Saying Goodbye to Louisville

&quot;For that, and many other reasons, we are deeply grateful to Mayor Greg Fischer, the City of Louisville and its residents for their partnership and spirit of innovation over the past two years.&quot;<p>That&#x27;s why we can&#x27;t trust Google with anything critical. They view the world as an experiment they can quit anytime. Definitely don&#x27;t buy a Google self driving car or anything else you expect to work in a few years.<p>There is a good chance that businesses moved to Louisville because of Google Fiber and they are being shown the finger &quot;Thanks for indulging us, we got what we wanted and you can go f... yourself&quot;.

I can&#x27;t trust Google. Every time they build something good (Reader, Inbox) eventually they will kill it even despite users clearly opposing the decision. And those are just web pages, here they&#x27;re denying of ISP whole town which was serviced before.<p>So for example how can I use their e-sim provider Fi if I know for sure in one of my travels I will get a notification &#x27;we are closing Fi next week. Find new provider.&#x27;.<p>I use their Photos service extensively. But in a couple of years I know it will get closed too, once they fully used it&#x27;s capacities for training internal ML models.

To try and hijack the top post with some of the comments I&#x27;ve scattered across this thread:<p>Google did <i>a remarkably poor job</i> in Louisville, and it&#x27;s absolutely no surprise to me that they&#x27;re giving up.<p>Google&#x27;s strategy was to build a FTTH network with microtrenching. In practice, this meant cutting a 2&quot; deep groove in city streets, placing a fiber optic cable in it, and using an expanding rubber gasket material to cover the groove.<p>This failed in <i>spectacular fashion</i>. One of the best pictures was this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wdrb.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;belknap-neighborhood-residents-concerned-over-sloppy-installation-of-high-speed&#x2F;article_4bc2a61e-8640-57f0-aba9-3dd4cb3d39e5.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wdrb.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;belknap-neighborhood-residents-con...</a><p>... a fiber optic cable, barely buried under the surface of the road, exposed after a few freeze&#x2F;thaw cycles.<p>If you click on no other link about Google Fiber in Louisville, click on this one. This scene is repeated <i>all over the city</i>.<p>There won&#x27;t be much in the way of &quot;dark fiber left behind&quot; because most of the Google Fiber rollout was FTTH done ridiculously poorly.<p>And for the customers? The only company competing for residential gigabit service is AT&amp;T, which (wisely?) rolled out their service to high density apartment areas and wealthy condos; for most residents, Spectrum or Uverse DSL are the only real competitors.<p>Some cites:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techrepublic.com&#x2F;pictures&#x2F;photos-how-google-fiber-is-using-shallow-trenching-to-outbuild-its-gigabit-rivals&#x2F;18&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techrepublic.com&#x2F;pictures&#x2F;photos-how-google-fibe...</a> -- Microtrenching will save Google!!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wdrb.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix-exposed-fiber-lines-in&#x2F;article_fbc678c3-66ef-5d5b-860c-2156bc2f0f0c.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wdrb.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix...</a> -- uh oh, things aren&#x27;t so good...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;9to5google.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;07&#x2F;google-fiber-closing-in-louisville&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;9to5google.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;07&#x2F;google-fiber-closing-in-lo...</a> -- we give up, 2&quot; of trench won&#x27;t do it.

&quot;That’s because we were trialing a lot of things in Louisville, including a different type of construction method — namely, placing fiber in much shallower trenches than we’ve done elsewhere.&quot;<p>Read as: We messed around with your street infrastructure using untested construction methods, and it didn&#x27;t work very well so WE OUT PEACE. You know what they say, fail fast byeee!

I can&#x27;t even picture a scenario where another ISP just says &quot;Hey, we&#x27;re packing up shop, you&#x27;ve got two months to find a new Internet provider&quot;. I guess I suppose it&#x27;s happened somewhere, sometime, but it certainly feels one of a kind.<p>It&#x27;s not a scenario I would have ever planned for, to say the least, but anyone who has service with Google is probably used to it.

Am I the only one going to say it?<p>Kudos to Google Fiber for actually trying to innovate in a stagnant industry. I&#x27;m no insider here, but I suspect the micro-trenching did go through internal testing which looked promising before they approved it for real city use.<p>If the micro trenching had been successful we&#x27;d be cheering for Google for finding an innovative way to bring fiber to more people. Turns out it didn&#x27;t work in their one trial city and since they discovered this at a time when Google Fiber is no longer expanding it is no surprise that they don&#x27;t &quot;re-open&quot; Louisville and retrench the entire city.<p>For a community that celebrates failure as a natural consequence of innovation, I&#x27;m surprised at all the negativity here. Not a mention of the 2 months of free gigabit internet they&#x27;re giving to customers. Yea, Google Fiber is just a bunch of soulless profiteering corporate jackasses &#x2F;eyeroll&#x2F;.

Can post-2010 Google execute on anything &quot;all the way&quot; through?<p>Is there some sort of institutional ADD?

And this is why public sector or PPP are better than private sector for necessities. You expect access to Internet to be stable like water or electricity, but clearly that wasn&#x27;t the case with Google.

It sounds like what they&#x27;re saying is that they botched the installation and would have to redo it. It seems like the responsible thing to do here is to just go ahead and redo the installation. It can&#x27;t be worse than the cost to expand to a new city; all they have to do is abandon their current infrastructure and replace it with the new (I know that &quot;all&quot; underestimates, but still).<p>This is a case where to maintain customer trust, they should suck up the cost themselves rather than trying to recover it through the one-time customer fees that they used at rollout time.

I&#x27;m from Louisville. From my perspective, I never expected to see Google Fiber, and I guess this confirms it. After reading about how all of KC moved so slowly after its initial deployment, it was telling when Fiber rolled out here that it only covered a tiny portion of our downtown-ish areas. This is not a high income area, nor is it all that dense population wise(then again, neither is the city). After the combination of the county&#x2F;city, Louisville became a physically rather large city. I don&#x27;t think it would have been worth the investment trying to cover it, and covering only a portion is only bound to irritate people.<p>That said, I appreciate them in that they really lit a fire under TWC&#x2F;Charter&#x2F;Spectrum. If I remember right, we were 10down&#x2F;3 up when fiber was announced (possibly 30 down, depending on when). Our base is now 200 down.

&gt; This decision has no impact on our operations in any of our other Fiber cities,<p>...yet.<p>Just more evidence you cannot rely on Google for long term product outside of search.

This is sad news for me even though I&#x27;m not from Louisville. Backing out of existing market shows that it&#x27;s even less likely now for them to enter new ones.<p>The main issue is that current companies have extreme control over market thanks to regional monopoly. They can squeeze as much of money from users, because there is no real competition. When a new company enters specific region they can up their speeds, lower price (and even operate at a loss in that specific region), so a competitor will have to leave.<p>The solution to this requires regulation, and basically a law should mandate to allow leasing infrastructure (the fiber) to others, of course not for free, but for a fee.<p>Currently if we would have great scenario when we would have 10 ISPs available to choose from, we would need 10 fiber cables to every home. That means if someone chooses one, 9 of them are not used, and all the effort to lay the cable and getting permits was just waste of money. If this is expensive to even company that has &quot;unlimited&quot; amounts of money, like Google it&#x27;s unrealistic to do for everyone else.<p>Leasing the physical infrastructure is the key to bring competition back in that market.

Seriously. Google messed up REALLY bad on this one. It would really difficult for many customers to come up with a contingency plan under 2 months.<p>Google should NEVER be trusted with other infrastructure projects going further. Infrastructure isn&#x27;t some forprofit companies trial-and-error playground, it is about stability and promise to the local residents, it is not about money and certainly not an experiment.

This development implies that one should not rely on Google for anything. Even you&#x27;re paying them for the service. They are so large they don&#x27;t have to care about their users&#x2F;customers.

This is why I&#x27;ll never use the Google Cloud. Sorry my business does not move as quickly as your decisions.

I never wanted to move to Louisville (from Lexington, KY) but fiber was a nice selling point. Now I&#x27;m just hoping our own Lexington MetroNet keeps chugging along so I can leave Spectrum when I buy a house.

I&#x27;m going to go out on a limb here and conjecture that this isn&#x27;t a typical Google pullback like with todo list apps. There are significant financial&#x2F;intellectual capital outlays required for nationwide-scale ISPs, in addition to operations and maintenance expenditures over time. Pulling back is a significant sign Google Fiber has already reached its high-water mark.<p>Sadly, I think Google&#x27;s pulling back because it more or less got what it wanted out of the telecoms in terms of network service, repealing net neutrality and regulatory capture increases Google&#x27;s competitive moats, and because corporate lobbying may be cheaper, more flexible, and have greater returns: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;googles-parent-company-spent-more-on-lobbying-than-at-t-1822394224" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;googles-parent-company-spent-more-on-lob...</a><p>On that note, here&#x27;s a how-to on starting your own ISP: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;startyourownisp.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;startyourownisp.com&#x2F;</a>

&quot;We would need to essentially rebuild our entire network in Louisville to provide the great service that Google Fiber is known for, and that&#x27;s just not the right business decision for us.&quot;<p>In other words, &quot;we fucked up and so we bailed.&quot; Google is like the bad first husband you should have never married in the first place.

Will Google repair the streets? Saw one picture with rubber gaskets coming out and it looked very bad :-(

That&#x27;s a lot of words to not actually tell you why they&#x27;re pulling out of Louisville.<p>&quot;not living up to the high standards we set ourselves&quot; is about as helpful as hearing over public transport intercom &quot;there has been an incident&quot;.

Google Fiber has suffered from a lack of imagination, or just good ole&#x27; plain market analysis, in figuring out how to roll out fiber to larger areas around their &#x27;fiber cities&#x27;. Google Fiber in Austin is limited to a very small area which oddly enough is probably not where most of the residential demand is. Somehow I doubt that they ever asked homeowners what they would be willing to pay for a fiber connection.

What was the problem? When I click the &quot;encountered challenges&quot; link I get a 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons (I am from the EU).

What&#x27;s going to happen with all of that now dark fiber sitting in Louisville, I wonder?

Another good example of &quot;smart engineering can&#x27;t solve every problems&quot;.

&quot;Its not up to our quality standards, so instead of fixing it we&#x27;re going to pull out&quot;. What a corporatespeak way to say you&#x27;re giving up on your customers.

<i>This decision has no impact on our operations in any of our other Fiber cities, where we continue to sign up and install new customers every day.</i><p>This is just irresponsible of Google at this point. This entire project has no momentum and isn&#x27;t going anywhere -- why are they still signing people up when it&#x27;s obvious that they&#x27;ll just cut them off eventually as well? In the meantime, they prevent any of these cities from taking control of their own connectivity.<p>They should help the cities form nonprofits to run the fiber networks, then gently remove themselves from the situation.

So what happens to the infrastructure? There&#x27;s fiber optics in the ground right? Do they give it to a local ISP?

I wonder how many of the people saying &#x27;See? Can&#x27;t trust google with anything&#x27; use Gmail accounts.

10 years ago I would have jumped at the chance to sign up for Google Fiber. Today they could not pay me to use the service.

TLDR: Google isn&#x27;t as good at paying off politicians as well as AT&amp;T and other ISPs are.

I fully expect my ATT Fiber to go up in price or down in transfer allotment as a result. What a shame.

ATT offers fiber internet in Louisville. After Google found out they wouldn&#x27;t be the only provider offering the service, they bailed.

One thing missing from this post: why?<p>After &quot;Advancing our Amazing Bet&quot;, it became clear that the level of regulatory obstacles Google needed to overcome made it too cost-prohibitive to continue their rollouts. But what factors are forcing them to pull out of an already established market?<p>Is the ISP environment so hostile as to squeeze even the biggest players out of town? Is Google slowly ramping down even existing Fiber operations? What&#x27;s going on behind the scenes here? If the microtrenching issue is driving this, why can&#x27;t Google of all companies put up the investment to re-do it right?<p>There&#x27;s failing an experiment, and then there&#x27;s realizing something is sub-par and putting in the work and money to make it right for your customers. I feel like Google has misconstrued the two here.