Report: Google Fiber to Cut Staff After User Totals Disappoint Sources claim that Google Fiber has been disappointed with the company's overall number of total subscribers since launching five years ago. A paywalled report over at The Information cites a variety of anonymous current and former Google employees, who say the estimated 200,000 or so broadband subscribers the company had managed to sign up by the end of 2014 was a fary cry from the company's original projection of somewhere closer to 5 million.

Google Fiber has never revealed its total number of subscribers. A report last October pegged the company's total broadband subscribers at somewhere around 120,000, though it's unclear how many of those users had signed up for Google Fiber's symmetrical 5 Mbps tier, which was originally free after users paid a $300 installation fee. That tier, aimed at low-income users, has since been replaced by a new 25 Mbps, $15 per month option. The company also continues to sell symmetrical 100 Mbps for $50 per month, symmetrical gigabit connections for $70 per month, or symmetrical gigabit broadband and TV service for $130 per month. It's believed that the company's TV subscriber sign up totals have been even worse, with one analyst last March suggesting that Google Fiber had just 53,390 pay TV subscribers as of the end of last year. The slow pace of digging up streets to install fiber is the primary contributor. Sluggish progress on that front is why the company has been looking more closely at multiple wireless variants to expedite deployment. Some of these technologies will complement existing fiber, while Google Fiber feels some, like millimeter wave, may someday replace it. Disappointed by sluggish subscriber tallies, The Information report states that last month Alphabet CEO Larry Page ordered Google Fiber boss Craig Barratt to cut the total Google Fiber staff in half to roughly 500 people. That's a claim that's sure to only fuel continued speculation that the company is starting to get cold feet about its attempts to bring broadband competition to a broken duopoly market. A Google Fiber spokesperson declined to comment on The Information's report. A Google Fiber spokesperson declined to comment on The Information's report.







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Most recommended from 227 comments

clbowen2

join:2000-10-06

Cleveland, OH 25 recommendations clbowen2 Member I hope not I hope they aren't slowing down deployment. I would sign up for it in a heartbeat.

StuckOnVZDSL

join:2015-02-26

Pittsfield, PA 23 recommendations StuckOnVZDSL Member Wrong Location Then Come run your fiber all over rural areas that Verizon doesn't give two craps about and I bet you can increase those numbers Google.

Luke_

Its all in your head

join:2015-08-27

Tempe, AZ 2 edits 20 recommendations Luke_ Member Projecting faulty numbers IMO, the company was expecting more subs because they themselves being techies know that the idea of gigabit fiber for 70 bucks is great. What they miscalculated is the majority of people just arn't techies. They don't know the difference between coax, dsl, fiber. They don't know what a megabit is. Some people barely know how to turn on their computers. And others just don't like change or just don't care. So while people who work at places like Google and the folks on this forum would jump on the idea of Google Fiber in an instant and know neighbors that will, its not the case for everyone. majortom1029

join:2006-10-19

Medford, NY 18 recommendations majortom1029 Member They are the problem. its on them. they refuse to go to areas that would have a ton of people sign up. Come to long island where we have a big population and only 1 company for internet access.

karpodiem

Hail to The Victors

Premium Member

join:2008-05-20

Troy, MI ·WOW Internet and..

·Comcast XFINITY

1 edit 14 recommendations karpodiem Premium Member Difficult tasks that take time and dont scale are sometimes worth doing Serious strategic mistake by Google, if they're completely abandoning FTTH in new (not previously announced) deployments.



I'm calling it now, bookmark this in your Google Calendar - 5G will be a flop, relative to the expectation that it can deliver a ballpark ~1TB a month for a residence. It isn't strong enough 4K or 8K video delivery over IP - only FTTH is.



Fiber is the only future proof technology.

alchav

join:2002-05-17

Saint George, UT 9 recommendations alchav Member The Average Person doesn't care about Fiber....They want Cheap Internet!!! The Average Person doesn't want to pay more than $50/mo, and probably most no more than $25. So people are still looking for Cheap Internet, they don't even care if it's Fiber or just plain Copper. Like I said, Fiber should be clean and run underground in Conduit not on Poles. So Google is running into all kinds of obstacles, and the deployment is just getting too costly. Reality has set in, and Google is rethinking their strategy. The Engineer

join:2015-04-02

Munster, IN 8 recommendations The Engineer Member I've said it before and I'll say it again... ...Google Fiber is not a real business. Not a real business like Comcast or AT&T is a real business.



They're either a hobby, or a publicity stunt, or a scientific experiment. But they're not a business that is going out and trying to provide a service in the market and make a competitive return on investment.



Now, with the latest news of their troubles, perhaps there is some indication that they are changing, and becoming a real business.



FTTH is hard, a lot harder than the average DSLReports commenter thinks it is. Corporate

join:2014-10-04 7 recommendations Corporate Member I called it Google Fiber is nothing more than one of Google's projects that the company will dump when their plans don't pan out.



This company never gives anything a chance.



Verizon didn't build the largest network with most subscribers overnight. That title belong to AT&T for many years.



Did Verizon give up? NO! travelguy

join:1999-09-03

Bismarck, ND 6 recommendations travelguy Member Sorry to hear this Anything that takes the pressure off the other ISPs to invest in upgraded speeds is double plus ungood.

tshirt

Premium Member

join:2004-07-11

Snohomish, WA 6 recommendations tshirt Premium Member reality stikes home... ....maybe they won't give up, but they finally seem to recognize that it isn't as cheap or easy as they hoped.

There still is a need for their efforts, but they need to adjust their goals and prices to better reflect what any of the cablecos could have told them on day one: It takes years to roll out, even under the friendliest of conditions, and billion$ sunk in, and years more to build market share even when the ubiquitous telcos offer little product to compare/compete with.

The Trouble is partly by culture and partly by PR required to keep stock prices high Google/ABC goes big or goes home.

Can they accept that this is a LONG term major investment, without a sensational windfall for tomorrows news or will they begin to roll up the tents and move to better pastures/other products?

ILikeTech

join:2015-03-09 5 recommendations ILikeTech Member My opinion I think most that know how the industry works knew that this is/was likely not going to work out as they had hoped.



They are even getting sweet deals from cities compared to the Telco and Cable Co's and still are struggling?



The 5G options (or millimeter wifi, whatever you want to call it) is going to be a flop also. Your still going to be running fiber up to the houses for backhaul of the wifi and deal with the nuances of wireless. Wireless that SUCKS at penetration and range. Good luck. mc510

join:2005-06-20

El Cerrito, CA 1 edit 5 recommendations mc510 Member Sad but not surprising Sad but not surprising news. The economics of overbuilding fiber are just incredibly difficult in territories in which the cableco has a very well developed fiber/coax hybrid system. Which is to say, most of the urban/suburban parts of the nation. And the economics of building *anything*, much less overbuilding, in rural areas are just 1000x tougher. It's time to remind ourselves of what we knew before telecom deregulation: residential networks of communications lines are a natural monopoly. You only need one set of wire/fiber infrastructure, and it needs to be regulated as a monopoly.



And I'd offer one correction to Karl's reporting on this news, where he refers to Google's "attempts to bring broadband competition to a broken duopoly market." Maybe it once was a broken duopoly market. What it is now is an unregulated monopoly market (in which the cableco is the monopoly provider of high speed internet) with some bit players dinking around at the margins (microscopic bits of telco fiber, microscopic bits of municipal/private fiber overbuild, microscopic bits of high speed wireless, lots and lots of low speed copper-wire internet) decifal

join:2007-03-10

Bon Aqua, TN 4 recommendations decifal Member build The trick is to build out in areas not already heavily serviced by the duopoly first.. If you want a higher adaptation rate.. Alotta folks are locked into two year contracts too so its harder for them to just jump on over... Me, if google fiber came into the area i'd be on board asap. It won't though cause the pie charts disagree with my claims..



If you build it, they will subscribe.. But no, lets do the insanity plead and keep doing the same crap over and over and over expecting different results.. Its like voting for a politician known for lying and "forgetting" rules (sound familiar?) and expect good things...