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.