This came up at lot at google when they launched fiber. CA regulation and environmental laws make it to easy for the monopolies to stop or slow you down.
If you look at how they pick cities the main criteria is friendly regulations like “one touch make ready” requirements.
Meh, they could have bought one the monopolies if they wanted to, like they did with Motorola when it is was in their interest to do so.
It is a matter of will and persistence to run a this kind of business, Google does not have the DNA to run a serious enterprise business that needs decades of commitment to a product .
Google did a $70B stock buyback last year. Every year they are doing similar numbers for the last 5 years.
In 2012 they had $50B cash on hand. Today despite the buybacks every year they still have $100-150Billion cash on hand, while Comcast is only worth $150 Billion.
They could absolutely afford it now and most likely 10 years back as well without even considering financing the deal.
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Google is just very bad at acquisitions, they simply are too risk averse and don't have the DNA.
Compare with a peer like Microsoft in the same time frame: bought Linkedin($24B), Github ($8B) Activision($70B) invested in OpenAI ($10B),
or Facebook : Instagram($1B), Occulus($3B), WhatsApp($19B).
Mandiant is the only acquisition of note since Motorola even that is pretty small at $5B.
Any reasonable observer wouldn’t compare the first 15 years of google to the next 15.
Also the examples(baring fitbit ) you cite were great product ideas but fairly small companies, it takes a very different kind of DNA to assimilate large organizations and still be somewhat functional, this is what a comcast acquisition would be .
Microsoft or even SAP have practiced this for years Google has in the last 10 years done of note only Fitbit and Mandiant you could maybe consider also Nest in outside edge of the window in 2014 , all small bets for google’s size
Apple is also similar, both companies believe they will do better doing everything in-house rather than acquire expertise in areas of interest (fiber, cars etc ) so far they have failed and now are content in giving money back to shareholders rather than find useful areas to invest .
The notion that any ISP has more pull than Google, Facebook, and Apple in the Bay Area is facially absurd. Cupertino literally has a deal with Apple where it pays back 1/3 of Apple’s sales taxes: https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/11/04/california-wants-...
That’s Cupertino. MV and Google have had much more adversarial relationship going back more than a decade. Look up their failed free wifi project as an example of this
They're fucking Google. If they dig the streets up and give me 10 Gbps fiber I will be more than happy to show up to city council and yell the shit away from any NIMBY old fart that says no.
And more NIMBYs will show up to scream about Google overrunning local government.
It is extremely easy to make hugely powerful corporations the villain, for obvious reasons, and this doesn't stop being true in the case where they want something actually good.
And yet all these mega corps can spend 100s of millions on lobbying and get favorable law passed or regulation taken care whether labor, FTC or taxes or EPA .
The local council is apparently the last bastion of democracy that can ward of influence of their largest tax payers and the wealthiest residents who are their employees
People really need to cool it with the 2024 buzzphrase "regulatory capture".
I don't know which podcast, and I'm almost certain it is some dumbass podcast somewhere, is promulgating the phrase which has been popping up with ludicrous regularity in 2024 to describe every situation where someone is pissed off about something, but the primary reason people don't have 10gbps internet isn't regulatory capture, it is that the deployment costs are too high unless either subsidized by the government (as is the case in many parts of Europe and this instance) or there is a combination of high density and eager market.
"20 minutes from Google's Headquarters" is San Jose. San Jose is served by over 20 ISPs offering services from wireless to 10-gig fiber depending on location. The locations aren't determined by "regulatory capture" they are determined by a cost-benefit analysis.
You, yes you, can start your own ISP anywhere in the country, right now, today. Anywhere.
Remember 20 years ago when NYC gave Verizon exclusive franchise rights and then everyone got upset that they didn't fulfill their end of the bargain? That's gone. Everywhere, it's gone. Anyone, including you, yes you, can get a permit to microtrench fiber to any building in NYC unless there is excess capacity already in which case the party holding the excess capacity MUST sublicense it to you.
Same for California. Same for any state.
Rural Texas? Vexus Fiber is diggin shit up in Tyler TX. Middle of nowhere WA? Ziply is taking the risk.
Doesn't matter if it is the densest or most historically protected city or loneliest prairie town you, yes you, can start an ISP right now, today.
Reforms to the Pole Attachment Act have made this shit is easy now. Easy, but not cheap.
Just gather $100 million so you can pay the $30k-50k per mile (due to material and labor NOT "rEgUlAtoRy CaPtuRe") to microtrench or pole-attach, get all of the permits to trench on public rights-of-way and negotiate the few (if any) non-public crossings you have to make, post the bonds needed to ensure that if you go bankrupt mid-construction there's cash to clean up YOUR mess, hire the network/civil engineers needed, pay for peering, staff an office and support center, and you, yes you, can start your own fiber ISP--today.
Hell, many states will give you money to offset the costs.
If I had $100 million I could wire all 2,300 homes in my Maryland suburb with fiber and no regulation could stop me. If I had $100 million I wouldn't waste it on that (we can already choose from multiple gigabit+ ISPs) I would retire.
> Reforms to the Pole Attachment Act have made this shit is easy now. Easy, but not cheap.
AFAICT, the pole attachment regulation changes only happened in mid-January 2024. They're probably good changes, but
1) They happened just yesterday, speaking in "policy time".
2) If you don't think an absolute assload of time and money can be wasted with doomed-to-fail appeals and spurious orders for documentation and impact analysis and the like, you've spent all your life in a shockingly well-run city (or maybe a place with next-to-no municipal services and associated power grabs).
> It doesn’t matter in which cardinal direction you travel for 20 minutes...
Well, it does, actually. See below for commentary on your particular selection of SJ as your exemplar city.
> ...regulatory capture ain’t stopping anyone from starting their own ISP.
And yet for some weird reason, there are precious few non-telco/cableco ISPs in places like San Francisco that are doing something other than reselling rotting DSL, or running small microwave dishes on rooftops (that is, being a WISP).
San Jose may be remarkably well-managed (though, I expect WISPs make up the lion's share of your 20 ISP figure (and they're playing on easy mode in regards to permission-seeking)), but other places in the Bay Area are definitely not.
I've been living in SF for more than a decade, and I've watched Monkeybrains notice that building a city-wide fiber network was completely impractical and resorted to being a WISP. I've also watched Sonic's fiber installation program in the city stall for roughly a decade. While I'm glad that starting in mid 2019 [0] they've been able to string and light up fiber to not just small sections of the most western portions of the city but a significant fraction of the city, much of Sebastapol got lit up quite a while back. You'd expect a big city with a high density of customers would get lit up before a fairly small, sparse town if it was just a cost/benefit analysis doing the location selection.
Whatever you want to call it, the political and regulatory situation on the ground is obviously getting in the way of folks providing civilized-speed data transit services to potential customers in many major cities. You don't want to call it "regulatory capture"? Okay, sure. The on-the-ground political resistance and obstructionism is still rooted in the same sort of backroom dealing and under-the-table kickbacks, so you're just using a different phrase for the same behavior.
[0] Notice that this substantially predates the pole attachment rule changes that you've brought up.
>You'd expect a big city with a high density of customers would get lit up before a fairly small, sparse town if it was just a cost/benefit analysis doing the location selection.
The costs are so high that a reasonable person would never expect that, not without government subsidies. Like what's happening in the small towns.
Nothing is stopping you from starting an ISP-- except the fact that you'll go broke because most people are happy with Comcast. Sorry if I didn't make that assertion clear enough in my original comment.
That's why Google Fiber pitted cities against each other in mortal combat to see who could get the most people to sign loyalty pledges promising to subscribe and they turned on the electrified subsidy extraction machine to "high" before making a deployment decision.
> The on-the-ground political resistance and obstructionism is still rooted in the same sort of backroom dealing and under-the-table kickbacks
This is not true. Literally and actually you can start an ISP and run 100-gig fiber to every single block in San Francisco and no government or cabal in a smoke-filled room can stop you. Only your creditors can.
> That's why Google Fiber ... turned on the electrified subsidy extraction machine to "high" before making a deployment decision.
If by "subsidy extraction" you mean "Required that the only objection incumbents could make to GF's pole attachments were objections rooted in real safety issues, that all objections must be resolved rapidly, and that incumbents could not charge GF outsized pole attachment fees (IIRC, often defined as 'not more than the incumbent had been historically charging themselves').", then, yeah, I agree they did demand a level playing field free from unreasonable interference from incumbent operators.
> That's why Google Fiber pitted cities against each other ... to see who could get the most people to [promise] to subscribe...
Yeah, that's part of any big, expensive rollout. You don't do it unless you have enough people who commit to use the service for a period of time to make it worth doing the rollout.
> ...most people are happy with Comcast.
The difference between the rates and restrictions imposed by the incumbent ISPs in areas where there is healthy ISP competition and areas where there is not suggest otherwise. Even credible rumors that an independent ISP might serve a significant portion of an area with a mon- or duopoly cause the incumbents to scramble to offer freebies, rate reductions, and gratis data transfer cap and speed increases.
Given the all of the previous, and that the FCC continues to update their pole attachment regs to add more avenues for appeal and impose more and more "playing field leveling" rules, I suspect you know less about this topic that you claim to.
Maybe these big internet companies should dig up all the infrastructure in their home turf and replace it?