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Google Fiber is hitting the pause button on discussion with "potential fiber cities", and will lay off about 9% of its approximately 1,500 employees. Craig Barratt, the CEO of Alphabet's Access division, is also stepping down.
After rolling out its Fiber product in about a dozen cities, Google is hitting pause on its project to deploy superfast Internet across the country. The news may come as a disappointment to those who were hoping the search giant would bring competition and faster speeds to their area.
[...] Even as Google Fiber pays lots of money to lay down cables and secure access to TV programming, a different type of technology is coming down the pike: wireless fiber. [...] There are signs that Google is moving in this direction, too. In June, it acquired Webpass, a provider of wireless broadband. Other acquisitions support this theory. And in its announcement Tuesday, Google Fiber said it would be looking at "new technology and deployment methods to make superfast Internet more abundant than it is today." So even if Google Fiber is on hold in its current incarnation, changes in technology may someday reduce the costs Google faces today.
Comcast and AT&T are still trying to hinder Google Fiber access to utility poles in Nashville. Both ISPs have filed suit against the Metro Government of Nashville for passing a "One Touch Make Ready" ordinance that benefits Google Fiber.
Previously: Google Fiber Gets Rid of "Free" Service in Kansas City
Costly Google Fiber Service Being Scaled Back in Favor of Google Wireless
Nashville Officials Approve Ordinance to Give Google Fiber Faster Access to Utility Poles
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday October 28 2016, @01:47PM
Yes, in the Land of the Free Market and the global leader in technology, we pay twice as much for half the speed of Internet service as customers in east Asia and Europe.
Don't understand, you say? Well, that is of course easily spotted sarcasm. We're not supposed to understand, but we do anyway. I've observed a strong correlation between excessive complexity and bad prices and bad service. Complexity is used to try to hide the lousiness of the deals. Or, more like, since that doesn't fool everyone for long, a source for implausible excuses so they don't have to come right out and admit that it's just price gouging. Turing Pharmaceuticals needed the money for research, right? In the 1990s, schedule D of the US federal tax form got much more complicated when the Flat Tax reformers showed that their real agenda was handing the rich a massive tax cut in the form of lowering the capital gains tax rate to 15% for "long term" investments. Doesn't feel too flat, or fair, when wage earners are still paying 25%.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Justin Case on Friday October 28 2016, @02:00PM
their real agenda was handing the rich a massive tax cut in the form of lowering the capital gains tax rate to 15%
I'm a wage earner. I set aside some of what I earn, and invest it. That's money on which I already paid income tax. But if I am lucky enough (or careful enough) to make a good investment, I get taxed again.
Oh, and the company I invested in, that made me some return? That got taxed too. I'm only taxed 15% on what's left over after the money has been through a car wash of previous taxes.
But to some people, even 100% tax would not be enough.
By the way, there is no such thing as handing someone a tax cut. When a mugger sticks a gun in my belly and takes my wallet, is he giving me a gift if he returns one of my five-dollar bills that he took?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @02:56PM
Justin Case you weren't aware, you are only taxed on the profit you made from an investment, and you can deduct your losses.
It's not free to provide a market and the legal safety for you to be able to consider making investments.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday October 28 2016, @05:22PM
Look our your unbroken window through the non-smog at the non-dirt road on which no Canadian soldier is talking to a non-existent homeless sick elder while no analphabet child scapes a living off cutting your non-exposed copper used to power your obviously-working internet.
Congrats, you paid taxes.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Friday October 28 2016, @07:02PM
You missed a "non": Non sequitur.
I'm responding to someone saying 15% tax is too low for money that has already been taxed multiple times.
You're responding as if I said nothing should ever be taxed at all. So if we're going to play absolutist games, can I put you down for supporting 100% tax on all money, moving or static?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday October 28 2016, @07:42PM
The point is that the money that was taxed multiple times still does not yield enough for a government running a giant deficit.
So, either you can list which expenses the government should stop making, or you need to point out where the money should come from instead.
For a given amount of required tax revenue, if you tax actual work more than you tax the profit of investments, you shift the burden of paying for government onto the poorer people and advantage the rentier class. Which is not the best plan for long-term stability and overall country health.
It's not as simple as "this has already been taxed, it shouldn't be double-taxed". It's revenue which someone can use as they use their labor's revenue, and should therefore be taxed equally.
Trust me, I come from a place which had the amazing idea to tax Assets over a certain threshold. If you have a few millions stashed, you have to pay up to one percent of it yearly in rich-person taxes. The stated goal being that you have to put that money to work for a return above that 1% (plus the taxes on that return), creating value for the country. Since rich people are not trapped in castles anymore, it encourages them to hide their cash elsewhere. Politicians seem to know that removing that tax would not be conducive to a great future, in a place where the privileged are fairly discrete because they've read history books.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @10:08PM
I'll take that one:
Militarism. Estimates range between 54 percent and 59 percent of the USA's discretionary budget.
(Note that, when ALL related expenditures are counted, -none- of the totals are below 50 percent.)
That could easily be cut by 40 percentage points and leave a more-than-adequate defense of the homeland.
...of course, it bears mentioning that *defense* is NOT what the USA military is for.[1]
Properly named, it would be called The Department of Aggression.
During WWII, it was still called The Department of War, which was more accurate.
[1] ...and the only armed service which -does- serve in an actual **defensive** role is the Coast Guard.
...which has been under the departments of Treasury, Commerce and Labor, Commerce, Treasury again, Transportation, and Homeland Security.
The only times it has been under The Department of War was during WWI (2 years) and WWII (4 years and 2 months). [uscg.mil]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday October 28 2016, @10:52PM
> could easily be cut by 40 percentage points
And cause one hell of a recession in the process... The main advantage of being paranoid about building weapons is the amount of domestic work it creates, typically in good stable jobs.
Should it be cut? Sure, but the only reasonable approach would be to trim over a couple decades (deny overall growth, trim political-related expenses).
Oddly, we should thank Duterte, Trump, and a few Japanese-teen-rapists for their contribution to reducing excess overseas deployments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @01:09AM
In recent days, I've mentioned how militarism actually has a poor Multiplier Effect.
Since I first posted here, I've been mentioning how The New Deal had an excellent Multiplier Effect.
When militarism is cut, you put those folks to work on INFRASTRUCTURE, rebuilding the nation's crumbling roads and bridges and water systems and schools and all the other stuff that's falling to pieces.
While we're at it, put unemployed IT workers to the task of securing our poorly secured online infrastructure.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @09:13PM
I'm a wage earner. I set aside some of what I earn, and invest it. That's money on which I already paid income tax. But if I am lucky enough (or careful enough) to make a good investment, I get taxed again.
Oh, and the company I invested in, that made me some return? That got taxed too. I'm only taxed 15% on what's left over after the money has been through a car wash of previous taxes.
But to some people, even 100% tax would not be enough.
By the way, there is no such thing as handing someone a tax cut. When a mugger sticks a gun in my belly and takes my wallet, is he giving me a gift if he returns one of my five-dollar bills that he took?
I hate this argument, because it misrepresents taxes. Everything gets taxed. This idea of double taxation is silly.
For example, you buy a hamburger, and that sale gets taxed. The hamburger stand pays the meat distributor, and that sale gets taxed. The meat distributor pays the factory, and that sale gets taxed. The factory pays the farm, and that sale gets taxed. Etc.
Would you agree if McDonalds said "the farmers already paid tax, so we should be tax exempt?" Or how about the argument that "I founded Apple with my own money 30 years ago, so all of that profit grown since then should be tax free?"
Are you really proposing a "first-tax doctrine" where only the first distribution of money from the Federal Reserve gets taxed and nothing else?