Whatever happened to Google Fiber (or whatever it was called)?
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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It still exists and is very reliable locally, but that's different than this. Fiber is laid underground and can't reach every corner where satellite coverage can.
Yay, more space junk, and knowing Google they would abandon the whole thing a couple years in when it gets boring and leave them to rot.
Edit:not actually sat, which makes it weird to call a 'starlink competitor' then, but I don't write the headlines.
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They split off from Google.
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They are not using satellites, they shine a lazer from one fixed tower to another, with range about 20 km.
Ah, see that's where not reading is a problem. Just saw star link competitor and remembered something a recently about China looking to launch a similar system.
Odd they would phrase it as a 'starlink competitor' then though rather than 'a new ISP bid'. Wireless systems with directional antenna relays are not really new, not sure if any use laser particularly but the concept is essentially the same.
Still raking in the upvotes though! Reading is for suckers!
Yeah back in 2005 I lived in a house that used that. We were on the very edge of it range so a strong gust of wind could knock the internet down.
That sounds similar to WiMax.
Yup. Now we have long-range WiFi filling that niche.
At sufficiently low orbits, the satellites would simply deorbit themselves because of the atmospheric drag. Several Starlink sats have been lost this way.
Yeah, more thinking the wasted time, resources, and emissions involved in building, launching, managing, and then whenever makes it down.
Take all that and make something useful instead, whatever happened to Google fiber being built out all over? More reliable, faster, doesn't involve sending piles of redundant satellites into space...
Supposedly traditional ISP's have tons and tons of lawyers and filed every single step of the way to stop Google from intruding on their local monopolies.
I think the existing telecoms tied them up in mountains of legal bullshit.
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I guess that's better but honestly not by much.
See that guy between Bezos and Musk at the Trump inauguration? That's Sundar Pichai, Alphabet/Google CEO.
It's zero better. Every one and every thing that bends the knee to fascism is fascist, and should be treated the same.
I'm not an apologist for any US company, particularly Google. But they are not the same as Musk. They didn't campaign for this. Yes, they've "bent the knee" if you will, donated, and attended the innaguration. Can you imagine the alternative? The threats they got? Suddenly all these top tech companies donated exactly 1 million and their CEOs showed up there. Pretty sure they were told this was the bare minimum donation and that if they didn't show up, you know...
Plus, they are not throwing nazi salutes, promoting nazis online and offline, or actively dismantling the US democracy. If anything, them not standing out and keeping as low a profile as possible is a good thing because they still hold significant power (for now) and the alternative is the US admin criminalizing them.
If I were forced to pick between the two I'd take the guy who is only a white supremacist when it's profitable over the guy who is a white supremacist every waking moment.
Call it 1% better, if that.
Still a ratfucker, but ... not as high a priority target as the one activly throwing out nazi salutes.
Sure, for the list of executions at the Hague Musk should take priority, but you shouldn't buy products from any fascist. The difference between 99% fascist and 90% fascist is inconsequential.
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Zuck looks like he's glitching and needs a hard reset
That's his natural state.
It's worse. Right now, people see the fascism in front of their eyes. They can choose to wake up or remain delusional. Before, it was masked and the average Joe wouldn't know better.
ok cool, whos gonna buy that? Europe wants to be independent from US big tech, elon got the US gov by the balls and china surely has their own thing.
Its not for people to buy. Companies like Google simply don't need to make profit anymore.
Its to show growth potential to investors. And when they inevitably cut the program, it will also show growth potential to investors since then it will be millions of dollars saved.
It's different tech that doesn't suffer from starlink's latency issues.
Im very much open to replacing my Starlink - but this isn’t it. Land based lasers are just going to be attached to things called cell towers - and if I have one of those nearby… then I’d use cellular.
The tech sounds useful to bridge cell towers in rural areas among each other to skip satellites and laying cables.
Back when I was still in university, dormatories' internet was established using a similar tech to the main campus. It was great, except on snowy days. Then there was just no internet at all.
Might have been microwave link. We had those as part of our disaster recovery at a few places I worked.
That sounds like a major drawback. I guess it's still better than nothing tho. Did rain cause issues as well?
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It's still longer distance than cellular and it can get even better. Cell towers will always win.
Google/Alphabet keeping up the tradition of terrible product names I see
a two-minute scan of products for sale on amazon will tell you that society is to the point of mashing keyboards to string letters together to come up with company names. this at least has consonants and vowels arranged in an order that resembles a word.
Musk just pissed as he was going to name one of his kids this.
Anything to avoid laying fiber.
How do you keep birds from landing on it and shitting up the lens and blocking the laser?
It's the law of outdoor infrastructure. If it's outside, and it's high up, it will get shat upon.
You put some bird spikes around the lens. Same thing that is done for windows in cities with pigeons.
Yea no. This company might even sincerely want to do its own constillation yet I doubt that. This is just to give the optics of 'see! Musk isn't a monopoly!' along with 'see! we're not trump's puppets! We're fighting against President Musk!'
Same as their halfhearted attempts at laying fiber.
Did you read the article? This is a ground based system.
google laid fiber to make the others panic and impliment fiber
The picture of a dystopian future where feudal oligarchs are shooting down each others low orbit internet satellites in the furious competition for best coverage popped into my head.
Who are we casting as the satellite retrieval specialist with a penchant for bonsai trees living in an off grid log cabin?
Heh, that's a good future.
The one we're speeding towards is where they all collude, and all the service is shitty and the same (or worse) as its ever been. If its not just monopolized. That's why Night City is a relatively good place to live in CP2077: There's still competition.
Not familiar with the current crop of actors, but Honestly I'd love william shatner and nicolas cage be in this one. Cage getting to go full tilt as the CEO who's put offensive lasers on his satilites marketing them as an anti kessler syndrome measure but really jsut wanting to fry competitors.
Shatner even has the bonus of having a REALLY nice ranch they could use for location shots of shatner's home as he's talked into helping train the group of loonies that are going up there.
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