Technology

@cantankerous_cashew add to the list of heinous stuff the #epsteinclass is using this window of opportunity to get away with. Imagine pretending to be a force for modernization and good, get grants from cities to build infra, then sell said infra to the same scumbag ISPs who already got grants from city/state/local & federal to create monopolies in the first place...truly, fuck you #google. Fuck you.

There are essentially only three major cable providers in the United States. They have blocked Google Fiber at nearly every turn. I have been unable to get Google Fiber at any address I’ve lived at since it launched.

It is oddly entertaining to watch monopolies that the federal government failed to break up, largely due to their own lobbying, fight each other in an attempt to prevent the others from becoming even more monopolized.

I always thought this was their plan. I used to work for one of the cable companies when this came out. Most of us in the Operations space saw this as an obvious play to bully the big telecom companies to increase speeds and latency to benefit the tech companies. However the execs freaked out and treated them as an existential threat, which is exactly what Google wanted.

They never had any desire to run an Internet company, it costs a ton of money to build out. So they cherry picked relatively dense middle and upper class neighborhoods that would have a good return in a way that the regulated telecoms would not be allowed to. They normalized high speed internet nationally and now they can sell off the business to recoup some of the cost.

I'm not a fan of Google, but as an internet customer, I appreciate the result of this strategy.

When do no evil finally turns to do evil always. I think this leaves the Woz as the only remnant of when tech was the good guy.

I always thought the 1Gbps was awesome and perhaps a good incentive for other companies to upgrade (probably more the reason since they're Google and their ad bucks). Recently saw a reason to switch for 2.5, did it then was told by the installer they don't even have cable that does it. Mean. I did it myself and my stream downloads are quite fast, but it'd have been nice if my provider mentioned that in the first place so I knew who had to run the wires. It was only through some holes, behind the sink / dishwasher so not awful but you td have been nice to understand 2.5 was higher than their techs supported.Also needed a switch / router upgrade. Which was actually quite fun to do and minimal cost now can get a mesh wifi going.

Still if your techs can't provide what is needed in cables for your upper end least tell the customer first.

This will enshittivize profit over quality of service.

So all of the easement agreements got pushed through by google, and are being taken over by entities who wouldn't have been able to get those easements due to commujity distrust of their company

I'd sue to have the easement revoked as a community, and for punitive damages hefty enough as a punch to Google's nose to prevent that type of bad behavior from happening in the future

Not chump change, not cost of operations. Actual punitive damages enough to cut out any profits from the transaction and then some

Meanwhile SpaceX spends billions launching thousands of satellites into space and wreck the environment just so people can doomscroll their slop. When all we need are governments building some basic infrastructure like fiber internet for a fraction of the money.

Add another to the graveyard

Everything Google touches turns to ash.

I don't have any experience with Google Fiber, but I was bummed when Google Domains got sold off, I forgot to whom. Google Domains was so simple. No nonsense.

Yeah fuck everything Google.

Ugh.

The service has been quite good for ten years.

Guess it was good while it lasted.

They just finished laying Google Fiber in my neighborhood and I was looking at switching. Guess I’m holding on that.

Another one for the Google graveyard.

I'm shocked. Totally shocked.

Private equity means rising *prices and dropping quality until it's useless at which point it will be sold off piece by piece. Consumers aren't part of the process except as wallets.