[hipsterrific]

My biggest pet peeve with Google has always been their slow roll out of non-search and ad products. They could have shook the ISP world with Google Fiber. They carry the clout necessary to get stuff done. Rather they did a slow roll out and that lottery style is less hopeful and more aggravating.

A lot of the products Google has released were either terrible, stupid, or makes you go "WTF?". Google Glass was so worthless that I often wondered why they even bothered. I think Hololens will move the market regardless of its success. It might take MS one or two iterations to get it right, but if MS is willing to become bellicose on its strategy, people will take risks and develop. If Google had pushed out Fiber to more cities in a shorter period of time, I think Google could easily expand its product line beyond search and ads.

[nostrademons]

GFiber roll-out is largely gated on the local municipalities. It takes years to cut through the bureaucratic red-tape of getting a right-of-way to run fiber to the home, and in many cases, the utility poles they use are owned by their competitors. The reason they started with Kansas City was because it features an integrated city, county, and utility government, and so they could negotiate with one entity and get all the permits necessary without having to go between dozens of competing interests. Same reason it will never come to San Francisco; CEQA means that any single property-owner along the fiber route can block the whole project, and there are a number of homeowners in San Francisco who don't exactly like Google.

My fiancee's taking a land-development course, detailing all of the things you have to go through to bring water, electricity, sewage, Internet to a new area, all the utilities we take for granted. The professor is a guy who spent pretty much his entire career, 16 years, doing one deal (from which he personally netted tens of millions in profit). That should give you an idea of the timescale that public utilities operate on.

[cloudwalking]

Would you argue that Glass did not move the market, regardless of its success?

[tashoecraft]

It may have moved the market backwards in terms of public image.