T legacy facilities. For about 5 years after the acquisition, every telecom consultant I dealt with avoided the confusion (for some definition of avoid, and confusion) - by continuing to refer to anyone getting their services from 2003 SBC, as "SBC Customers", even though, for the last several years, their phone bill read "AT&T".
So, ironically, for some customers in the Bay Area, AT&T lines actually are AT&T lines, but for most customers, they are SBC/Pacific Bell lines.
On the contrary. AT&T has been laying political groundwork for ages. This is a PR hit piece intending to show they're competitive with Google's offerings, but in reality they're playing the reactionary. Google is scaring the shit out of them and they're trying to retain customers who might otherwise jump ship immediately by assuring them they'll get the exact same deal. That is almost certainly not the case, however.
If this were happening in my city and Google came along with Fiber, and AT&T and Time Warner decided to upgrade their infrastructure in response, I'd totally jump ship to Google anyway.
I think a lot of people have been unhappy with their service providers for a long time, for more reasons than just the speed.
At least when I have a problem with Comcast I can eventually get a rep on the phone to fix it. Can anybody with Google Fiber comment on whether the customer support is better than their other products'? Even paying Google Apps customers have said that it's almost nonexistent.
I realize it's possible since this is a (relatively) expensive paid service, but Google has a lot less experience doing customer service even less than AT&T or Comcast. And their usual approach of "Make a webpage listing common problems" might not work as well for fixing internet service outages.
I've used Google's support for Nexus devices, and it's been pretty good. Talked to a human being, walked through the troubleshooting with her for a few minutes, then RMAed the phone.
>Did Google do the political work here and leave the door open for competition?
Incidentally, AT&T did a lot of similar political work for others years ago when they were starting their U-Verse rollout.
They lobbied in numerous states for video franchises to be granted on a state-wide basis, rather than having to go to each individual municipality and negotiate deals. That allowed them to basically steamroll into an area.
When AT&T did this, the laws were written such that the cable companies selling service in the same areas could tear up their contracts with the municipalities and go statewide as well.
Yes, except there's still usually just one cable company in an area. The real effect of this is that a municipality unhappy with service now has no opportunity to oust a provider when the term of their franchise agreement is up.
"However, in Austin, the agreements that Google has signed with the City of Austin are no different than the ones that AT&T and Time Warner have signed according to Laura Morrison, an Austin city councilwoman."
I suspect this is exactly what Google wants. They don't want the burden of bringing high speed internet to everyone, but they do want everyone to have high speed access.
> I suspect this is exactly what Google wants. They don't want the burden of bringing high speed internet to everyone, but they do want everyone to have high speed access.
I suspect this overstating the case significantly -- I think its basically right in that Google's prime motivation is to push the market toward widespread, ultra-high speed access. But I think that by the time they launched Google Fiber, and certainly before they expanded it to Austin, they also had a model where it was worthwhile beyond being a lever to move the industry, between direct revenue and the opportunity to use it as leverage to promote the Android ecosystem through the Nexus devices tied to it.
As with the Chrome browser, heck and even Android itself, what Google does with the prime motivation of moving the market (and preventing another vendor from getting/keeping a monopoly which they can leverage against Google) isn't necessarily a "burden".
It may be naive to think that AT&T will get the same rules. By all means, all firms should get the same rules, and may need to litigate.
But to assume that municipalities want a uniform set of rules for all comers would be without basis. Municipalities want to negotiate with vendors to extract concessions.
Laws can be written, without naming names, that apply only to individual firms. Maybe Austin will say that the new rules and incentives only apply to firms below a certain market share. Or to firms that don’t also operate mobile networks. Or firms that have, or don’t have, some geographical footprint. Or which employ a certain number of Texans, or Austinites. Etc.
It would be viewed as pretty evil if Google extracted government concessions and then used some kind of regulatory capture to lock out competitors. That's AT&T's game.
When somebody says "real possibility," that normally means something like "has a high enough chance of happening that it's worth considering." It is "possible" in the sense that there are things that are better than Google that could exist, but none of those things are here right now, the chances of somebody appearing out of nowhere and coming out with something so much better that everyone switches to it are practically zero. It's not a real possibility — it's just a hypothetical situation.
This is crazy; of course it is a real possibility that someone could beat Google search. It could be a big competitor who grows over time to challenge them wholesale, or it could be a collection of smaller, smarter mobile apps that nibble away at their marketshare from every direction.
You must be fairly young...when Google originally launched, few people thought that a plain white page with a search box could unseat Altavista, let alone Microsoft.
Wow, that is a pretty condescending reply based on an uncharitable misreading of my comment.
The point was not "Nobody will ever beat Google search no matter how much time passes." It was that Google being killed outright by a better search engine is extremely unlikely for the foreseeable future, so to call their long-term plans into question on that basis is specious.
Also, Google has not really unseated Microsoft. Microsoft's flagship products — Windows and Office — are still utterly dominant. Most of Google's battles with Microsoft have been from MS trying to encroach on Google's turf and losing. (I mean, yes, MSN Search existed before, but it was just a white-label AltaVista when Google entered the field.)
At any rate, Microsoft has been assailed on every possible front and is weakened but still massive. If you want a model of Google's future from '90s history, I'd say that's the worst case that's likely in the medium-long-term. AltaVista was a big search engine when the Web was small, but it was never Google.
> The point was not "Nobody will ever beat Google search no matter how much time passes."
Well then I apologize--that's how I read it.
In terms of how Google might "lose", the real issue is their ad revenue growth, and I'll give an example. My employer (a nonprofit) runs online ad campaigns to raise awareness on issues. We used to spend a lot with Google; these days almost all the money goes to a combination of Facebook, Twitter, Outbrain, and Taboola. Every one of those performs more efficiently than Google.
Google could get beat like Microsoft got beat--not destroyed, but not setting the agenda either. It used to be that Microsoft could just buy or leverage their way into markets if they missed the boat early. They did it with databases, with business accounting, with the browser, with mobile (the first time around). They can't do that anymore.
Google is buying their way into the ISP market...they may not always be able to do that, even if they maintain a solid search market share.
Brain-reading technology has been in use for years. It's possible that direct mental interfaces will completely obviate the keyboard, mouse and touchscreens in the near future, but it's a pretty distant possibility. As impressive as the technology is, it hasn't been shown to be anywhere near suitable for this application yet.
Who's to say that Watson's technology is even sufficiently well-suited for a search engine that it would give not only better results than Google, but results so much better that it would overcome inertia? Google has over a decade of machine learning specifically applicable to search engines. The fact that Watson does cool stuff on Jeopardy doesn't mean it's anywhere near ready to beat Google at its own game.
Simply put, these things are possible in the boolean sense of "not impossible," but are they remotely likely? No, I don't think so. They're stupendously unlikely.
IBM seem to only be interested in applying it to Medical. It's probably way too processor intensive to use as a search engine, and they can make lots of money selling hardware to hospitals instead of making pennies on ads.
Musicipal fiber also seems to be a great way to rile up the telcos. If Google won't wire your city, just do it yourselves. AT&T and Comcast will either compete or sue to prevent it.
Make it one, Google will almost certainly close shop soon after AT & T does theirs. AT&T then will double prices.
Notice the zingers to Google and to Austin officials: "AT&T’s expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives...AT&T consistently invests in U.S. communities -- $98 billion in capital in the past five years, more than any other public company"
AT& T is most likely gonna sue Austin unless they provide them with the same incentives as Google is getting.
Yeah, running an ISP is exactly like, and as profitable as developing a browser based on Apple's work. Running an ISP is surely Google's strong point and core business.
> Running an ISP is surely Google's strong point and core business.
No less so than developing a web browser was when Chrome was launched, or doing the same with a mobile OS was when Android was launched.
Perhaps more relevantly, Fiber has a similar role in terms of developing and promoting Google's existing core business as Android and Chrome did when they were introduced.
> Why didn't you compare Fiber to the [Google's "second spring of cleaning" announcement] ?
Because none of the products and features closed in the second spring cleaning were the focus of large-scale investment and promotion aimed at improving the market for Google's core offerings the way Chrome browser, Android, or Google Fiber is.
I've seen non-techie people use Chrome, none of them remembered how and why. My guess is that tried to download something else and it as bundled, or clicked on an advert when using Google. That might explain a large part of success. Chrome is pretty good, but then so is Firefox and (even) IE10.
One thing that Google does better than anyone else (period) is build networks.
Even if I assume that as true (surely many will contest it) somehow I suspect that that's not why we don't have 100mbs or GB service countrywide
A friendly piece of advice, you're coming off as very harsh/hostile - it might be well worth it to take a few minutes before posting to cool off, if this subject is close to your heart.
>Make it one, Google will almost certainly close shop soon after AT & T does theirs.
It's more likely Google proceeds b/c they have a better business model with higher ROI on expanded fiber access for the whole country, ATT doesn't.
For Google this is a loss leader that will pay off if it gets more people watching more videos (and ads) on Youtube, and using other Google properties. Iirc, something like 90%+ of their revenue still comes from ads of various sorts.
Without something similar, ATT will have to gorge customers, meter and cap usage, and other things customers love so much.
Only way ATT can win this is by playing dirty, and I have no doubt they will. Hope Google is ready for it.
"AT& T is most likely gonna sue Austin unless they provide them with the same incentives as Google is getting."
Could Austin make the argument that AT&T is only entitled to the incentives Google receives if they agree to the additional community work Google is doing (i.e. free fiber for schools, government buildings, and hospitals)?
Much like Firefox forced Microsoft's hand in regards to Internet Explorer it seems as though Google have forced one of the major players hands to innovate in the Internet and bandwidth space as well. Any outcome of this battle will only benefit the people in the end. More choice equals a better deal for everyone and I have no doubt this was never about money on Google's end in the first place, merely a wakeup call to companies like AT&T and Comcast who have stopped trying and let their networks deteriorate.
Considering Google have only spent $100 million on their impressive fibre network thus far, AT&T have a lot of catching up to do here to meet the same service offering Google is giving customers (no network caps, fast speeds, a new and reliable network).
Back in my Demon Internet days we went through every possible way of solving that last mile. One of the most innovative solutions, that actually got trailed before being "canned" was to backhaul fibre through the sewage system - it was pre existing tunnelling in every home, could be installed by any fool and had negligible effect on "flow"
Sewage systems are non-pressurized gravity flow and many have cleanouts for service. The line could exit out via the cleanout. My house has a clean out just as the sewer line exits the foundation, and the sewer line itself is a 4" pipe. Lots of room and easy access.
In the Chicagoland area, their DSL service was simply horrible, and it languished, until Comcast started rolling out Internet and triple-play (cable TV, Internet, and phone).
Suddenly, AT&T's market was at material risk.
Even then, their Internet offerings remained poorly supported, if relatively somewhat improved.
I suspect the primary reason for this announcement is for use in manipulating various political entities, including Congress. Also, some public PR value, from those who are still inclined to believe anything they might have to say.
Note that today's AT&T is really SBC. AT&T was a mostly empty shell at the time SBC bought them up -- largely, I suspect, for the branding.
Why are they announcing it the same day as Google? And in the same city, no less? If they've had this capability all this time, what has prevented them from offering good service to customers up until now?
"AT&T’s ... anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives."
They want to make a case out of Google getting preferential treatment to build out its network (which they are).
It seems like there should be a pretty easy way around the claims of favoritism: Come up with the terms (e.g. right of way and easy licenses if you install gigabit fiber to x thousand homes with no caps and observe network neutrality), then let companies bid on the contract, and open bidding to any qualified organization. Google can put in a nominal bid and take it if no one submits a competing bid, or AT&T can outbid them if they want, but then AT&T has to pay to build the network under those terms and Google can just move on to the next city.
This, this, this. Google has kc govt bending over backwards and att is using austin to make a point to any city thinking about doing this. Very smart business move. Att will get free incentives to upgrade.
How much do you want to bet AT&T never builds anything? This is a classic tactic of them to announce the development of a network and then never build it. They often do this as a means to extract honey from regulators, but it also works to distract consumers and municipalities. It's the equivalent of networking FUD.
This is duplicated infrastructure. What a waste of money and effort. Australia's National Broadband Network seems a much better way to handle this kind of thing.
I have FTTH with AT&T Uverse yet they only offer at max 22 mbps down / 3 up at around $60/month. Is lack of competition the only reason why AT&T doesn't offer me more speed? I mean why would they? It's either AT&T or dial-up.
This is sort of like if Google announced they are building a 50 ft. wall around the city of Austin, and then AT&T announces they are building a 50 ft. wall around the wall that Google is building.
AT&T is telling Google that they'll play in any market Google commits to and drive the margins out of it. They want Google to stop doing this, and they're hoping to make Google question its financial model for this capital outlay. (I doubt it will faze Google.)
AT&T is warning other municipalities to not cut Google any sweetheart deals that they're not willing to extend to AT&T. This is a potent message for municipalities that are sitting pretty on financial or other perks they've extracted from AT&T or other telecoms. AT&T is warning them the gravy train stops when they let in Google.