Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

http://fiber.google.com/plans/residential/

by stevewilhelm • 14 years ago

1139 466 14 years ago

fiber.google.com

pizza4• 14 years ago

Usually when people in Silicon Valley use the word "amazing", I roll my eyes.

But $0 internet is very amazing.

On top of that, $120/mo for cutting edge consumer entertainment is just a slap in the face to other service providers.

NathanKP• 14 years ago

I wonder how much money Google can make from a single household that is using Google products on the internet? As long as Google makes more money over time than the internet connection costs them, then it could be a very profitable for Google to increase the number of people using Google products and gain great product PR and brand loyalty from these people who get free internet.

mhurron2• 14 years ago

Yep, how much monitoring and data collection is Google doing here?

I wouldn't sign up for Google provided internet.

VikingCoder• 14 years ago

"Amazon has found that every 100 ms of latency costs them 1% in sales."

"Google has found that an extra 500 ms in search page generation time made traffic drop by 20%."

http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/09/23/latency-costs-sales-and-...

I don't think Google plans to bring this level of high-speed internet to everyone in the US, but they're certainly trying to spur the competition on.

If people use the internet more, Google makes more money.

untog4• 14 years ago

$120/mo for cutting edge consumer entertainment is just a slap in the face to other service providers.

I pay $120/mo in New York and get high speed internet, and cable TV with HBO (conspicuously missing from Google's offering) and ESPN. Don't get me wrong, I'd switch to Google in a heartbeat, but I don't actually think that $120 price point is much of a slap in the face to existing providers.

EDIT: and this is just in Kansas City. Given the existing variations in price across the country, I'll be very surprised if we are all paying $120 when (if?) it rolls out nationally.

oskee802• 14 years ago

Well, that depends on your ISP and where you live. I pay $160/month for a higher-tier internet (Blast) and basic cable from Comcast.

jevinskie• 14 years ago

How is $70 w/o TV and $120 w/ TV not a slap in the face to other ISPs when it gives you gigabit without data caps?!

stevejabs• 14 years ago

In Orlando I'm paying $240 a month to get 40Mbps down / 5 up with a full channel lineup, plus Showtime and NHL Center Ice. So THIS would be a huge deal to people in my area where only one cable option exists in a lot of Central Florida.

Edit: Fixed bandwidth

pizza4• 14 years ago

I get decent internet, home phone, and sdtv for around $200 here :( Worst part is, I don't think my situation is that uncommon.

fusiongyro• 14 years ago

Did it come with a free Nexus 7? Google's going to decimate the existing cable and DSL offerings in Kansas City in less than a week.

mbell2• 14 years ago

Its $120/mo for:

* 1Gps Internet

* TV service

* A Nexus 7 tablet

* 2TB 'Storage' that has features that make is sound like a full NAS to me

* 1TB Google Drive (1TB dropbox would run ~$100/mo alone)

Its a bit more than your average TV+Internet package you'd get from a telco.

nilsbunger• 14 years ago

This is very disruptive on both ends, free and $120 per month. Hits the cable providers, telcom providers, and even apple, Netflix, Hulu, and roku where it hurts. Nice work google!

They are still missing a few key channels - CNN, Disney, and espn - all of which my household can't live without (I know, first-world problems). And I think those are some of the harder, more valuable properties to acquire. Anyone know whether google will be able to get those channels?

masonhensley• 14 years ago

Cutting edge is right...

"Record up to eight programs simultaneously, just because you can. And with an unprecedented two terabytes of storage, you will never have to worry about having enough space to record your favorite shows."

snprbob86• 14 years ago

And the included remote is a Nexus 7. Sounds almost too good to be true.

criswell• 14 years ago

I hope they still provide a regular remote of some sort. I don't want to have to unlock a tablet and go to an app to change the channel.

duaneb• 14 years ago

is $120/mo good? That's more than any other bill I pay except rent.

smacktoward2• 14 years ago

It's comparable to the price of the usual "Triple Play" Internet+cable+phone service offers from cable companies and telcos.

hesselink• 14 years ago

I had the same feeling, but maybe the Netherlands are just cheap. You can get phone/internet/tv combinations here from €40-70. Although the fastest internet connection you get there is usually 'only' 120Mbit.

lawdawg• 14 years ago

The $120/mo plan is incredible for what you get, considering 1TB on Google Drive is normally $50/mo. So jealous ...

thiagodotfm• 14 years ago

Holy shit.

That's a lot of porn.

blktiger• 14 years ago

I'm so sad that I can't get this where I live... :(

dkhenry• 14 years ago

Nexus 7 as the remote. This could really be a game changer for tablets, and for google.

soccerdave• 14 years ago

Comcast in my area has been hurting due to the local power company offering fast fiber speeds. This is going to be much worse for those local companies. I'm not saying it's bad, that's what happens when you spend 10 years without innovating.

antonioevans• 14 years ago

How would they get this into SF or NYC? Verizon currently testing a 300mps I am sure they will scale that a bit in next 1-2 years.

untog4• 14 years ago

Getting this into big cities with established players is going to be an utter nightmare. Although I live in a pretty central area of Brooklyn and still don't have FIOS, so anything that will allow me to get rid of Time Warner Cable will be very, very welcome.

That said- TWC has awful customer service, but Google doesn't have the best reputation either. That might be their biggest test in all of this.

stephengillie4• 14 years ago

What about smaller markets like Seattle, Portland, or other cities up here?

Is there any more info about their plan for build-out or how soon it'll be available in our neighborhoods?

dannytatom3• 14 years ago

I'd imagine it would get to Seattle sooner than later since there's a Google office here?

philwelch3• 14 years ago

In downtown Seattle they already have competition in the form of CondoInternet.

babar• 14 years ago

The cable channel lineup looks limited (no ESPN? can you add HBO?), so I wonder if they will get much adoption there.

Internet pricing looks fantastic.

pkulak• 14 years ago

Espn is the only reason I have cable.

discountgenius2• 14 years ago

No AMC, no FX either... this is basic basic cable here.

dannytatom3• 14 years ago

I still plan to get it once it gets to Seattle, but I'm kinda bummed out that there's no Cartoon Network (specifically Adult Swim).

jcampbell1• 14 years ago

ESPN is the most expensive cable channel. They charge the provider roughly $4/month if it is part of a main package, or $20/month if it is part of an upgrade.

methodin• 14 years ago

One would think if this gets a decent adoption rate that they could/should offer such channels a more lucrative deal than what current providers offer. This all depends, of course, on how they can make money off this and how much.

Nemisis7654• 14 years ago

According to The Verge: "There's a basic version with network channels and some basic cable, on up to the movie channels like HBO." So it looks like you can get HBO...

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3188845/google-fiber-tv

brownie• 14 years ago

Yep, looks like they haven't been able to secure deals with the big providers - Disney (ESPN, ABC Family), Fox (FX, Fox Sports Net), or Time Warner (CNN, TNT). I imagine this will change over time.

topherjaynes• 14 years ago

Was so excited then saw it was just limited to Kansas City, what a tease, but glad to see they're 'shaking' things up.

danvideo• 14 years ago

Right, I would have preferred a quiet roll out, until large metro areas were ready to go live. It's going to be at least 2013 before most of us even have the option to use it.

Sort of like hearing that the new Android upgrade is available, but only international phones for the next year, and your phone might not even support the new version.

mmahemoff• 14 years ago

They're offering it to an entire city, a public website was always going to be necessary.

danielweber3• 14 years ago

They are encouraging people to pre-register to figure out where the demand is.

dusing• 14 years ago

I would guess more like 2015+ for most metros

will_work4tears• 14 years ago

I would have signed up in a heartbeat. I grew up in KC but do not live anywhere near there now.

Come to Western Washington, Google!

cmelbye• 14 years ago

It's still limited to just Kansas City? Hm.

patrickod• 14 years ago

I'm hoping that this becomes available in the bay area in the coming years. $70/month for gigabit connection is an absolute no brainer.

ghshephard2• 14 years ago

Given that I pay $69.16/month for service from Comcast that in theory should be 30 mbits, but in practice ranges all the way down to 3 megabits for hours at a time, depending on time of day, yes, it would be a no brainer. $70/month for an actual 30 megabit connection would be a no brainer as far as I'm concerned.

whichdan• 14 years ago

I'm paying around $100/mo for 50mbits, and it seems to fluctuate between 30 and 60 realistically. That's for just bare internet service and nothing else. I'd switch to Google in a heartbeat, provided they have atleast basic support.

michaelhoffman• 14 years ago

Why start this in Kansas City? Is this like trying to produce a future Broadway show in New Haven or San Diego, so you can work out the kinks before you go to the big time?

cschmidt• 14 years ago

They had a big competition where lots of cities bid to be the first city, and they won. One issues was that all utilities in town are above ground on poles. They wouldn't have to bury any cables, just string them along the existing poles.

jeffool2• 14 years ago

They courted communities about two years ago for this. The idea was to find an area that would work with them, and actively help. KC "won". It makes things easier, I would imagine, if an entire city council was lobbying for you.

_delirium• 14 years ago

They solicited proposals from cities (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/think-big-with-gig-ou..., http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/next-steps-for-our-ex...), and ended up choosing Kansas City as the initial site (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/ultra-high-speed-broa...).

It looks like they wanted a market with between 50,000 and 500,000 subscribers as the initial one, so not NYC or SF or LA. And, wanted strong local support to avoid regulatory problems.

bicknergseng2• 14 years ago

"wanted strong local support to avoid regulatory problems."

Probably the most genius part of this whole thing. It may the reason we're not hearing about the lobbying backlash someone like Uber received.

jonknee3• 14 years ago

Not to mention the ridiculous cost of digging up something like NYC.

hoka2• 14 years ago

having spent the summer on true gigabit internet, it's a shame people won't even understand how big of a difference this makes. Their site makes a cute attempt at it, but I don't think it does it justice. Gig internet just has to be experienced.

rplnt2• 14 years ago

Free internet. That's rather creepy from Google. When they roll this big it would hurt other providers, which in itself isn't bad, but having only Google as a choice is. Can they even do that by the way (anti-monopoly regulations)?

ConstantineXVI2• 14 years ago

They'll have a hell of a time getting in other cities in the first place. AT&T and the major cablecos typically have an absolute, legally-sanctioned stranglehold on their markets.

clavalle• 14 years ago

But up until now there have been no clear alternatives when citizens try to fight those sanctioned monopolies.

If Google is offering 100x the speed in another city, Time Warner, Comcast, AT&T etc. will have a hard time explaining why they should retain their monopoly unless they offered something competitive.

nemo16182• 14 years ago

Not sure if this is at all relevant, but a judge ruled in 2005 that distributing GPL software for free is not anti-competitive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_v._International_Busine...

ghshephard2• 14 years ago

"Can they even do that by the way (anti-monopoly regulations)?"

Yes - Google does not (A) Have a monopoly in providing Internet to the home and (B) they are not attempting to leverage their monopoly in search (which they _are_ pretty close to having) in order to achieve dominance in another market.

I think they are clear from an anti-trust position.

randall2• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)#Action...

Maybe?

Avenger42• 14 years ago

That only seems to apply to dumping as an action by international firms, intended to damage domestic companies, and the rights domestic companies have to address it. It's not strictly applicable between two local firms competing for customers.

rush340• 14 years ago

I'd rather have Google as the only choice than Comcast/CenturyLink.

chaselee• 14 years ago

This is exploding with awesome at every seam.

discountgenius2• 14 years ago

So... I can get gigabit internet for either $70/month locked in for 2 years or $25/month locked in for 1 year. I'm not seeing the point of the $70 pricing option.

jeffool2• 14 years ago

The free option is 5Mbps down/1 Mbps up.

grecy• 14 years ago

The Free plan ($25/mo 1 year)says:

Up to 5Mbps download, 1Mbps upload speed.

The $70/mo for 2 years says:

Up to one gigabit upload & download.

Big difference

oskee802• 14 years ago

That 25/month for one year on the free plan is only for 5Mb down, 1Mb up... not Gb speeds.

sondh• 14 years ago

The third package is not having gigabit connection (at least, for now). The speed is 5Mbps/1Mbps (D/U) only

normalfaults3• 14 years ago

During the live event it was mentioned that premium channels will be available at an extra charge per month. Google wanted to simplify the cable line up as much as possible.

Xcelerate2• 14 years ago

When I was at Georgia Tech, I got 650 Mbps. You realize the bottleneck isn't your connection at that point -- it's everyone else's. Which means a lot of sites still download just as slow. Although the big sites have optimized data centers, so it was pretty cool downloading an entire OS in a few seconds (although I think my hard drive write speed limited that a bit too).

My father works in the fiber optics industry and has told me that if fiber was brought directly to each home, every person would have more bandwidth than they knew what to do with. One thin, tiny fiber can carry an INSANE amount of information. The problem is the processing circuitry that converts these light signals into digital signals. These NICs have a much lower throughput than the fiber itself, but if the fiber infrastructure was already in place everywhere, upgrades would be much cheaper and quicker. (In other words, Google Fiber has easy upgrade potential to 10, 100, ... Gbps).

stephengillie4• 14 years ago

Would Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive, Amazon cloud storage, et al exist today if we could send data across the US at even just 650Mbps?

lsc2• 14 years ago

yes. They would have to dramatically decrease their bandwidth charges, and they'd have to lower their charges in general (just 'cause the barrier to entry for their competition would be lower) but if anything, having a fat pipe at home would make storing things remotely a lot more attractive.

Think about it; with that kind of a pipe, you could boot your desktop off of a drive in my datacenter, two cities away.

modoc• 14 years ago

I'd use DropBox much MORE if I had more than 15 Mbit upstream. If I had 1 Gbit+ speeds, I'd use DropBox for EVERYTHING (5+ TB) and happily pay for it. As it stands now the upload would take far too long to be much use.

wickedchicken2• 14 years ago

Housefires happen regardless of internet connection speed, so yes.

abhishekkr• 14 years ago

Yes they would. Its the same reason ftp servers, backup servers and NAS would exist no matter how fast the connection speed is. Its about availability, backups and more holistic access control. It would be interesting to see how these services innovate with such high speed connection though.

betterth2• 14 years ago

Oh yeah! Think: a harddrive writes at what an average of 75MB/s [1], and 1Gbit internet is 125MB/s [2]. (Note, Google currently advertises 'up to 1Gbit up and down').

This means that dropbox no longer "syncs". It's just another harddrive in terms of how it works. Copies to and from just as quickly as your harddrive.

Heck, it seems like if you installed an application to your dropbox, and ran your computer off of an SSD, it seems like you could enjoy BETTER performance than if you had that program installed on a 7200rpm drive and ran it locally...

Can't wait to see what we end doing with 1GBit ubiquity!

[1] http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3.5-hard-drive-charts-200...

[2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1Gbit+in+MB%2Fs

cryptoz• 14 years ago

> every person would have more bandwidth than they knew what to do with.

I think that is exactly the point. That's why they are doing this; Google doesn't know what exactly will happen when everyone in the USA/world has fiber connections, but they do know that incredible innovation will come. What kind of applications will be built? What kind of applications can be built?

Couple this with the increasing computing power inside each home over the next many years, and Google will have control over an unbelievably fast and large network of computers.

I'd be certain most applications are in the weak-to-strong AI arena.

nemo16182• 14 years ago

indeed. The scales of computing technologies have increased by many order of magnitude in their history, and it has never been "enough." Bill Gates infamously demonstrated the danger of predicting how much RAM/Clock speed/Bandwidth/etc. is "enough."

EDIT: fixed a rather wacky typo

m_for_monkey• 14 years ago

I fear, the surplus bandwidth will be simply wasted, just like the enormous computing power of modern desktop CPUs.

bicknergseng2• 14 years ago

If you build it, they will come.

htf• 14 years ago

Can you give examples you have in mind of AI applications that requires high bandwidth? Something related to vision maybe?

hoka2• 14 years ago

Yeah, Google's going to have to do a good job telling people their computers and NICs aren't going to cut it. It's amazing when you're limited by your machine instead of the internet!

sadga2• 14 years ago

Who doesn't have a gigabit NIC? They've been standard for years.

bcrescimanno• 14 years ago

The thing I miss most about my internet connection at GT was the incredibly low latency to most everything. Now, this was circa 2000 or so; but, I remember page loads seeming more like loading files locally the latency was so low.

Google today, for all it's speed an simplicity, is significantly slower to get to search results than Yahoo would load them for me in 2000 on a GT internet connection.

ktizo3• 14 years ago

You can go all the way into the terabit range with single fibre, which is also around the same ballpark as what you need for full holographic video.

datalus• 14 years ago

So we can get a real holo Tupac now? Joy!

dudus• 14 years ago

> every person would have more bandwidth than they knew what to do with The same thing was said about floppy disks and RAM in the past. The reality is that the demand expands to fill whatever you have available and still ask for more. Once we have blazing fast speeds like that someone will come up with a crazy idea that will require still more bandwidth and lower latency.

api• 14 years ago

Thank GOD they're disrupting this industry. All the telcos are worthless "Soviet bureaus" that deserve death.

It's really sort of amazing to think about. In all my years on this planet I have never been pleased with a telecom company. Never. I have always felt like I was paying far too much for inferior service, contemptible customer support, and endless efforts to further "monetize" me through harassing phone calls trying to sell me more stuff, intrusive DNS systems that redirect me to their crappy web sites, etc.

There is not a single other industry I can say that about, certainly not one that comes to mind so quickly. Hell, I can't even say that about the government.

As if that's not bad enough, this industry seems to spend a lot of money lobbying to destroy the open Internet, which is like a car company lobbying to increase the number of annoying traffic regulations in order to make it less enjoyable to drive.

philwelch3• 14 years ago

Be careful what you wish for. I'm dubious of getting any kind of service from a company known for not having any kind of customer service whatsoever.

ktizo3• 14 years ago

I don't mind having no call centers to call as long as the service works better and the network is smart. Currently, you are having to use a phone to verbally tell the telco where the problems are on the network they run, which is insane.

dholowiski• 14 years ago

Um... I've called google tech support numerous times (for google apps, and google adwords) and had great experiences. I'd be ecstatic if my ISP gave me the same level of support.

nickpinkston• 14 years ago

Though to be honest - how good is ComCraptic at service? At least when Google has bugs they're solved quickly.

notatoad4• 14 years ago

TelCo call centers are universally useless. Google could have a phone number you call and a robot on the other end that informs you of service disruptions and tells you to turn it off and turn it on again, and they would have better service than most ISPs.

jvanenk• 14 years ago

I actually have some experience with GoogCustSvc now.

I bought a Nexus 7. It has touch-screen problems. They provided a way to contact them here (http://support.google.com/nexus/bin/request.py?contact_type=...).

I talked to the rep (after waiting about 30 minutes). They were helpful, direct, competent, and provided a way for me to contact the person I talked to via e-mail after the call was ended.

They organized a replacement device and even worked through the fact that I'd purchased the tablet from my brother-in-law.

If their future customer service offerings are the same as what I experienced last night, I have no concerns.

fourmii• 14 years ago

Anything is better than the rubbish we currently get from Comcast...

apenwarr2• 14 years ago

Google Fiber has customer service by phone. The phone number is visible at https://fiber.google.com/help/

cciesquare• 14 years ago

What are we comparing the customer service to though? For ISPs google cannot do worse, it's impossible. I've used Verizon, AT&T, Charter, Time Warner and they all have terrible customer service, and I am understating it.

WettowelReactor• 14 years ago

Having used Google customer service as a paying customer I have never had an issue. Customer service on their free offerings is another story all together but what do you expect on that end anyways?

maratd3• 14 years ago

> contemptible customer support

Because Google will be so much better? Look, I hate telcos just like the next guy, but the suckage is mostly due to the nature of the business. They form natural monopolies and that sort of thing doesn't lead to customer satisfaction. The only way that sector is going to get truly disrupted is through gigabit wireless internet. You can have multiple competitors in one space with comparatively limited infrastructure investment on their part.

That free tier? That is outright illegal and its sole purpose is to eradicate all competition. It' a good thing for Google that sort of thing isn't really enforced anymore. They'll still get sued though. Look up price bashing.

Once Google is the only player in town, you still think they'll shit lilacs and spread rainbows and unicorns? That's just not how monopolies work.

eavc3• 14 years ago

"That free tier? That is outright illegal and its sole purpose is to eradicate all competition."

No - the purpose is to increase people willing to pay for installations in a given neighborhood so they can go ahead and roll out service to more people.

AsylumWarden• 14 years ago

You know, I've never had trouble with Google customer support. I've contacted them twice: once for a Google Maps issue and again because I couldn't access my account. No problems for me. I find these kinds of complaints strange. Most of the time I hear this complaint the person doing the complaining hadn't ever even tried to contact Google; they just read that it was a problem somewhere. Oh, I will admit they don't make finding the contact information easy but with the number of users barely able to order a happy meal without calling 911 when their fries aren't right who would want to make it easy?

EthanHeilman• 14 years ago

Plain and simple: Google makes money if people use the internet. Anything that increases the number of times someone views a website makes google money.

It's like a billboard company offering to add free windows to your house so you watch their ads from your living room.

I agree with the motivation of your post. Monopolies are bad and customers have a vested interest in preventing google (or anyone else) from having monopolistic control of consumer internet. Unfortunately this is already true in many parts of the United States (Comcast is the only game in town where I live). At least in the short term Google entering this market should reduce monopolies not create them.

brlewis• 14 years ago

The free tier? That's $300 up front. I expect some of that $300 defrays their ongoing marginal costs. See also sibling comments by eavc and EthanHeilman.

           Free Internet
              $0/mo
      $300 construction fee
  (one time or $25/mo for 12 mo)

neurotech1• 14 years ago

"That free tier? That is outright illegal and its sole purpose is to eradicate all competition."

Why don't we sue Google for providing free WiFi in Mountain View? And Google Fiber isn't free - its $300 to cover the equipment costs. I'm pretty that 12 months of basic DSL for less than $300 anyway, installation included. Some neighbors will "freely" share their internet, should incumbent cable co sue them aswell for unfair competition?

What is to stop a cable co "recycling" old equipment to provide basic freemium internet to people who don't want to pay more for premimum plans.

The unfairness of having all that equipment already owned and built out... somebody stop them... oh wait what is Google doing?

mikeash• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure it's not illegal to pay up front for service. Note that the "free" tier is either $25/month or $300 up-front. I never heard anyone accuse e.g. TIVO's lifetime service of being illegal, or any other such pricing scheme.

jawns• 14 years ago

I looked up price bashing (using Google, haha) and didn't get satisfactory results. Can you provide a link that gives a good explanation?

wickedchicken2• 14 years ago

> You can have multiple competitors in one space with comparatively limited infrastructure investment on their part.

Spectrum and tower licensing is off the hook, and it's unlikely that more than a handful of companies will have the business acumen, capital, and regulatory skill to build up a network of significance. Any 'gigabit wireless' scheme will likely look the same it does today: a handful of key players with reciprocal data roaming agreements, and a few MVNOs which piggyback off the big guys. Wireless infrastructure is so expensive that carriers don't even have full coverage: they share. You're not always on 'Verizon's network,' sometimes you're on Sprint's network shared to Verizon. For CDMA, these are sent to the phone via PRL lists[1].

The MVNO scheme happens in DSL where it is called a CLEC[2], where the local telco is required by law[3] to allow other companies to lease its lines. This is how companies like Sonic.net exist. If I understand correctly, the same forced-lease agreement is not in place with cable, which is why people are talking about a 'cable monopoly' here. There is no such thing as Sonic.net for cable, and DSL is physically limited to about 20down/1up. Thus, there is no competitive high-bandwidth pipe to the home until fiber comes into play. Note that DOCSIS3 can easily push 300Mbps down 100Mbps up[4]. You already have this capability if you have cable, it's simply not turned on. If you were a cable company, why would you?

"In the UK, broadband provider Virgin Media announced on 20 April 2011 an intention to start trials with download speeds of 1.5 Gbit/s and upload of 150 Mbit/s based on DOCSIS3.0.[4]" <---- this is with literally the same kind of coax and modem in your home right now.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_Roaming_List

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carr...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS

magicalist• 14 years ago

It's kind of ridiculous to talk about "natural monopolies" when often it is a government-mandated monopoly via cable franchise agreements.

It's also ridiculous to talk about predatory pricing when historically all major telecom infrastructure has been government subsidized.

The major ISPs are all capable of competing in this market (Comcast and Time Warner Cable both have had profits growing at rates many times higher than that of revenues this year. AT&T has as well, but I couldn't find a split for just their ISP numbers), and disruption is exactly what will help them start doing so.

danellis• 14 years ago

> Once Google is the only player in town, you still think they'll shit lilacs and spread rainbows and unicorns?

Actually, yes, because unlike most telcos, this isn't Google's core business. The only reason it exists is to drive people towards their core business. They have a wider, longer-term view of their business goals.

yxhuvud• 14 years ago

Exactly why is it outright illegal? I guess Google can make a fair argument that the added exposure to google ads will pay for the running costs of the connection.

dysoco2• 14 years ago

I suppose Google is not an exception, and we will eventually start to hate Google too.

I hope that doesn't happen of course.

fromhet• 14 years ago

That really depends - as you know Google's motto is "don't be evil". And it is apparent that the other american telcos don't share this motto.

If Google manages to stay not evil it is the only way they will be relevant in the future. I think it is possible, and it's the only way to survive competition.

paulitex• 14 years ago

> There is not a single other industry I can say that about, certainly not one that comes to mind so quickly.

Airlines?

> contemptible customer support

IMHO better than Google's dogmatic avoidance of any kind of customer support.

Lockyy• 14 years ago

Why has this guy been down-voted? This has happened to me in the past, complain about lack of customer support from google, get down-voted with no responses.

dillona• 14 years ago

I've had nothing but positive experiences on JetBlue

potatolicious• 14 years ago

> "Airlines?"

Heh. Flying is a terrible experience because what most people pay for is the transportation equivalent of a Wal-Mart jar of pickles.

The price of flying, especially as a proportion of income, has tanked since the golden age we all yearn for. There's a reason airlines no longer serve meals, give out free pillows, and are still going bankrupt every few years - the margins are razor thin and the competition is extreme.

It's the same reason why they no longer hand out hotel rooms like candy, or why there are more cascading delays (hint: keeping spare planes and crews on standby is really, really expensive).

If you paid as much now as you did for the same flight in the 70s, you'd still get the very same service.

myko• 14 years ago

> IMHO better than Google's dogmatic avoidance of any kind of customer support. - Someone whose never actually used Google's customer support

I've never had a problem with Google's customer support. One time I had an issue with a 'Books' purchase and it was pretty easy to get through to customer support and speak to an actual person, issue was fixed straight away. 'Dogmatic avoidance of any kind of customer support' is just plain wrong.

greggman• 14 years ago

Yes! This is what happened in Japan. The telcos dragged their feet. Dial up Internet was pay per minute and adsl was $60-$90 a month. Yahoo Japan came in and offered adsl 1mbit speed for $20 a month unlimited. That is the moment Internet usage took off In Japan.

The telcos lowered their prices to match. Yahoo doubled the speed for the same price. That continued up to at least 8mbit speed for $20 month

Similar things need to happen here

GuiA• 14 years ago

Same thing happened in France with Free.

justincormack• 14 years ago

I get my internet for under $10 a month for 14Mb (in UK). Paying that little I dont mind providing my own ipv6 tunnel and using google name servers. I used to pay for service instead, but cheap works too.

I might switch back to service if it cost less than $50 per month, but I dont really need support for adsl.

bound008• 14 years ago

They are not doing much of a job of disrupting the tv part of the deal. $120/mo with Comcast gets you the same channels, Internet, dvr, and telephone service with no contract. They also have customer service. When you call Comcast about a service outage, they prorate it every single time.

The real disruption here is free Internet. And for that I tip my hat to google.

Disruption to cable would be a la carte channel selection in any market.

jonknee3• 14 years ago

No, the real disruption here is speeds 50x faster without any caps. There is no comparison with Comcast, but their fast package of 105/10 Mbps is $199.95 a month. Yes, 10 megabits of upload... They have a limited available tier of 305/65 Mbps (FWIW this plan is a day old and probably to fight FiOS Quantum, it used to be 50Mbps) which runs $299.95.

http://www.comcast.com/internet-service.html

tl;dr Comcast is a joke.

Scene_Cast2• 14 years ago

The idea is that TV is "obsolete" because of the Internet (see Hulu, Netflix, etc).

fghh45sdfhr3• 14 years ago

I have experienced everything you said as true in most places where I have lived. But I did also live in a place where Time Warner, Verizon and Comcast all competed with each other. And guess what? Service was great and prices were low!

Yes, thank God Google is entering some markets, but we wouldn't need Google if only local governments had not succumbed to lobbying to kill competition.

chimeracoder2• 14 years ago

You were very, very lucky. If I remember correctly, fewer than 20% of the US population has more than one option for their cable provider.

I'm moving into a new apartment (in NYC) and the only 'choice' I have is how much I want to pay Time Warner for what's likely the same speed.

drzaiusapelord• 14 years ago

I'm actually somewhat content with my broadband options. No, I'm not ecstatic and am glad this is happening but PLEASE someone disrupt the damn cell phone business. My ISP doesn't install software on my computer, doesn't hit me with mystery fees, and doesn't tell MS or Apple what to do, but cell carriers do all these things and more.

>and endless efforts to further "monetize" me through harassing phone calls trying to sell me more stuff,

Never happened to me, but all carriers text subscribers "deals" and other marketing garbage.

> intrusive DNS systems that redirect me to their crappy web sites, etc.

Never noticed and if I did its trivial to change DNS.

Cell phones on the other hand do all these things. I mean, Verizon just told google that its Wallet NFC stuff simply isn't allowed. Imagine if Comcast said "You can't install LibreOffice on your computer because we're thinking of entering the office game." I won't even go into uninstallable carrier apps, commercial spying, mystery charges, and billing fraud.

Maybe Google Fiber will the the backend for a future wireless roll out. One can hope.

kennon• 14 years ago

> My ISP doesn't install software on my computer, ...

Not for lack of trying. I recently helped my friend set up Comcast and part of the installation process included downloading a required suite of "configuration" software. We were able to figure out a way around it but most people probably just click through without a thought.

guelo• 14 years ago

Google tried to disrupt the cell phone industry by bidding $4 billion on the old TV frequency auction but they were cockblocked by the shitty Bush-era FCC and collusion between ATT and Verizon. Makes you wonder how things would have been different, would Apple have sold the iPhone on the Google network?

aswanson• 14 years ago

Right. I hope so as well. Maybe they can use that as the wired backend for the white space spectrum, and bypass the cell networks: http://mashable.com/2011/01/28/google-white-space-fcc/

mtgx• 14 years ago

At least there is some net neutrality for regular ISP's. There is none for carriers, and very soon they will be very aggressive about pushing their own services and charging extra for stuff like Facetime, Skype, etc on top of what you pay for the data you're using. Watch it closely. It will happen.

csmeder• 14 years ago

Maybe once you have tried Gigabit (GIGABIT!) internet, on a daily basis you won't feel the same. Cloud storage and a bunch of other things will now feel very different.

- Why own a computer when you can just vpn into a cluster through a thin client?

- Why own a game system...

- Stream 4k HD movies

- A whole bunch of ideas not thought of yet.

0r maybe your right and it wont be that different, I would like the chance to see if it does make a big difference. The current telcos were not in that game, google is.

matwood• 14 years ago

For the most part I agree, but experience with broadband differs greatly depending on what area you happen to live. Even within the same company like Comcast, broadband in one state can be great and one state over can be horrible.

Cell companies on the other hand are basically crooks. Every other month I get 'services' added to my bill that should only get added if I respond to a spam text. Of course I never respond to the text, but somehow "Fact of the Day" for $9.99/month keeps getting added to my bill no matter how many times I call I tell them I will never subscribe to this so stop letting them attempt to fraud me. After a little research it turns out that the cell company can get 30%-40% of the subscription fees on these bogus services. So, of course they turn a blind eye on what isn't much better than stealing through fraud.

Nrsolis6• 14 years ago

Really?

You might change your mind when you consider that Bell Labs (part of the "Soviet Bureau" you despise) created:

- The transistor - The laser - The C language - The Unix operating system

Other notable discoveries (but not of concern to those who discount anything not Internet-related) are things like the cosmic background radiation, etc. etc. etc.

SO: as much as I hate to defend "the telcos" (wired/wireless/cable) which according to the OP are completely interchangable and not at all distinguishable, they had their good points.

What you're (probably) pissed about is the business model that (most) telcos are forced to follow since deregulation.

Consider this: since deregulation, the cost to deliver bandwidth has dropped so significantly that it's actually CHEAPER to build a "telco" now than it was just 10 years ago. Once you factor in the cost to build out fiber links and light those with equipment, you get more bandwidth today than your earlier competitors got.

Hey, there's still a few dialup providers around. Maybe you think thats a better option?

papsosouid• 14 years ago

>You might change your mind when you consider that Bell Labs (part of the "Soviet Bureau" you despise) created

Just because bell labs was owned by a telco, doesn't mean they were a telco. A research organization existing under the ownership of a telco company doesn't make telcos provide good service, or have fair prices, or have good customer service.

ilovecomputers• 14 years ago

Well those innovations were all thanks to AT&Ts monopoly status where they didn't have to worry about quarterly reports: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation-...

Also Unix was a rogue project because Bell Labs didn't want to fund an OS project after a previous one failed: http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-strange-birt...

tomsaffell• 14 years ago

Yes, there is a time and a place for everything: monopolistic telcos did society good in the past. But now is not the time for a lack of competition / oligopoly in the telecommunications industry.

chimeracoder2• 14 years ago

You're leaving out a very key point: because of an antitrust case against AT&T, they were forbidden from turning their non-telephone technology into proprietary products. In other words, they were essentially conducting research for the public interest at no real cost to the public.

That's very different from any definition of a 'monopoly' that I'm aware of, and very different from modern network providers.

Many factors were essential to Unix's success, but the fact that it was anything but a monopolized product is certainly one of them.

TruthElixirX• 14 years ago

You cannot prove that those things would not have come about without Bell Labs. Seeing as Google is doing this, Mozilla is building "Rust", and HP created a memristor, I'm pretty sure a similar list of inventions (transistor, laser, C language, UNIX) would have come out without Bell Labs.

randomdata2• 14 years ago

I'm pretty happy with my telco. They are owned by the customers, so everything they do has to be with the customer in mind. It is kind of funny when people in the big cities are still practically lucky to have dialup access while here they have fiber installed into farmhouses.

jjolsen• 14 years ago

In business school I read a study showing that for a few industries (telcos & utilities among them) there is an inverse relationship between customer satisfaction and profitability.

mrkurt• 14 years ago

Google's currently doing the best job of anyone of disrupting the cell phone industry. I have a $350 unlocked, contract free handset that's near the best you can get right now and I can run it on any pay as you go plan (like a $45/mo Straight Talk plan).

dkrich4• 14 years ago

How is this a disruption? Seems to me that they are building out their own fiber optic network to go toe-to-toe with the best-in-class internet/cable products on the market at a price point that doesn't really seem any better.

deveac2• 14 years ago

>at a price point that doesn't really seem any better.

$70/mo for gigabit speeds and a terabyte of cloud storage and a wifi router? Or a one time installation fee for free internet comparable to what people are paying $50/mo for now?

Can you direct me to the pricing for the companies that are doing anything close to this? Really, I'd love to see it. Currently, the only thing comparable is Verizon FiOS at 300mbs for over $200/mo. http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/google-fiber-launches-in-ka...

This is the very definition of disruption.

pacmon• 14 years ago

Seriously. In my current location I am stuck with a 5mb connection because I'm at the edge of my DSL provider's range and the only cable option in the entire city is Charter (who has truly horrifying customer service AND awful reliability). A friend of mine in town has had to call Charter tech support many many times because of issues he has with their service. I think my entire city would abandon Charter if google dropped fiber here.

chj• 14 years ago

Now, the purchase of motorola makes sense after all.

lucian1900• 14 years ago

I'm mostly pleased with my current ISP. 60Mbps for £30/month.

Downsides are stupid search page instead of NXDOMAIN, adherence to UK court orders and potential surveillance.

dysoco2• 14 years ago

Living in Argentina, and paying quite a lot for a 3Mb/s connection, now I hate America a bit more :D

brh_jr• 14 years ago

How is Google going to get past all the state and city monopolies?

azakai• 14 years ago

Does anyone know how they make money from the free option?

jjcm• 14 years ago

They don't, but I'm guessing since they're just entering the industry having more subscribers is their number one priority right now. Delivering a product at a loss is nothing new.

drewinglis• 14 years ago

It's laying the fiber that's the expensive part, and there is a $300 fee to pay for that. In terms of marginal cost, it really doesn't cost them anything to serve another 5MB/1MB connection. They want to get you hooked so you'll want to upgrade later.

harpastum• 14 years ago

I would expect they're looking for two things.

First, they're hoping many of these users convert to gigabit after a short time ("Just flip the switch, and you get 200x faster internet!"), which will cover the loss from the free users.

Second, straight market penetration. The more people that use the service (even the free one), the more visibility Google gets as an ISP, which has other benefits.

mrschwabe2• 14 years ago

Google has a private working relationship with the NSA - so its anyone's guess but it is conceivable that Google is receiving money from them to subsidize this cost.

http://rt.com/usa/news/court-nsa-google-agency-053/

bryanlarsen• 14 years ago

They don't. The $300 installation fee doesn't cover the cost of running fiber to your house + the cost of the box.

But it's hugely cheaper to wire your house at the same time they are wiring your neighbours. That's the catch -- the deal disappears once the neighbourhood is connected. They're not going to do a truck roll for $300.

Once your house is connected, upsell potential is a lot better than if it isn't.

andyl• 14 years ago

Wow - impressive. Can't wait to say goodbye to comcast.

corford2• 14 years ago

I might just be overcome with the sheer impressiveness of this but it feels like the real reason behind everything that Google has done over the last 5 or so years (Youtube, Android, Chromebook, buying dark fibre, Chrome, G+, tablets etc.) has suddenly come in to crystal clear focus. They're going for the jugular with a grand unified strategy the likes of which the tech industry has never seen before.

sounds• 14 years ago

There has been a good discussion on the previous article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4293530

w1ntermute has a comment that has been highly up-voted:

"I don't know about you, but I'll take Google over Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, etc. any day of the week, regardless of their conflicts of interest."

Google may have an impressive business strategy, but they haven't done anything to lock out a competitor. Google has tough competition in every single area you have listed.

corford2• 14 years ago

Thanks, hadn't seen the other thread.

They have tough competition but who else is able (or even capable) of offering such a compellingly unified and cutting edge platform? If they can crack the content to go with the platform, they've won imho. Worst case: the incumbents are forced to up their game dramatically.

kennethcwilbur• 14 years ago

If Google Fiber catches on, and you consider combining it with Google TV, Youtube content and Google TV Ads, the strategic possibilities are fascinating.

I wish I knew whether enough consumers are willing to pay to justify a large-scale infrastructure rollout. There is a whiff of that old saying here - Google engineers are great at building products for Google engineers.

quellhorst• 14 years ago

Meanwhile Verizon FIOS (fiber) is available in hundreds of cities. http://www.consumerfiber.com/fios-availability

icefox• 14 years ago

Of course on all of their plans they limit your speed. The top speed at over $200 is only 300/65Mbps

Edit: and that is only for the connect, not the TV service. And the router they give you isn't very good and same goes for the 'cable/tv box' which sucks up more power than my PC and likes to die once a week forcing me or my wife to physically unplug and re-plug it if we want to watch Tv. It would be a far stretch to say Fios is good, it is only better than the alternatives in my area.

sootzoo• 14 years ago

There are some frustrating limitations. In my region (Philadelphia), they will literally have one street with full service and on the next block, they'll only sell you DSL. They announced not long ago they were "scaling back" their buildout, I suppose declaring something akin to "Mission Accomplished" when I still cannot get FiOS from them and, inexplicably, my neighbors not 500 yards away can.

kayzee• 14 years ago

Is anything actually 'free' in this world?? I wonder how much of my data they will be using without my permission to serve me ads...although I guess targeted TV commercials are a heck of a lot better than random stuff I see now.

Double-edged sword if you ask me.

eavc3• 14 years ago

The only thing free here is low-tier internet if you pay for the installation. This isn't about ads, this is about installation.

normalfaults3• 14 years ago

The rally concept is pretty neat. If your fiberhood gets enough registrations you will get the next install batch plus all schools, government buildings and other public establishments will get gigabit in your fiberhood.

romaniv• 14 years ago

This would be awesome if it wasn't coming from Google. If they control the browser, a good chunk of websites/services and the delivery mechanism, there are just too many opportunities for abuse. Although, maybe this will force other telecom providers to stop sucking so much.

neilk• 14 years ago

Does this alter the trend towards mobile? Maybe not in terms of the kind of device you use - it might still be a tablet or a phone-like device - but in terms of data delivered over mobile telephony networks?

Perhaps part of the reason that my iPhone can compete with my desktop is that home internet is just so terrible. Maybe there will be a whole new class of bandwidth hungry apps that can't be duplicated in anything going over a phone network.

In places like Korea I believe they have high bandwidth fiber everywhere; what's the experience there?

recoiledsnake• 14 years ago

While I am super happy that the cable industry is getting disrupted as it deserves to be(the wireless industry sucks too, maybe a tech company can buy TMobile or Sprint), I feel uneasy about the following two points:

1) Profitability: I wonder how profitable and sustainable this is for Google? They can subsidize it for only so long before deciding to discontinue it as has been happening to many of their services recently.

2) With Google as your ISP and TV channel provider, they will have the potential to know everything about you, probably even more than you know about yourself! Imagine you use all their services, they will know about your surfing habits(via ISP, Google searches and clicks, G+ buttons, Google ads, Google analytics etc.), your location(Android location services/GPS. Google Maps), TV channel viewing habits, Gmail, social network(Google+), phone calls(Google voice), etc. etc. It will also provide malicious and state actors with a one stop shop to steal/request information from.

normalfaults3• 14 years ago

on Point 2: How is this any different then today with Comcast/Verizon etc..?

mehulkar• 14 years ago

It's different because Comcast/Verizon don't have your email and your calendar and your web surfing habits and your voicemail and your text messages and your contacts and did I mention your email?

spindritf• 14 years ago

Yes, because they also have access to data associated with your Google account and collected across the web through AdSense and Analytics.

However, having potentially millions of people with gigabit connections creates a whole new world for darknets so I think it's a net gain.

engtech3• 14 years ago

re: #2

have you been following this story at all?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nsa+whistleblower+william+binney

(lmgtfy used not because I'm trying to be a dick, but rather because the direct google search gives a url that contains all kinds of extra parameters)

delano• 14 years ago

You only need one:

https://www.google.com/search?q=nsa+whistleblower+william+bi...

vdm• 14 years ago

https://www.google.com/search?q=william+binney

dag112• 14 years ago

http://google.com/search?q=nsa+whistleblower+william+binney

andypants• 14 years ago

re 1: The more people on the Internet, the more potential google customers, and eyeballs on their ads.

wmf3• 14 years ago

Are those ads going to pay for the $1,000 of equipment that Google gives you?

notatoad4• 14 years ago

>They can subsidize it for only so long before deciding to discontinue it...

on the pricing page, they commit to providing free service for at least 7 years. So unless google goes belly-up, it won't be discontinued for a while.

wlesieutre• 14 years ago

IMO, the free plan is brilliant. They get people to front the money for putting in infrastructure, and as digital distribution of everything continues to grow, they'll probably start to see people transitioning over to the faster connections. $300 + $70/month is a hard sell for a lot of people, but if my parents could ditch Comcast for a one time fee I'm pretty sure they'd do it.

tonfa• 14 years ago

> With Google as your ISP and TV channel provider, they will have the potential to know everything about you

Is it allowed by the ToS?

mseebach• 14 years ago

1: Someone mentioned that it's a $700 cost, less the $300 you pay - so $400. Also, installation of the fiber is like to be amortized over 100 years or more: So single figure amounts a year for the fiber itself. Of course, there's an upfront capital expenditure, but Google literally has more cash than they know what to do with, so no problem.

Once the fiber is in the ground and connected to the Google backbone, I would guess that delivering 5 mbit internet service to the kind of people who won't/can't pay $70 for insanely fast Internet is actually cheaper than sending out the invoice.

2: I, for one, welcome our new advertisement-serving AI overlords. Also, I doubt that Google can learn much new about you from your TV habits than from all the other sources you mentioned.

treeface2• 14 years ago

>Someone mentioned that it's a $700 cost

It was some guy higher up who provided no sources. We don't know how much it actually costs Google. There are so many factors involved that I highly doubt $700 is what it costs.

pwny• 14 years ago

I guess living in Montreal means I'm not getting a piece of this action any time soon.

It had the merit of making me reconsider how I live my life though. When you think about moving to another country, even for just one quick second, for an internet service, it's probably way too central to your way of life to be healthy.

dgudkov2• 14 years ago

I'm sure big Canadian telcos are now forced to do something in the next 12-24 months, otherwise they will lose time, and then money very soon.

______• 14 years ago

The country of Australia is spending over $31 billion on a project called the National Broadband Network (NBN) to bring fiber directly to 97% of homes. That project is enormous in scale compared to the Kansas City experiment.

JL2010• 14 years ago

Did anyone else catch the "2 year contract" bullet point? Despite that, of all the Telcos out there, I suppose I would be more willing to sign one with Google than any of them.

denzil_correa2• 14 years ago

The most important piece of information I see than the speeds is "No Data Caps". Will this mean the end of Fair Usage Policies? I am anxiously hoping that this is the start of the end of the evil FUP policies.

danielweber3• 14 years ago

Is it dedicated fiber, or are you sharing with neighbors? If shared, just how many of your neighbors can shoving blu-ray rips around before your VOIP suffers?

(Of course, even with dedicated, you still are meeting other people's bits somewhere.)

denzil_correa2• 14 years ago

I presume it's dedicated. "No data caps" is a huge bonus in the world of FUPs.

agumonkey2• 14 years ago

Onlive must be very excited.

dgudkov2• 14 years ago

It seems like Google TV now done right.

DASD• 14 years ago

This might just make Kansas City the tech center scene for colocation startups. Run this out of your bedroom. Amazon watch out!

Note to self: Cross KC off my list of colo locations if an offer appears with outrageously low pricing.

dr_• 14 years ago

Very interesting. All the packages sound great but it's really the free internet that's going to prove to be disruptive. I, as many other I'm guessing, have moved away from traditional television, watching a lot of stuff on my laptop and iPad. There are a couple of TV shows I enjoy but I'm not bound to them and don't mind purchasing the episodes at a later time. And you have to imagine that Apple and Google will strike their own deals with content creators at some point.

cocoflunchy• 14 years ago

What's the average price for an average connection in the US ?

Here in France, I get Internet + TV + free phone to 50+ countries for about 40$/mo.

I don't think there is anything above 60-80£/mo here (that would include all of the above + mobile + paid TV channels), so 120$/mo seems really kind of expensive to me!

smackfu• 14 years ago

Usually you'd expect to pay $100 or so for that.

But the history is that a cable TV package alone is generally $60 and has been increasing. The secondary TV channels have figured out that if they produce high quality original content (like Breaking Bad or Mad Men) they will be considered essential by the consumer, and can raise their price to the TV cable operators. Who then passes that on to the consumer.

conradfr• 14 years ago

So does it cut your Internet and your TV when your Google account gets suspended ?

jps359• 14 years ago

I don't live in KC, but I'm very excited to see what kind of splash this will make in the industry. A lot of neat things might come from this.

mrschwabe2• 14 years ago

No thanks. Google already harvests enough data on me that I don't need to pipe my entire internet & TV connection through them.

akennberg• 14 years ago

One of these gigabit subscriptions is enough for a few houses / apartment floor. :-)

tubbo• 14 years ago

aww i wish they were around philly

blinkingled• 14 years ago

Kansas, KS and Kansas, MO - what's with the Kansas fixation Google?

This sounds good but if they are going to take more than a few years just to move out of Kansas I am not sure if it would even relevant in the grand scheme of things.

aggronn• 14 years ago

Kansas City is partly in both states. Why KC? Google had a competition and they won.

wildmXranat• 14 years ago

We Canadians need this so badly it's not even funny. I would honestly pay for a 5 year long contract as long if that's what it takes.

spiffworks• 14 years ago

https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html

Read this first, and read it well.

ryana• 14 years ago

I noticed that there are no FOX Broadcast Company channels on their channel list. That's a shame because I'd really want to keep Fox Soccer Channel if I was switching.

I would guess that has something to do with Google and Rupert Murdoch's well publicized icy relationship. It'll be interesting to see who blinks first if this takes off.

ditoa• 14 years ago

God I hope they bring this to the UK!

yumraj• 14 years ago

Damn!!!! Their free tier is better (with a higher upload speed) that what the max AT&T can provide my home, via DSL, in San Jose, Capital of Silicon Valley. Go figure....

suyash• 14 years ago

Google is taking over our lives :(

gojomo• 14 years ago

This is another demonstration of why federal network neutrality regulations would be premature.

pasbesoin• 14 years ago

Google: The moment you're in my area, I'll sign up.

Unless sonic.net beats you to it. ;-)

(Please do whatever you can to speed up planning and deployments in additional areas!)

drivingmenuts• 14 years ago

I want this in Austin. Now. Yesterday.

Seriously, the customer service is a non-issue. You can't do any worse than the telcos/cablecos other than having zero customer service ever.

If this forces the entrenched companies to man up and throw down some fiber, it's worth whatever it costs as long as no one is getting physically injured.

zupreme• 14 years ago

Here's a good quote from a friend of mine, Craig Clausen of New Paradigm Resources Group (a market research firm specializing in telecom):

"This is more of a strategic play for Google. As they mentioned, there are three essential components to the Internet (i.e. Google’s business model): Computing power, cloud storage and access. The first two have worked in Google’s favor. The third hasn’t kept pace. The telcos and other access providers (like the cablecos) don’t care about what’s good for Google and broadband speeds aren’t where Google would like them to be. As they’ve done in similar situations (such as wireless and energy), Google is signaling to the telcos that, while they’d prefer not to be in the telecom business, they are certainly capable of doing so. Picking Kansas City – smack dab in the middle of the country – has less to do with Kansas City showing the most interest and more about being able to distribute that message evenly between the coasts. It’s a different type of investment for Google – one in which they hope to spur the access providers into stepping it up or risk having the guy with the deepest pockets step in for them."

271828182842• 14 years ago

Even their homepage blows away the others. Simple and flat. It tells me the mbps for each and whether there are data caps. Contrast that with, say, Windstream where you have to go searching to find out the speed of "Merge"

The homepage alone is going to do good for the industry.

laserDinosaur• 14 years ago

Could this ever come to Canada, or would Google be stuck behind the same Canadian ownership requirements that nearly blocked Wind?

tokenadult• 14 years ago

I browsed around the site,

http://fiber.google.com/how/

and although I have friends and relatives who live in the Kansas City metropolitan area, I don't live there myself. So as rollout happens there, I'll be glad to hear from HN participants who live there what's happening in the local Internet access market. Meanwhile, I'll still be dealing with the same SMALL subset of providers who reach my neighborhood as I have for years. Please let us know what you think of Google Fiber when it arrives in your neighborhood, okay?

swalsh2• 14 years ago

I think Google has another unmentioned monopoly. Some of the smartest people in the world are employed by them. They have experience in AI, and as seen by the self driving car they also know how to do practical things with it.

Google being the kind of company that is opposed to hiring an army of manual labors, could very well create an army of digging robots to lay the fiber for them. I can see google scaling this faster then anyone else.

thenomad• 14 years ago

So, anyone know if this is coming outside the US any time soon? I'm getting that "nose pressed against the glass" feeling...

xutopia• 14 years ago

This reminds me of when Bill Gates was purported saying that he'd enter the RAM market if prices didn't go down. Google has nothing to lose here. They want a faster web because it means more chances to provide ads. If ISPs aren't willing to provide it they will... and once they start the ISPs will have to follow suit.

jacoblyles• 14 years ago

"fiber" is a horrible name for a suite of products! (But this still looks awesome)

Trufa• 14 years ago

Coming from a 3rd world country, free Internet sounds like a fiction, my expensive connection is slower than the free one Google is offering! Though I'm happy I will be one of the first homes to have fiber on the country.

mikebracco• 14 years ago

With this announcement by Google, we're at stage in the game were cable company execs hear this --> http://youtu.be/_hHDxlm66dE #finishhim #mortalcombat

Brock_Lee• 14 years ago

With the "Free Internet" plan, what happens if I pay the construction fee, then move out of my "fiberhood" into a house that isn't part of a fiberhood?

cma• 14 years ago

DDoS will never be the same

dakrisht• 14 years ago

Kansas City - yeah, that'll do it. I'm sure everyone in Kansas City needs Gigabit Ethernet.

Metrop0218• 14 years ago

This is awesome.

jrwoodruff• 14 years ago

Does it surprise anyone else that they're offering television with this package?

Clearly it makes sense, and seems like a great way to give Apple TV/Roku etc. a run for their money. Plus, if they expand this program, which they presumably will, it could put Google TV in a lot of homes... although it doesn't explicitly state that the 'tv box' will be running Google TV.

javert3• 14 years ago

Note to telcos: If all your customers hate you, you are begging to be made obsolete. Looks like your wish is about to be granted.

nsxwolf2• 14 years ago

There's no point even checking to see if it's coming to my city. I already know the answer is no.

e28eta• 14 years ago

I really want this to succeed. I have never had a great experience with high speed Internet.

I'd even consider adopting a KC home, and paying some or all of their $300 for free Internet if it meant it would come to the San Jose area sooner.

Maybe a Kickstarter to wire a fiberhood?

nsxwolf2• 14 years ago

Is Google going pull a Google with this and keep a copy of every you packet transmit and receive, holding onto it for ever and ever?

samstokes• 14 years ago

Only available in Kansas City?

calinet6• 14 years ago

Who wants to bet these have HD's (or SSDs) in them and are set up for peer-to-peer content caching on the local city network?

They'd be stupid if they didn't do that.

lurchpop• 14 years ago

Cool, but do they have a plan that doesn't freely give my data to law enforcement as part of a regular dragnet?

cygwin98• 14 years ago

I looked at their Term * Resale and Redistribution

The Fiber Services are intended for the personal use of you and others with whom you share your residence (including, within reason, guests who are visiting you). You agree not to resell or repackage the Services for use by people other than those with whom you share your residence. If you wish to use the Google Fiber Services to provide Internet service to others, you must enter a separate agreement with Google Fiber that specifically authorizes you to do so. *

I do have some questions though. I get that a Fiber user cannot resell the bandwidth like a VPS provider. But how about hosting his own web server running a HN clone site?

azinman2• 14 years ago

WANT

mikemoka• 14 years ago

I'm surprised that I wasn't able to find the word privacy mentioned in the first page.

I think that Google is clearly losing the "don't be evil" credo, whatever you may think about a specific industry.

Google is trying to do everything, Google is not satisfied with ads and is trying to remove the middlemen, all the possible ones.

They tried to attack the fashion ecommerce niche with Google Boutiques, they tried to attack Groupon with Google Offers, now they become an Internet Provider, but why? Here are my two cents:

-they will be able to know everything, and I mean everything, their users do online, and they are one of the few organizations actually able to parse and exploit this size of data -they will be able to know the identity of their users -they may be able to control the speed or stability of the connection to specific sites, they may even hijack specific banner ads without anyone noticing

pbhjpbhj2• 14 years ago

One day Google will launch something new and there will be a highlighted note at the top "based on your IP this release doesn't apply where you are [and probably won't ever]" and then I won't need to stare blankly for 10 seconds at an address form working out how it's possible to enter a real [read: my] address in to that weird configuration.

But then again, maybe not.

Kell• 14 years ago

As a matter of comparison. Here a regular situation in France :

I pay 63€ for a nominal 100MBps fiber connection + free calls from my landline (to other landlines in most of the world (more than 100 countries, and all the big ones (but neither Africa nor the Middle East)) and mobile phones in France and US), plus 170 televion channels (that I don't watch anyway), plus a femtocell device, plus a smartphone subsidized (2 years contract) with illimited calls to other mobiles or landlines in France, free SMS and MMS, 1Gb of "high speed" (in average 2Mbps) 3G , after 1Gb it switches to low speed (512Kbps). Oh, and I get Spotify Premium. All that for 63€ a month (That's 78 american $) (but I'm in a 24 months contract) It's quite the usual "quadplay" offer (Television + Phone + Internet + Mobile Phone) here in France. There are cheaper ones.

So yeah, at 200$ there is somebody being ripped off. But the Google 120$ option doesn't seem too bad, it's a little less than twice the price I pay here in France, but with great goodies like the tablet, and an incredible 1Gbps... Ten times my official speed. So the markup is deserved.

To French people, I have the SFR MultiPack offer with the Carré Web + the Spotify Premium at 5€ option, and the Classic Fiber option (not the Evolution one) cf. http://www.sfr.fr/mobile/multi-packs-de-sfr-mobile-et-adsl.j...

_nist• 14 years ago

Read through a couple of comments and all I see is people bitching about phone and cable companies.

The problem is, you can only get Google fiber if you get enough people in your neighborhood that want it and you meet a preregistration goal. Then you can choose the DSL crappy free internet, or the gigabit one for 70/month which is comparable to the Comcast rate, except faster speeds. Of course, the more people that choose Gigabit, the more demand there is to justify a price increase.

And, to be honest, my employer is running on fiber with a link speed of 1 Gbps and there isn't that much of a difference between Internet browsing at home.

funthree• 14 years ago

> Free internet at today's average speeds

> $300 construction fee (one time or 12 monthly payments of $25) + taxes and fees

Google is going full circle. I wonder if the cost for Google to give internet to people who didn't otherwise have it (and at no charge to them) actually paid dividends because that person is going to immediately generate new revenue for google from the inevitable use of Google/adwords. I think John D. Rockefeller would tip his hat.

antihero• 14 years ago

Anyone read Snow Crash?

knodi• 14 years ago

Holy shit, I want this.

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

1 Gigabit Download and Upload!

I have always believed that the internet would have been and fundamentally different place if we had fast upload from the beginning.

Rather than having everything in the cloud (i.e big corporate datacenters) people would have gotten used to running small server at home. After all was the web not originally designed to work more in this way?

This would have fostered a much better culture of privacy and freedom when you have ultimate control of what you are putting online, freedom from TOS etc. Sure there are advantages to big datacenters such as backup and fireproofing etc but is every piece of data really that precious?

bfe• 14 years ago

I hadn't seen the rabbit mascot before, but I hope it's meant as a nod to Mr. Rabbit from Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End.

captaintacos• 14 years ago

After living in Australia for about two years (probably worst internet in the developed world) and now living in Japan with gigabit speeds I can confidently say: Do thank Google for this and do give them all your money!

zx1986• 14 years ago

WOW! what a great news! I hope Google keep this job quicken in another country. We here in Taiwan need a REAL FAST Internet!

robotment• 14 years ago

It is great, but never can use it.

daimyoyo• 14 years ago

When this comes to Vegas I will buy a TV specifically to take advantage of this. If anyone at Google is reading this, please come here as soon as possible. Seriously, the internet quality out here is atrocious and I REALLY want to support this business model.

sebastianavina• 14 years ago

Why Kansas and not Durango, MX?

bmuon• 14 years ago

I'm astonished! Free 5mb/1mb connection? I have to pay close to us$40/mo for 3mb down in Argentina.

delackner• 14 years ago

Can't believe no one has mentioned that the TV option does not include AMC, HBO, ESPN, Disney Channel, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network. (List from the Verge).

So the only channel it has that I actually would watch is The Daily Show, I mean Comedy Central, which I can watch on the net for free (in a much better extended length version).

Spreading real modern internet infrastructure to the masses in the US though, yes that is a very positive thing.

EdwardTattsyrup• 14 years ago

I'm sorry but this is not actually happening in a meaningful way for the vast majority of people. Your city will never be on the list. There's way too much local government corruption and cable-co monopoly. Please stop wet dreaming on your HDTV. You'll void the warranty.

tapsboy• 14 years ago

Good for KC. Here, 3 blocks from Empire State building in Midtown Manhattan, the max I can get is 10/2 from TWC. FiOS is still negotiating with building authorities.

orphol• 14 years ago

Anyone know when is so cal is in pipeline

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

If this pans out it'll be a huge boost for civilization for one reason:

The distributed internet. Today the internet as a transport layer is a multiply redundant mesh, to some degree, but the content of the internet is still highly centralized.

Now imagine a world 25 years from now where everyone has >100 mbit/s internet connections and multi-terabyte SSD (or memristor) drives are commonplace and cheap. Now the idea of caching huge chunks of the internet starts not only making sense but becomes imminently practical. Web sites will be viewed less like applications and more like git repos with front-ends.

SjuulJanssen• 14 years ago

In comparison the pricing of my local provider: http://www.onsbrabantnet.nl/internet-weert

pradeep89• 14 years ago

I wish, this could come up in India early , Internet is worse here. If you want high speed internet,the charges are too high to afford for common man. I remember before 5 years i used to download at 2 kbps :(, now it's better but not cheap

catfish• 14 years ago

Please GOOGLE, please come compete with ATT and TIME Warner in San Diego. I am ready to pay....

zumth• 14 years ago

In the FAQ :

> Can I run a server from my home? > > Google Fiber is intended as a residential Internet service. Our Terms of Service prohibit running a server.

This scares me.

dropshop• 14 years ago

Anybody else thinking of moving there just for fiber?

Grepsy• 14 years ago

I really like the little SVG animations on this site. Any ideas of how you would go about authoring this?

engtech3• 14 years ago

Does anyone know what hardware companies they are using for their network?

Are customers going to have an optical transceiver in their house?

neduma• 14 years ago

the whole Comcast Experiene is really bad. We bought new HDTV and went comcast store to get HD cable box to watch 2012 Olympics tonight. but they gave some wrong box and said they're sorry.

dhughes2• 14 years ago

Being in Canada this is going to suck immensely having people just across the border with 1Gbps meanwhile I pay $100 for 15Mbps/950Kbps (cable TV included).

Pretty soon I bet I'll come across someone say "Here look at this file...what wrong? It's only 9GB you should be able to download this no problem."

Or Xbox oh crap I'll forever be stuck with racist Scottish ten year-olds since I'll never get matched to my own region everyone will be 1Gbps.

SimonSayz• 14 years ago

So true. The other I went to change my cellphone plan and god forbid, I asked why the monthly fees are so high in Canada compared to US. The answer "the cost of running a country wide network for so few people is costly" Let me say this, bulls*.

dhughes2• 14 years ago

I know it's not like we are spread evenly across the country just Great Toronto Area (GTA) alone has over six million people out of a country of 34 million.

My small city in my small province has almost 50% of the entire population of the province in and around the one main capital city.

Clusters of people are in cities in fact I believe a few years ago Canada tipped past being a rural country to an urban one with more people in cities than in the country.

If anything you would think that would make it easier to supply mobile phone, TV and Internet service.

tete• 14 years ago

I am living in Europe/Vienna. I do not know the US situation too well. However I think they really need an option in between. I think neither option is really interesting to the average user. The buy once option with 5/1Mbps seems too low for the average user, while the 1GBit seems really too expensive.

Wouldn't offers from 30 to 100MBit make much more sense. That's the broadly available offer here for 20 to 50EUR.

Of course we have symmetric fiber offers with 10MBit for 17EUR and 100 for 25EUR too, but that's only available in bigger cities.

sreyaNotfilc• 14 years ago

It sucks that I turned down a job in KC during the spring because I didn't want to move away from my house. It would be very cool to have a chance to use Google Fiber.

I wonder what the timeline will be to spread this baby nationwide. Then again, I wonder what Congress will do because Google is in yet another industry. Hopefully then can pull this off. It'll be a great future!

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