We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14305945 and marked it off-topic.

I don't think it's about being upset -- it's about pattern recognition and learning from one's mistakes as a consumer.

In this case we are not really talking about a free consumer product, though.

I would be surprised if Toronto's municipality would grant this development without having some guarantees of it being carried out, save for paying severe penalties.

Sounds like a free consumer product to me. What exactly is the profit model you see in this?

Infrastructure projects can be a lot more expensive than even non monetized software projects.

And their fiber-optic to the home ISP. That's quite relevant here.

Google Wi-Fi mesh network in Mountain View hasn't worked in a long time. Toronto may well get similar service decline.

Also, Starbucks Google Wi-Fi rarely uses Google Fibre, IME, and instead uses commercial providers like AT&T and Comcast. Plus, Starbucks hasn't deployed much SGWF in Silicon Valley so it's still basically vaporware. (There's a Starbucks in Santa Clara with non-Google Wi-Fi as slow as dial-up.) They'd be wise to cancel the Google partnership and go with an outsourcer whom has access to a couple of big providers to maximize cheapest/fastest/coverage and handles all the deployment, support and security.

Toronto already has a city wide wi-fi that has never worked!

Fiber is still alive. Here's an announcement from last month.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/googl...

Also it pushed the broadband industry forward by providing competition. AT&T and Comcast stepped up their development of Gigabit Internet in the US.

Maybe. AT&T started deploying FTTN to major cities like Houston and Chicago in 2005-2006 (four years before Fiber). Their gigabit buildout was based on that original plan (which dates to SBC). Comcast has been on the DOCSIS upgrade treadmill for years. In the 7 years before Fiber they went from 8 to 100 upgrading to DOCSIS 2.0 then DOCSIS 3.0. Gigabit is another 10x jump over a similar time frame, based on DOCSIS 3.1.

There was also Verizon FIOS, which started in 2005, expanded to 5 million customers, then stopped expanding much after 2010. It apparently cost Verizon more than they'd expected.

And they stopped doing that in the same week Google announced that it would stop pushing Fiber.

Actually, I hope not. Nearly every building in this neighbourhood has fibre to the home, there are three different carriers with fibre into my condo. Most of the rest of the city has copper. While it gets a bunch of press, I hope this is more focused on applications and IoT than pipe.

Long term investment in telecoms plant isn't Googles thing

Does long term investment in urban development sound like one?

actually that's the annoying part.

Fool you once, fool you twice I guess

Sms in Hangouts, personally.

you realize they shut down like 80 percent of what they start? or atleast abandon it?

Where did you pull that 80% from? Or you just feel like it's 80%?

Most of Google's big projects are still alive today. Search, Gmail, Android, GSuite, Chrome, Drive, AdWords, YouTube, etc.

There are a few big projects that they shut down but most are smaller projects.

Do we want Google to just launch products that they will keep alive indefinitely whether it succeeds or not?

Should Google not have started its self-driving car initiative, Calico, Fiber? Yeah, Glass failed. So what?

Do you want a company to innovate? Have them try different things. You can't change the world by only doing things with 100% certainty.

80% sounds quite high but I wouldn't be surprised if the number is around there. Google are big enough to take risks and try things that don't work out. There are 95 official Google products in the Wikipedia 'discontinued products' listing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon..., but that's not very accurate in that it doesn't mention things have failed but are limping along, and it includes things that were discontinued but live on in other products (eg Wave merged with Docs).

It's not entirely unreasonable to suggest Google have 20 successful products for their ~95 discontinued ones though.. which would work out as 80% 'failed'.

Google bought YouTube after it was already hugely successful. I don't think it makes the best example here.

I wouldn't characterize hemorrhaging money and facing lawsuits from all of major media players as being successful.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15196982/ns/business-us_business/t...

Why is that significant? How many projects has GE or IBM discontinued? Google is at the peak of its profitability today, so whatever is being done to products seems to be working out.

Please don't post uncivilly, even when someone else is wrong.