Google ditches its free WiFi service in South Africa, three months after launch

https://www.businessinsider.co.za/google-backs-out-free-wifi-google-station-partnership-with-think-wifi-in-south-africa-2020-2

by infodocket • 6 years ago

207 145 6 years ago

businessinsider.co.za

judge2020• 6 years ago

"ditches" definitely not the word that should describe this (this is towards the article and not the HN submitter since it's the article's title); it could lead those who don't click to think it's another project Google has shut down.

“We are transferring our Station operations in South Africa to Think WiFi who will now carry out the project independently,” a spokesperson told Business Insider SA.
“We'll work with Think Wifi on a plan to transition the service to them, and continue to support them until the end of 2020. We remain committed to looking for ways to make the internet more accessible to users around the world.”

xeromal3• 6 years ago

If I hand my child over to someone else to raise forever, I'm ditching them. :p

booi• 6 years ago

A 3 month old at that

pcdoodle• 6 years ago

wtf?

cma• 6 years ago

But if you sell a car to a new owner, you aren't ditching it in the woods.

chii• 6 years ago

bad analogy. There's no parent/child relationship between this service and google. As long as the service is continued, there's no issue as to who is owning and operating it.

Using children makes it seem like google is providing essential operational expertise to keep the child alive, and the child would die if stopped.

zapita• 6 years ago

In all likelihood the “transfer” is just a way for Google to save face and avoid yet another “Google kills project” news cycle. Good on the editors for not falling for it.

Covzire• 6 years ago

Another possibility is that the legal landscape was more hostile than Google anticipated and they essentially got squeezed out.

foolfoolz• 6 years ago

silicon valley: “fail fast”

also silicon valley: “google shuts down too many things”

wyxuan• 6 years ago

I don't really know why Google, a company, is doing what should be done by the government with no clear benefit to the bottom line. This is not to say they shouldn’t do this, but if you look at it that way, it shouldn't be surprising at all.

If they really wanted to help they probably should have teamed up with the government to ensure that there is government buy in to the program.

qeternity• 6 years ago

More people using web -> more ad revenue for Google

doggydogs94• 6 years ago

I guess that didn’t happen here.

nothrabannosir• 6 years ago

"Commoditize your complements." Covered by Joel Spolsky in an oldy but goody: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ (2002!)

manigandham• 6 years ago

It's pretty cheap and offers branding, data, ad impressions, and the opportunity to upsell other Google services. The government is very ineffectual in these areas, if it even exists beyond a name. These services will never happen without big companies starting them.

At least Google tried, and it looks like they're able to hand it off to another company that can keep it running now.

thrower123• 6 years ago

The South African government would have to be capable of managing some kind of project competently, which they demonstrate they are not able to do on a regular basis.

samplatt• 6 years ago

Google needs all the good PR it can get, these days. I'd be willing to pour money into ventures like this if I was in their position, too.

mav3rick• 6 years ago

Google has been working on WiFi projects for a long time. They have enough good PR outside HN, no need to trivialize when a company takes up a good project.

pnako• 6 years ago

I think Google is an insecure advertising company. It's as if Phillip Morris International was trying to develop solar panels and vegan food products to make everyone forget that most of their revenue comes from tobacco.

godzillabrennus• 6 years ago

Would have made it harder for the public to hate big tobacco if they had been putting their names behind good stuff for all the years they had insane profits. Might even have kept regulators from decimating their business.

Google learned from mistakes of the past.

toper-centage2• 6 years ago

Google is not a person. It can't feel anything. It is also composed of several teams, so it's perfectly possible for Google to look both to the left and to the right at the same time, before the higher ups decide to do some spring cleaning and shut down projects that don't align with their bigger picture.

AnthonyMouse• 6 years ago

Phillip Morris International

You mean Altria. They changed their name, for some strange reason.

sumedh2• 6 years ago

with no clear benefit to the bottom line.

I dont think they are doing it for the bottom line. Google also offers free wifi on many railway stations in India where lot of poor Indians get to use Internet for the first time.

It's good PR but also that automatically becomes a branding opportunity where lot of people think internet means google and creates a trust factor in the mind.

satya712• 6 years ago

That's also being shutdown according to Indian media. Railtel is going to take over the WiFi in India.

dade_4• 6 years ago

Government is a corrupt single party system in practice. Can't even keep the power on and the water system is in trouble. They would need a World Bank bailout for the Internet in a few years.

trazire• 6 years ago

With India, they did this. They collaborated with RailTel, but I assume that was more logistical then anything else.

craftinator• 6 years ago

Google gets just a little bit shittier, every day. Amazing.

hadlock• 6 years ago

We need a catchy verb for when Google abandons yet another service... De-google?

"South Africa's free Wifi service 'de-googled' as Google abandons yet another product"

jaimex2• 6 years ago

Microsoft had a brilliant one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogled

Time to bring it back I say.

silentsea90• 6 years ago

I appreciate that Google tries new things, but I don't get why their success rate seems to fall far short of Amazon.

asperous• 6 years ago

I think they way they see it is they are a company of scale. Scale is what they are good at (if anything). So they shutdown lots of small successes to try and focus on the huge wins.. things like youtube, gmail, google docs, etc. things millions of people use.

ineedasername6• 6 years ago

This is a reasonable perspective on their actions, but it then it still belies a huge glaring problem in Google fundamentally lacking the ability to understand which projects have the potential for scale at the desired level. It seems a standard part of a typical SV pitch deck to address the potential market and growth opportunities. Sure, they're wildly optimistic most times, but VC knows this and can price it in. But it almost seems like Google doesn't have the internal filtering mechanism necessary to perform this same function.

nmfisher• 6 years ago

I appreciate that Google tries new things, but I don't get why their success rate seems to fall far short of Amazon.

From the ground up, Amazon is focused on customers. Its mission statement is literally "to be Earth's most customer-centric company."

Compare with Google: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Google just isn't a customer-focused company. It seems many people who've tried to deal with their front-facing staff directly (AdWords, Pixel, Cloud, etc) have experienced this.

They don't need to be, because search/ads are a licence to print money.

tjpnz• 6 years ago

From what I've heard Amazon has a more data driven approach to product development. They're still prepared to take risks, but do it in a more controlled fashion. There's no Amazon Stadia yet (for example) but there is Lumberyard and various services catered towards game developers on AWS. If they do decide to launch something similar in future they will at least have some understanding of the industry they're getting into.

vineyardmike3• 6 years ago

Google seems to build things their engineers want to build. Amazon seems to build things their customers want to have.

justlexi93• 6 years ago

SA doesn't have the resources to offer the poor free Wi-Fi so they will miss out. And there is also the ongoing problem of cable theft so maybe google won't chance it here.

nostrebored• 6 years ago

What do you mean? Redirect the billions lost to state capture each year and free wifi to a few townships would be nothing.

tibbydudeza• 6 years ago

And do what with it ????.

Folks just want's the basics ... a job to feed their family and decent education for their kids to escape the cycle of poverty.

I don't see how free Wifi is going to help with this one.

m0zg3• 6 years ago

This is how it works:

1. Googler wants a promo. They know they need to "launch" to get promo. They can't get a promo if they just improve or maintain something that already exists.

2. Googler gets together with other googlers and puts together something they could launch. Nobody cares if it makes any sense.

3. The thing launches. Googler gets their promo. It is now pointless to spend any effort on maintaining something that you can't "launch" again. Googler moves on.

4. Project dies and gets shut down after a while because no sane person would touch maintenance work with a 10 foot pole.

9 out of 10 projects at Google go through this lifecycle, pretty much verbatim. This is why you have three different Google-provided messsengers on Android, and why stuff launches with great fanfare and then quickly runs out of steam. You get the behavior you reward. This is what Google rewards.

abrookewood• 6 years ago

"You get the behavior you reward. This is what Google rewards." From what I have heard, I think you're right. Promotions and kudos flow from launching new products & services, but not in maintaining them.

ineedasername6• 6 years ago

Yes, it convinces me there needs to be a 3rd stage to the old axiom: 1) Ideas are easy but 2) execution is hard and (new) 3) Maintenance is boring and lacks prestige but you'll fail without it.

amznthrowaway52• 6 years ago

Well if Google tried rewarding maintenance work, would people who do hard maintenance work and reduce tech debt actually be rewarded? Instead I think the result would be people gaming the new system and doing nothing while claiming to solve hard maintenance problems. Managers, as usual, would reward the wrong people. At least with the current system, google gets something kinda measurable.

m0zg3• 6 years ago

Managers are only very tangentially involved with "rewarding" employees at Google. They do not promote them: it's the responsibility of the employee to apply for a promo, though manager has to support. And promotion decision is not made by the manager either: it's made by a committee that has never even seen the employee and knows nothing about their work other than what they choose to put in their "promotion packet", as well as peer feedback. IOW your manager can torpedo your promo chances, but they can't unilaterally "promote" or "reward" you per se, aside from some fractional bump in the yearly perf score.

So employees have to support the assertions they make in the promo packet with evidence. I suppose you could support the assertion that you've done great maintenance work on something that's valuable to the company, and show off the metrics, PRs (or "CL"s in Google terminology), monetary impact, and things of that nature. But Google culturally doesn't really give a shit about this kind of thing, even if it's otherwise impactful. A few people manage to do well maintaining code at scale, but by and large my advice to Nooglers would be to stay as far away as they can from anything that's not contributing to a launch in some _easily quantifiable and attributable_ way. Or even if it does contribute to a launch, stay away from things they personally can't take credit for. Otherwise you'll end up working on something that someone else "started", and that someone will take credit when it's done.

vineyardmike3• 6 years ago

AWS found a way to reward the maintenance of amazons internal deployment infrastructure.

Apple and the yearly WWDC found a way to reward improving bugs and stability in operating systems (by labeling them as launches).

Hell, Microsoft provides huge lifespan guarantees ensuring that maintenance is a success metric.

You can totally incentive correct behavior.

jugg1es• 6 years ago

What does recomplex mean?

nebulous1• 6 years ago

typo, should be complex

ineedasername6• 6 years ago

I just can't think of any reason why, if I were building any sort of business (tech or otherwise) I would incorporate google services (apart form google search ads, perhaps) into any aspect of it that I would deem "essential" or even "important". Even Drive & the associated sheets/docs/etc I look at with an eye towards "be ready to mass download the lot of it on short notice"

As an example, about two years ago they were building something that looked poised to compete with MS Power BI and Tableau. Not mature enough at that point, but promising. I poked around and saw potential for what it could offer if I pushed it forward in my work place, but I quickly realized it was a very risky career prospect: It might not work quite so well and sure, that's fine, we'd be trying it out on that possible basis. But it might work just fine, and we migrate some clunky "enterprise" reporting over, decommission some old iron, and then... ::Poof::! Google's system is gone, end-of-lifed with a 90 day notice and then I'm left holding the bag because Google is not a reliable partner for anything outside a narrow core of the selections.

davewasthere• 6 years ago

Do you mean Google Data Studio, or something else?

ineedasername6• 6 years ago

It might have been that... They had a few similar forays into that sort of thing and at least one change of branding for the same offering when they gave it an overhaul, so I'm not sure. It may even still be around, but I just didn't have confidence in it's long term viability to push it organizationally over Tableau and ::shudder:: Cognos. (Cognos was mandatory, it was built on top of the the semantic layer of data from an ERP. A year later we realized we needed Tableau for truly modern data presentation, and used the semantic layer underlying Cognos as the primary data source for it, so it actually turned into a decent compromise. Now my push is for true data mining pipeline/ml development and deplo capabilities. Something like Alteryx, but there's a few solar industry-specific tools I'm looking at instead.

dboreham• 6 years ago

Yes. Been there, won't do that ever again.

esprehn2• 6 years ago

There's a big difference between a paid (Google) service and a free one.

Google doesn't generally shutdown paid B2B services, but it certainly does have a record of instability on free consumer services (like this wifi thing).

ineedasername6• 6 years ago

Well, they may not exactly sjut it down in th same abrupt way if it's paid, but if you look at their recent changes to the costs if using their maps API, they're certainly willing to rewrite the terms of use for paid tiers that result in apps that were paying nominal fees to suddenly being charged onerous, crippling costs order of magnitude more expensive that require shutting down the service built on Google's tech.

So, no, paid services are not free from the fear of Google's drastic and suddenly project cuts or (as near as cuts) massiveness overhauls.

njacobs5074• 6 years ago

This seems to be a part of the Google Station project (product?) being shut down world-wide [1].

TBH, while I'm all for projects that provide public uplift, it's clear that Google was never doing this completely out of the goodness of their hearts. Moreover, providing things for free here needs to be balanced with building services that provide a path out of the endemic unemployment that crushes so many people and communities.

[1] https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/338928-google-pullin...

QueridoGuy• 6 years ago

i always think that Google and Microsoft are the worst when it comes to projects. They make good concept projects, but their problem is that they don't do full commitment. Much like Google Duo or Google Allo. Their problem was, while it's good to have those apps, they never made commitments into pushing them for consumers to like or even recognize. instead, they kept their hangout when they could either migrate fully, or just migrate the core from the new app.

Microsoft did that with many projects too but their problem was different. That's why i believe the last good time google did something good was from when they announced their very first pixel.

At least Microsoft is doing great job currently with their open source approach.

roseway4• 6 years ago

A huge pity. Langa, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Delft, Elsies River, and Philippi are poor, underserviced areas. It’s unlikely they benefit from the fiber to the home that the rest of Cape Town has (nor could many of their residents afford it).

What they do have are cellphones and a free wireless service would likely benefit many.

I can’t see any commercial value from continuing the service in these areas: Exactly why a wealthy tech company /should/ be considering this service. It’s quite possible the new operators will retreat to the formerly white (and rich) suburbs and center of Cape Town.

* I’m a South Africa ex-pat living in the U.S.

reaperducer• 6 years ago

I still remember when Google promised to bring free wifi to all of the poor neighborhoods in Chicago. Amid a big frenzy of local media and politician hoopla it said was going to put access points on every streetlight.

Then Google found out that when the street lights turn off, there's no power to run the access points. So it just walked away.

numlock86• 6 years ago

Then Google found out that when the street lights turn off, there's no power to run the access points.

Uh? Duh! What did they expect? A switch in every street light? (Which also would need to be controlled in some way ...)

krasin• 6 years ago

Google operated city-wide public WiFi in Mountain View for many years. So, it's not like they didn't have any experience.

I would also like to point out that most cities have a utility electrical grid to power traffic lights and the like. While I imaging some south cities could get away with solar-powered traffic lights, it's unlikely that Chicago is one.

I don't know anything about this Google+Chicago experience (even though I currently work at Google), but I would bet the issue was not as simple as "they found out that street lights turn off".

thereisnospork• 6 years ago

Ones in my neck of the woods just switch based on a light sensor on the top. No need for programming/timing adjustment or a master-switched second grid.

odiroot2• 6 years ago

Streetlights in Berlin (at least on my street) are completely autonomous. It's a lot of fun to watch them start sequentially (with the light dimming down).

cs02rm0• 6 years ago

Maybe they did. We have street lights with light sensors, so they turn on when it's sufficiently dark rather than on a schedule.

I've seen videos of people who'd rather not have a light on outside their bedroom window at night setting up a laser pointer to point at the sensor to keep the light off.

_-___________-_5• 6 years ago

In my experience a fully-centralised switch is actually quite uncommon.

In many locations they use light sensors, and if you live above a street oriented the right way you can see quite a cool effect of the lights going off sequentially down the street as the light goes below the threshold.

In other locations that I'm familiar with, they use a ripple relay, where a particular signal is transmitted over the power lines (a "ripple") in a way that doesn't affect unaware equipment, but signals the target equipment (relays on the supply to the streetlights) to switch. Similar technology is used to provide day/night rates where one circuit is only energised during off-peak hours.

I don't see any reason the ripple relay couldn't be bypassed to provide a second always-on feed for the Wi-Fi gear, but it might be that the ripple relays are not at every lamp post but instead at the substations or roadside cabinets, in which case there would indeed be some cost to run the extra circuits.

netsharc• 6 years ago

Huh, they didn't have the motivation to add an 18-hour battery/UPS per light? Charge it while the light is powered, and discharge during the day..

Or, solar panels..

dntbnmpls• 6 years ago

I remember when Google Fiber was going to put verizon, comcast, time warner, etc out of business. I remember everyone being so hyped for Google Fiber to come to their neighborhood. Haven't heard anything from them in years.

SOLAR_FIELDS• 6 years ago

They’ve stopped the rollout to new cities - however in cities they currently exist in they continue to roll out new fiber, just at a rate slower than molasses. Austin TX seems to get a new neighborhood once every 2-3 months or so.

Animats• 6 years ago

Lesson: never bet your business on a Google product other than ads.

toper-centage2• 6 years ago

Considering how easily you can get banned from Google ads, you should also prepare for that scenario.

kkarakk• 6 years ago

Amazon, SpaceX and OneWeb are all doing satellite based internet service(or atleast trying to push in that direction.

I wonder why project loon/whatever google calls it's think tanks now discarded that as an idea? seems like a thing purpose built for the google brand - huge idea, requires massive funding, literally no government can prevent you from beaming internet at it's citizens without a satellite killer(which they can't deploy without intl negative attention)

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/22/fast-internet-via-satellites...

vineyardmike3• 6 years ago

Huge idea requiring massive Capex seems more like an amazon thing (AWS, fulfillment centers, etc) than a google thing.

chilldsgn3• 6 years ago

I suspect they're withdrawing due to infrastructure issues. We also have frequent power cuts (in my area it's up to 4 hours a day with no electricity) and loads of cable theft. Some of the cell towers even get shut down because people steal the hardware, the batteries that keep them operational. Heck, we've even had cases of people stealing fibre cables, because they thought they were worth more than copper.

*I am a South African living in South Africa.

WrtCdEvrydy2• 6 years ago

Unfortunately, this is the downward spiral of having bad actors. I kinda wish we lived in a world where communities could self-regulate and expel bad actors to let the ones who want to work together to achieve something can thrive.

eklavya• 6 years ago

Do you mean law and order?

buro9• 6 years ago

It's more the downward spiral created by inequality and poverty.

Address that and you can have nice things safely.

zapzupnz3• 6 years ago

When you see the inequality in South Africa, when even people working good jobs still get paid only in single digits (which in Rands comes to /nothing/), where things cost so damn much — you might have a slightly more sympathetic take on why people do what they do to survive.

pixelpoet• 6 years ago

Eish, that's still going on? I'm half South African and grew up in SA but left in 2007, mainly because of the crime, but also the Telkom monopoly and rolling blackouts ("load shedding") were not so conducive to starting an internet business.

It's kinda amazing to me that any techies stay there. Cape Town is beautiful yes, but so is New Zealand (where many Saffers such as my family emigrated to).

chilldsgn3• 6 years ago

It's worse than ever. I am having a lot of trouble keeping to my deadlines for work and have to work around all the blackouts which frustratingly disrupts my life and thousands of other businesses. Just a couple more years until my degree is done, then I am GTFO of here.

happypants232• 6 years ago

I'm a techie living in Cape Town and I love it. I have no plans to emigrate. We have problems down here yes, but they've been no impediment to my career.

Both Amazon AWS and Oracle OCI have satellite development offices in Cape Town, and if anything they are hiring more and more.

bogomipz2• 6 years ago

"Cape Town is beautiful yes, but so is New Zealand (where many Saffers such as my family emigrated to"

I found this interesting. I did not know that was a common migration. Is there any reason for that? I know they are similar latitudes but I'm guessing there's some other connection?

bogomipz2• 6 years ago

Whereabout in SA are you? Are the issues you describe more common in rural areas or is it in the larger cities as well?

frankzinger• 6 years ago

The power cuts are country-wide. The sole, state-owned power utility Eskom has neglected its infrastructure despite warnings going back decades and now cannot generate enough electricity to meet demand. And the corruption under former president Jacob Zuma has caused newer power station projects to be botched and run way over schedule and budget. In the best case we will be having regular power cuts for the next 18 months at least.

chilldsgn3• 6 years ago

Johannesburg region

ptah• 6 years ago

slightly misleading as they are handing it over to someone else to run, not completely stopping it

alexmingoia• 6 years ago

I’m surprised none of the comments mention widespread increases in 4G coverage and decreased cellular broadband costs as a factor in shutting down the program worldwide.

At least here in Myanmar free WiFi is no longer needed at cafes and the like as most people now have access to affordable cellular broadband at 4G speeds. I know it’s a similar situation in India where Google was operating the program.

satya712• 6 years ago

It's being shuttered in India as well [1].

[1] https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/google-to-close...

Google ditches its free WiFi service in South Africa, three months after launch

Related Stories