Disinformation

 A while back I wrote a piece asking What is AI? But the core problem is that junk in then junk out. See Google's latest piece of junk, Gemini. But as I noted, if the AI system can go out on its own a scour up information and then develop an unbiased rating metric, a real step up, independent of its creators, then perhaps we obtain a reliable AI system. Otherwise we have a next step disinformation system! Never trust humans, especially big ego Silicon Valley types. They believe that they know more than the rest of humanity but in my experience they are just pampered creatures oftentimes not worth the name human.

Thus my recommendation is stay away from this AI systems which are merely mouths for the Silicon Valley elite.

Bye Bye Google?

Disintermediation is an interesting concept. Ten years ago if one wanted to find a scientific paper one used Google. Now that is the last place I would go. I use Semantic Scholar, no fuss and almost everything I need is there. No junk, no billboards, no tracking. If I am researching say breast cancer then my profile is not tracked assuming I am a breast cancer patient. I am just researching BRCA in breast cancer as I have in other malignancies.

Also when you write something as a work in progress, one uses Research Gate. I have a few hundred items there and so far in three years have has close to 25,000 downloads. I have put drafts of books, and expect that that is as far as I will go, for some have already had thousands of downloads. Since I do not seek academic awards, only seek to put my ideas into the cauldron of thinkers, this is all that is needed. Google does not do that.

So with Open Source publishing, for that segment that Google had provided an essential asset a decade ago, it not only has been superseded but has been dis-intermediated. Thus in this small corner of Googledom, we see cracks appearing.

Along comes a study on creating these Open Source venues in an MIT affiliated report.

The number of OS online publishing platforms has proliferated in the last decade, but the report finds that they are often too small, too siloed, and too niche to have much impact beyond their host organization or institution. This leaves them vulnerable to shifts in organizational priorities and external funding sources that prioritize new projects over the maintenance and improvement of existing projects. This fractured ecosystem is difficult to navigate and the report concludes that if open publishing is to become a durable alternative to complex and costly proprietary services, it must grapple with the dual challenges of siloed development and organization of the community-owned ecosystem itself.

Open Source, OS, is a movement wherein documents are provided without paywalls.  Journal publishers may bemoan this. There is the issue of peer review and exclusive highly credentialed journals such as Nature which present the best of the best, but OS system allow and support works in progress. It stimulates early works and allows for more immediacy but without the constraints of peer review. Now if one is seeking to gain the credentials in Academia then peer reviewed publications are sine qua non. If however one is beyond that stage then OS platforms allow for a ready outlet. If readers think what you say is useless they can let you know in many ways. First they can tell you and second you can see your site gets no attention.

Now this report that the MIT group refers to states:

Our findings include the following, each of which is elaborated upon in the report: 

We need a standardized taxonomy for the various functions performed by SCRs. It is currently difficult to differentiate between the broad range of functions offered by SCRs. It is also challenging to understand which steps are common in scholarly communications and publishing workflows, and what SCR choices might work for each of these steps. 

SCRs operating within nonprofit and hosted environments report ongoing challenges in raising and sustaining appropriate levels of funding to enable them to build and maintain services over time. These SCRs need additional support if they are to be viable options for institutional use.

Connected to the above, sunsetting in our scholarly communication technical environment is often considered a sign of failure. Instead, we need to welcome it as a sign of a healthy overall environment. We also need to further explore the value of mergers, migrations, and other mechanisms that may provide the necessary administrative, fiscal, and social infrastructure to help support the technical development and maintenance SCRs require. Scaled, leveraged efficiencies (e.g., multiple programs hosted by a single entity with shared leadership and staffing) may help to bring needed expertise while also maintaining a lower overhead.

SCRs need guidance, mentorship, training, and opportunities to refine their visions, technical platforms and design, financial and HR models, community engagement and outreach practices, and governance frameworks, as well as the decision-making processes that undergird each of these elements.

It is not at all clear what these mean. I have read them a few times and perhaps I am too far from the Academy.

Bot Semantic Scholar and Research Gate seem to do quite well. In fact in just the two years or so of using them I find them indispensable. From one I can get what I need and from the other I can see if what I have produced has any interest.

Some of the principals behind this effort have noted:

While the primary focus of our research, and of this report, is software and software development—functionality, code, developers, partners, and funders—the themes we have kept in mind throughout have to do with sustainability, scale, collaboration, and ecosystem integration. Through all of our research, and our investigations of dozens of projects, the question in the back of our minds is always who will care about these projects? Their project leads and PIs of course care, but beyond the inner circle of active agency... who else will care enough to fund, contribute, promote, use, and ultimately further the useful life of these projects? What are the values and mechanisms that cause people—especially external stakeholders—to care enough about these projects to keep them alive, and even thriving, going forward?

 I gather the issue is platforms for OS publishing. If OS is developed on OS software, say like the Internet was, with the equivalent of an IETF, does this enable a similar open network of OS facilitators? If that is so, then does this platform then create a true disintermediation to say a Google. Namely information without advertising? Without tracking? Without intrusion? Without profiling? 

This may not be the case since Google does facilitate a great number of transaction related efforts. I suspect Google will be around much longer, but perhaps this effort, as confusing as it may be to me, may not be to Google.

But one last thought. As long as Microsoft monopolizes the OS market and continues to deliver what in my opinion based upon my experience is a defective product, the world will need Google to find out how to fix it.

Told You So

A few years back when Google announced its fiber business I noted that they knew nothing about it and the people that were running it in my opinion also had little understanding. Today I see that they are slowly abandoning thier efforts, leaving Louisville.

ArsTechnica notes:

Google Fiber will turn off its network in Louisville, Kentucky and exit the city after a series of fiber installation failures left cables exposed in the roads. Google Fiber's customers in Louisville will have to switch ISPs and will get their final two months of Google Fiber service for free to help make up for the disruption. Google Fiber went live in Louisville late in 2017, just a few months after construction began. The quick turnaround happened because Google Fiber used a shallow trenching strategy that is quicker than traditional underground fiber deployment and doesn't require digging giant holes. Instead of a foot-wide trench, a micro-trench is generally about an inch wide and four inches deep. In Louisville, Google Fiber reportedly was burying cables in "nano-trenches" that were just two inches deep. But Louisville residents soon found exposed cables, .... "When you're walking around the neighborhood, [the lines are] popping up out of the road all over the place," resident Larry Coomes said at the time. "People are tripping over it."

 As noted, the infrastructure business is dramatically different that software. I have been in both, and infrastructure requires experience and mistakes are costly to recover from. Clearly this team would not have been chosen by General Groves in the 1940s. Can't say we didn't warn them.

Google et al

Google uses algorithms to determine what to present to a user who does a search. That is well known. Now what those algorithms are is the "secret sauce". But one suspects that the algorithms are written to maximize revenue. Thus if I seek a hotel, the listing will often present those which have purchased ad space on Goggle. What else would one expect. If your hotel has not done so your hotel may appear at the bottom of the list if at all. Profit drives the algorithm.

Now politically one would be nuts to seek Google as a presenter of opinions. I use Feedly and I select a few dozen sources from left to right to several languages. Frankly I like Le Monde, the French are very intellectual and compared to the NY Times they are head and shoulders above them. Thus if one seeks to understand world views then one must seek out the primary sources, and don't waste your time on Google.

If it is scientific, I use Semantic Scholar, a fantastic source. But the last thing I would ever use if Facebook or Twitter. One would be better off listening to conversations on the A train. But they no longer occur even there. All the passengers are on smart phones, and most likely sending text messages or commenting on Facebook.

The NY subways are now spotless, no left over newspapers, no one buys them any longer. I have not seen a single person with a news paper, or a book for that matter! Again they are in the echo chamber of their smart phone.

Most likely the worst device ever created is the smart phone. The NY Subway system wants you to use this to pay your fare. Imagine a $1,000 device held by every passenger trying to get through a toll station at rush hour. One might ask what moron thought that one up? Most likely someone who went from 34th Street to Times Square at rush hour. But I digress.

So does the President have a point? Perhaps, but he is a Twitter user.

reCAPTCHA and Knowledge

One should read Theaetetus a few times, even if Plato was a bit off, lacking any scientific basis. But then again these are techys I will be speaking of and worse they are millennials. But in trying to deal with reCAPTCHA, that device which says it can tell if you are a human, I suspect Plato would not agree.

Let me pose a simple example. The ask to show street signs. Then there is a photo with a street sign on a pole, and a bit overlapping another frame, just a wee bit. Now to me the pole is a part of the street sign. The sign would not function without the pole. But not to reCAPTCHA. So on to another picture asking the same question. How about that structure holding the sign above the highway? Nope, I guess not.

Language and meaning are complex, and despite the best efforts of those isolated mammals inhabiting some complex in California, I would guess, humans, the real kind, can understand the word "sign" in a multifaceted manner.

This is a simple but powerful example of the lack of human understanding, especially of others. Plato in his Socratic tales spent a great deal of time on this issue. Google seems clueless.

Google Fiber

We thought Google Fiber was a dumb idea from the outset. Why? Well we tried it before they did. What was the problem. Costs. What costs. Three types. 1. Delay. It takes forever to get permits etc. The Incumbent can throw tons of stiff at you. 2. Franchise. You need one for every town. 3. Pole Attachments: Again the Incumbent. Fundamentally fiber can be real cheap. It costs about $20,000 per mile if nothing else is counted. Then if you consider the number of homes per mile at 50% penetration you can get the fiber down to $500 per customer! Drops are $200 and electronics per sub is about $300. Overall about $1,000. Then add the above and it goes to well over $3,000 and drop penetration to 25% and it doubles to $6,000! Now it is no longer a business. I recall speaking to some Google folks a decade or so ago. Back of the envelope stuff. It took them a decade and hundreds of millions to learn! That's Silicon Valley!

Now Wired states:

Eventually Google Fiber could offer even more radical wireless technologies. For example, Webpass has tested technology from Artemis Networks, a startup building a new type of wireless service that can “follow” users from place to place and guarantee a certain amount of bandwidth. Developing those sorts of technologies is a radical departure from building a network that provides actual fiber to homes, and requires a different type of workforce. In a letter to employees about the transition, Alphabet CEO Larry Page said the leaner Access will largely work in the field, not from the company’s headquarters in Mountain View. A more wireless future for Fiber still comes with risks. More traditional telcos are also eyeing high-speed wireless internet as a way to bypass more expensive traditional broadband. In the meantime, Alphabet is still trying to figure out how to be a company that provides internet at all.

 All you had to do was read what I wrote a decade or more ago. But that is West Coast vs East Coast. Wireless is the future, if one can get out of their own way. Now come Verizon. Buy Yahoo. Yeah, right. Look at Verizon stock, down almost 20% while the market is up 20%. Is the Board asleep? They are sitting on a gold mine in wireless licenses and they go after AoL and Yahoo. They could be the next Google in doing dumb things!

What Took So Long?

In a report by Tech Dirt they note:

Back in August a report emerged claiming that Google Fiber executives were having some second thoughts about this whole "building a nationwide fiber network from the ground up" thing. More specifically, the report suggested that some executives were disappointed with the slow pace of digging fiber trenches, and were becoming bullish on the idea of using next-gen wireless to supplement fiber after acquiring fixed wireless provider Webpass. As such, the report said the company was pondering some staff reductions, some executive changes, and a bit of a pivot. Fast forward to this week when Access CEO Craig Barrett posted a cheery but ambiguous blog post not only formally announcing most of these changes, but his own resignation as CEO. According to Barrett, Google will continue to serve and expand Google Fiber's existing markets (Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte, Kansas City, Nashville, Provo, Salt Lake City, and The Triangle in North Carolina), and will also build out previously-announced but not yet started efforts in Huntsville, Alabama; San Antonio, Texas; Louisville, Kentucky; and Irvine, California. 

I love the new Valley words; pivot, disrupt, etc.  We have argued for a decade that fiber is too costly and rant with delays and that wireless is the way to go. Yes a decade, ten years, 10% of a century, 1% of a millennium. So much for those bright minds at Google. Perhaps the fact of life has finally hit them in the head.

Now for wireless. You need a license. Lots of them actually. So where do they get them?  Acquisitions, but costly one.

What Business is Google in? Redux

Over the last eight years we have seen Google wander into businesses with great fanfare that frankly they had no core competence in. Google is in the software business, search and OS. Now they tried Nexus, and I was a buyer, early. The unit died promptly and when calling the customer service line you got Valley Speak, Silicon Valley speak. They "shared" my concern but alas when I sent the unit to the Executive I had worked with on a Presidential Panel, well, never got a reply. Google, you see, does not like people, in my opinion. It likes computers and getting them to do stuff and then getting commercial entities to ride on that stuff and pay them money.

There is a fantastic summary of "Google's Follies" in ArsTechnica which states:

Google is definitely pushing itself as a hardware company like it never has before, but this is hardly the company's first effort to get into the smartphone hardware business. The first was the Nexus One, which drew iPhone comparisons when it was launched. But low sales almost killed the brand—Eric Schmidt said in 2010 that the Nexus One “was so successful [in helping Android along], we didn’t have to do a second one”—before it was resurrected and pointed at the developer-and-enthusiast niche. The second and more serious effort began in 2011, when Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion. After clearing out the old Motorola’s product pipeline, in 2013 and 2014 the company introduced a series of high-end and midrange Moto phones that were critical darlings for their price tags, their focus on fundamentals, and their fast Android updates. These were three non-broken things that Lenovo promptly “fixed” after it bought Motorola from Google for just $2.9 billion three years later. Google made no mention of its Motorola experiment onstage today, even though the same guy who ran Motorola is now running Google’s hardware efforts. But the sense that all of this has happened before is just one of the contradictions of Google’s new mobile strategy. More importantly, the company’s actions and stated goals contradict one another, to the extent that I wonder just how committed Google is to its hardware plans and, on a related note, just how good its chances of success are.

The author however has forgotten Google Fiber, the ongoing stumble  that could clearly have been avoided by a simple conversation with folks who had done this before. Instead they follow a pure tech and then a pure sales led strategy. Unfortunately even if you can build it, and can sell it, for nothing it is a political and operational problem, expertise which seems anathema at Google.

Fiber, Wireless and Google

Some decade ago I mentioned to some top folks at Google that fiber to the home was a long and unfruitful hill to climb. Wireless would be the game of the future and those with a license will have a head start. Google bought into Meraki, a mesh WiFi system, and then proceeded to plow ahead with fiber just as we got out. And yes, let Cisco buy Meraki. Between the Franchise and pole attachments, and the massive delays of build outs we have no way we can see that an overbuild of fiber will work. Add to that the new advantages of wireless and well, only big egos with no insight would go forward.

Now it appears as if Google is heading towards wireless but at the 70-80 GHz band. Ooops, another mistake. As Wired notes:

The spectrum in question—the 70/80 Ghz band—is used by Webpass, the San Francisco broadband company now owned by Google Fiber (the acquisition closed today). Webpass uses this band to beam an Internet signal to the roofs of apartment buildings and condos, before stringing cables into living rooms. Google wants FCC rules that would allow it to use such technology on a much larger scale. Google Fiber is as a separate company under the umbrella operation called Alphabet, and according to some reports it is under pressure to cut costs—even as it expands its high-speed Internet service and pushes entrenched companies like Verizon and AT&T toward similar services. A faster Internet is good for Google.

What should be good for Google is growing positive cash flow.This adventure may not be one.

Adult Supervision

The Guardian tells of the Google April Fool joke. Now really, you suspect that the kids at Google would ever consider consequences, after all they are Masters of the Game, King of the Hill, Gods of the Universe. So people got fired, lost jobs, had other personal disasters.

As The Guardian notes:

The first of April is normally a day of frothy fun, where newspapers and brands compete to produce the best jokes and the worst puns to fool their readers. But this year some of the more complex pranks did not go quite to plan. Google’s April Fools’ Day prank had to be pulled within hours after some users complained a new feature installed in their email service, Gmail, might have cost them their jobs or reputations. The stunt was the “Gmail Mic Drop”, an augmented send button which attached a gif animation clip of a crown-wearing Minion character from the film Despicable Me dropping a microphone like a brash rap star, which instantly ended an email exchange. 

Well welcome to the world of real privilege.  They can watch your email, scan your searches, time your day, monitor your likes and dislikes.

Perhaps there should be an "Adult Supervision" branch located in Topeka to approve of any of the brainchildren.

Why Is Google Building Fiber?

In a article ArsTechnica discusses Google's expanding fiber footprint. They seem to have targeted 20 major US cities. Having been down this road a bit I wonder what they are doing.

1. Franchises: You must have a Franchise in every location, unless your political "pull" allows you somehow to avoid it. I have been there for 36 years, and I never found a way. Franchises are costly and a delay. Getting 20 Franchises in face of companies like Comcast can be overwhelming.

2. The costs of fiber are extraordinary. Verizon has walked away and they really know what they are doing. It was just not worth it.

3. Wireless can do better are an order of magnitude or less per customer.

4. All of this has been know for a decade or more. What does Google know that everyone else does not?

They cannot build it cheaper, cannot get fewer Franchises, cannot get cheaper pole attachment fees, cannot dig cheaper. So what is it? Just a way to get PR or is Google just wasting shareholders money? I suspect it is the latter but it is just my guess. After all, what do I know, I have only done this for 40 years! They just did a part of one friendly town, they must be smarter, they are Google.....

Getting Out of Hand

The Inquirer remarks about the EU now investigating Google about Google Maps. They remark:

Brussels asks Google's mapping rivals whether they feel bullied. EUROPEAN REGULATORS are investigating whether Google has been supplanting native mapping applications and devices with its own Google Maps, thus causing a competition vacuum. A questionnaire obtained by Bloomberg has been sent to rival companies asking for any evidence that the prevalence of Google Maps has damaged sales of rival devices such as TomTom, Garmin and HERE. Officials will also be looking for data on user numbers, preinstallation of mapping apps and the costs faced by cartographers to make mobile-ready versions of their work.

You really can't make this up. This is what happens when people have too much time on their hands. They should be out shearing sheep or something. One wonders how an entity providing a free service that works well can threaten others. Now I use Garmin as a GPS device, refuse to get an android phone and pay Verizon an exorbitant amount. But if one wants to then go use Google and not Garmin. But then why not feel bullied by Verizon, sorry it would be BT, or DT, or whatever other state entity controls the phone systems.

But no, get those nasty Americans, after all they are free! Perhaps not for long, depends on the elections.

Buildings and Creativity

The above is a view of Bell Labs in Holmdel. I spent the summer of 1965 there between my MIT work. I recall driving my little yellow VW into the complex the first time in 1964 when at NY Tel to coordinate with BTL on the introduction of the No1 ESS. My office in NY was a desk on some non-descript floor at 140 West Street. In NYC there was no air conditioning and you had to commute like all other New Yorkers, by bus, subway, ferry etc. Now Holmdel was the "future" Now of course it is trying to avoid the bull dozers and new homes. The tale is that buildings do not mean anything. Some of my most creative times were spent in Building 20 at MIT, the wooden rat infested Rad Lab structures, now replaced by the Gehry monstrosity of the Stata building. What lent the most to creativity, wood and asbestos or glass and leaky windows?

Now the New Yorker has a piece on the Google building boom.The writer notes:

The idea of living not just near one’s employer but in a world of its creation will sound horrifying to many workers: company towns were supposed to have vanished as an industrial-age perversion. But there are socially responsible reasons for holding employees in lavish corporate dorms. For one thing, it keeps them from messing with the local real estate. As I reported in the magazine last year, the greater Bay Area is in the throes of an acute housing crisis, exacerbated, if not caused, by forces attending tech’s wild ascent. The value of employee housing, if built from the ground up, is one of the few points on which large tech companies and housing activists see eye to eye. For the companies, too, there’s a promise of fruitful cohesion (the group that lives together grows together) and productivity (no trains to catch). It’s less clear how tech giants are served by campuses that tune out the outside world. When organized monasticism took root with the Buddhists, in the fourth century B.C., it was the result not of religious insularity but of secular wealth. To shelter nomadic monks was thought to be admirable, so those with faith and money sought to institutionalize the practice. Twenty-five hundred years later, perhaps not too much has changed. To the extent that Google has done its business on the premises of enlightenment (“Universally accessible and useful”) and virtue (“Don’t be evil”), its research for the future shares a questing optimism—and a reverent isolationism—with the studious faiths of the past.

 It is a truly monastic and insular approach. In old Building 20 we walked to many places just to get out of the cold and out of the heat. In Holmdel one went no further than your aisle. You never went to the adjacent aisle, no less the lower or upper floor. You were compartmentalized. My job was the cross point matrix driver for the No 1 ESS switch. Somewhere in the maze of a building was the software. No where was there a vision!

Buildings are a powerful mechanism for communications, or the destruction of such. The building should allow flow, not distract from itself, and facilitate what needs facilitating. My most creative spot was at the old MIT Instrumentation Lab looking out over the back window to the coffin factory, seeing the mahogany coming in and the finished products going out. It was a mix of Camus and Kafka, a vision of life that few have. Behind the coffin factory was the glue factory, with the remains of horses going in and little bottles of glue coming out to be sent to little children to draw their school picture cut outs.

Today in those same spots are multi story buildings all filled with biotech. small DNA segments running through machines. No more coffins. In fact few if any remember the coffin factory. Each day I sat there writing Stochastic Systems and State Estimation, no air conditioning, sweat dropping down my arm as I wrote pencil on yellow pads. No PC, no assistants, just the steady flow of wood to coffins and dead horse to glue bottles.

So perhaps Google may be making a colossal mistake. For McGarty's Law is "Anytime a company builds a massive new corporate headquarters, they soon go bankrupt!" Let's just wait. The again we may have to see what I meant by "soon", it took 20 years for Holmdel.

Where's The Franchise?

Google announced a massive expansion of fiber to the home. As the Washington Post announces:

After months of speculation, Google confirmed Tuesday that its ultra-fast Internet service will soon be coming to four more cities — Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Nashville, Tenn.; and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Those regions, along with more than a dozen cities in their immediate vicinity, will be the latest to benefit from high-speed Internet provided by the search giant. Google Fiber already sells Internet service with download speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second — roughly 100 times faster than the national average — for $70 a month in other cities such as Provo, Utah. Google had been considering expanding to as many as nine metropolitan areas. In a blog post Tuesday, Google said it was still in talks with five of those cities — Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio and San Jose — and would decide whether to expand into those regions later this year. Construction in the four cities the company named Tuesday will begin in a few months, according to Google.

The questions are:

1. Does Google have to get Franchises and pole attachment agreements in all of these places or is there some "deal" that goes around that and if so why? This is a total of 12 major cities. In my almost 40 years of experience getting a Franchise especially with an incumbent is a long and costly process. Avoiding one is a miracle, namely very few miracles really happen, if any.

2.  At the same time Google is buying in to wireless. As we have argued wireless is much less expensive, requires no franchise, is already enabled by customers and has near equal capacity. So why waste billions on fiber? Do the shareholders care?

3. What is the Google strategy and what are its goals? It appears that they can afford to play many games. But to what end? They can control the distribution channel but then what?

Google, Fiber and the Franchise

There has been some recent talk of Google and its fiber Odyssey. In a recent ARS Technica piece they discuss the possibility. Having done some New York builds in my time and being still somewhat aware of the process, at no time does anyone seem to address the issue of the Franchise. What do they expect. Just start digging holes, pull the fiber and well? In New York. Ever head of IBEW Local 3? If not then you better learn quickly. You just don't send a team from Palo Alto into the city and pull whatever and wherever.

As the article mentioned above states:

Google recently announced that it chose nine metro areas around the country for potential Fiber deployments. The closest ones to New York City are Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia. New York City already has fiber in the form of Verizon FiOS, and Google has focused mostly on underserved areas where municipal officials are willing to provide expedited permitting and other perks. There are still millions of Americans without broadband, so there are plenty of areas where Google Fiber is needed. One thing that is clear is that Google is building up its Fiber team. Job listings indicate that more than 60 positions are open. There is one other Google Fiber position open in New York, for a network infrastructure design manager.

 But assuming you break bread with the Union types, a real big assumption, then what of the Franchise? That may take nearly forever. You can bet that if Comcast gets Time Warner that any chance another entity has of doing anything is zero, I have been there.

Lastly, the process of getting a Franchise may very well take forever. The costs are unbelievable. How then can one get any return on investment? That is the key question.

Also, if wireless keeps doing what it is doing and expanding data rates and lowering costs, then why build fiber at all?

The International Business Times lays out a more complete tale. They state:

Underneath Manhattan lies a vast labyrinth of tunnels that was originally built for telephone wire after the Great Blizzard of 1888. It runs from all the way from downtown Manhattan to the Bronx, and it's controlled by Empire City Subway (ECS), a Verizon subsidiary. Verizon claims that it maintains the tunnels, and it points to its own fiber-optic FiOS network as proof. But critics, including one of Verizon’s competitors, as well as other businesses that lease the space to run their own cables through there, recently told Crain’s New York that the tunnels tell a different story:

"Conduits are filled with cables from defunct Internet providers that went belly-up after the dot-com bust in 2000. Verizon itself left severed copper wire in lower Manhattan ducts after installing a fiber-optic network following Superstorm Sandy. (The company says the cables could be easily removed, if needed.)"

The conduit system that could supply New York with Google Fiber is a crowded mess, which is unlikely to change in the short term. Why would Verizon clear the way for its competition?

 Indeed, there are a plethora of obstacles. First the Franchise. We wrote of our recent experiences. That process is endless, meeting after meeting with every citizen having a say. Second is rights of way as discussed above. The incumbent has those rights, not the city. Try and displace them. Third is as mentioned above is the unions. New York makes Afghanistan look like the paradigm of correctness. I suspect there are unions to manage the "Porta Johns". Fourth, is the process of getting permits for this and that. Those who succeed in Real Estate have spent decades mastering this effort. A new guy on the street just cannot master the effort.

But remember the key factor. Wireless now is a winner. OFDM allows 10 bps/Hz, add to it adaptive beamformed antennae and we may get another factor of 5 to 10. Then HDTV can be compressed to 4 Mbps. Thus we can achieve a Gbps speed per user and can send a ton of video, which Verizon already has access to via FIOS. Ever wonder why they abandoned FIOS?

Getting a Job

I am always amazed when I read something about Google, namely is it true or just for the show. I recall being out there visiting the Chairman in the old building which I believe was formerly an Atari facility in one of my prior lives.

But as is stated in today's NY Times by one of the commentators who frequently tries to opine on the technology space, all too often in my opinion with little understanding, Google tries to hire people with certain skills. He states:

...the first thing Google looks for “is general cognitive ability — the ability to learn things and solve problems,” he said. In that vein, “a knowledge set that will be invaluable is the ability to understand and apply information — so, basic computer science skills. I’m not saying you have to be some terrific coder, but to just understand how [these] things work you have to be able to think in a formal and logical and structured way.” But that kind of thinking doesn’t have to come from a computer science degree. “I took statistics at business school, and it was transformative for my career. 

Analytical training gives you a skill set that differentiates you from most people in the labor market.”

A lot of work, he added, is no longer tied to location. “So if you want your job tied to where you are, you need to be: A) quite good at it; and B) you need to be very adaptable so that you have a baseline skill set that allows you to be a call center operator today and tomorrow be able to interpret MRI scans. To have built the skill set that allows you to do both things requires a baseline capability that’s analytical.”

The overall discussion is how to get a job at Google. Perhaps it should have been how to get a job period. Now just what the second paragraph above intends to say is too complex for me. Just what does he mean being tied to a location. Back in the 60s we moved every other year, from Boston to New Jersey to Boston, to DC, to Chicago, to Atlanta. Frankly I wonder if this is what he is saying. Then the ability to be a call center operator and a Radiologist is a non sequitur of the highest level. I guess it is just what one would expect from HR and a reporter.

Having just returned from a week trip with grandson number 2 to five colleges in anticipation of his next step, the key issue is what is he doing to get a job? He may still be a High School Freshman but now is the time to start that discussion. He may want at this stage to be a Civil Engineer, a noble calling, but then at his age I wanted to be a jet pilot, not knowing that at 6'3" I most likely would lose my head if ever ejected. But the earlier one starts the better is the process. He will not get a job as an anthropologist, there are very few of them, unless you are self funded by a large trust fund. Yet there is a continual demand for Civil Engineers, and Chem Es as well. 

Thus prior planning does indeed prevent poor performance. It is not just analytical thinking but doing so in a long term perspective, looking forward to have skills which are portable, marketable, and sellable. An electrician always has a better chance that an anthropologist.

Google is Becoming Microsoft

Try and find out anything in Microsoft Help. First it is written in a language that has become extinct and no human can translate it. Second when you search you get nonsense to begin with. The Microsoft indirectly destroys your data. Example, PowerPoint before Office 2000 is unreadable by Office 2007 and after, even some of Office 2003.

Now what has Google done? Some Microsoft infected character took Google maps and turned it into an incomprehensible mess, no warning, no way to go back, and years of storing directions into the system leads to a total loss. Take printing a map. They say Ctrl P. No way, tried it on 7 machines. Try and find out how to do it and they send you to a blog with hundreds of complaints. Some Google genius decided that their idea was better and wham, millions left as road kill!

Are there any adults out there? It is like some 20+ year old who says follow me and off the character goes in some Shelby Cobra at 100+ and there are twenty others trying to follow on the LI Expressway on a Friday night in July out to Shelter Island! And the rest of the crowd are in Honda Civics!

Every once in a while a seminal event demonstrates the coming collapse, albeit slowly, of an entity. With Microsoft it was Vista, the Office 2003 SP3, then Windows 8. For Google it is the death of a great system. Congratulations to whoever was the brainchild of this disaster!

Maybe Verizon could acquire Google, they could probably not make things worse!

Impossible!

There are times when I read things that are totally illogical but then I just say, so what. But this one beats all. Some writer at Fierce Wireless considers a merger of Verizon and Google.

He states:

However, a merger between the two of them in the next few years is not so far-fetched, according to an opinion column from FierceCable .... A Google-Verizon marriage would be the largest corporate merger ever. The companies had a combined market cap of $537 billion at Wednesday's market close. Yet there are more than a few reasons why such a deal might work, including the fact that there is no overlap (yet) between Verizon's FiOS footprint and Google Fiber deployments. The combined company could also deliver affordable high-speed Internet service through both wired and wireless networks, and it could provide competition to a combined Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

Now I could not consider two more different cultures. Verizon is fundamentally the classic "knuckle dragger" company. People do what they are told by people who often succeeded by doing what they were told! And often in my experience they made it near the top by never making a mistake or if they did to find someone else to blame.

At Google you sometimes had to be creative and profitable. At Verizon, well, if it were up to them we would still have black rotary dials! I was there, I saw it.

So putting these two together not only stretches the imagination it goes well beyond that!

Just look at fiber. Verizon very wisely saw where wireless could go and is betting the ranch, and winning. In contrast Verizon saw the folly of fiber and stopped it. The stopped it just when Google started to get into it. With multibands, OFDM, etc wireless can do HDTV etc. In fact after Sandy Verizon is not rebuilding any physical plant, only wireless in certain areas. Great idea.

So why is Google running full bore on fiber? Good question, sooner than later they will get hit with the Comcast sledge hammer and come to a halt. The Franchise is that hammer. Doing a trial in a friendly city, one city, well that may work. But their roll out,not really. But then Google has enough money to waste learning the hard way.

When I see things like this I just shake my head. I guess someone has to fill up the world with words, meaningful or not.

The One Trick Pony

For the past five plus years as I have watched Google prosper I have always suspected it is a one trick pony, a very good one trick pony. The announcement today that it is selling the Motorola Unit that is bout a few years ago seems to more than validate my view.

One need just look at Google's stumbling:

1. Nexus, now I have several Kindles, they work, they are reliable, and Amazon understands customer care. My Nexus broke in 6 weeks and I sent it back to the Chairman who I had co-chaired the Internet 2 Presidential Panel with. I sent a letter, a personal letter. Did I ever get a response, no, did I ever get a replacement, no. One suspects management has other issues that are more important than customers.

2. Google RSS Reader: Now this could have been a goldmine. Dead.

3. Google's Personal Health Pages: I saw this as a home run for the EHR requirement. Google's response, kill it.

4. Fiber to the Home: What part of my many analyses on cities did Google not read? Forget it guys, the Cable companies will bury you. How much did you wast on this one.

The list goes on. However, Android makes sense, but that was a natural extension of software to the customer, a platform. The other things were toys that the "kids" played with.

My advice to Google, "focus, focus, focus". Being under 30 and having a high IQ is not all in life. And yes, if all else fails please listen to the customer. After the NSA does, your customers at that!

Google: Whither Goest Thou?

When I was young my father was on the New York Police Department and my life was surrounded by NYPD, FBI, NY State Police and other kinds of law enforcement types. Getting information was at the heart of seeking out the bad guys. So as a young lad I was taught how to get information from the best sources; sales clerks, secretaries, mail men, gasoline station attendants, receptionists, security guards. First they liked the attention and second they were privy to things that contained phenomenal value if you knew what to look for and how to assemble it.

So how does this old way of intelligence gathering relate to Google? Not exactly as you may think. I was at MIT last Saturday and the streets were all blocked. It was a mess. It has been that was for weeks, and will continue that way. Why? Go ask the sales clerk.

Thus when I started to talk with the Coop sales staff the vitriol came out. It was Google! They were building walkways between their buildings across streets so the Google people do not have to go outside and mix with the rabble. They can stay with their own kind, at least that was what I was informed. Arrogance?

Well just look at the NY Times today and some Google employee stating:

“What Google is beginning to do is share some of the knowledge in the world that humans have in their minds,” said ... a Google fellow, “so users can begin to communicate with Google in a way that’s much more natural to their thinking.” 

 Frankly I have read this a dozen times and really cannot understand what he is saying, but alas it is my experience that as a company ages it degrades. Now take Google, its search is being disintermediated by "appliances" task specific search systems, that solve a specific problem at a specific time and in a specific place.

Yet when Google tried to expand, it seemed to be successful in Android, an operating system, but the Nexus is in my opinion a disaster due to Asus, a 30%+ failure rate again ascertained by speaking with multiple Staples sales staff. My Kindles and iPads work like a charm, and despite letters to the Chairman at Google, someone who I had worked with extensively on a Presidential Commission with, no response. If it were Hyatt, Honda, Kraft, or Fidelity I would have a reply, if it were Verizon Seidenberg may actually have called. Yet Google is above all that.

So where is Google going, is it still a modified one trick pony, albeit with a lot of cash? Will it become a Microsoft, which is in effect a utility company, the only innovation Microsoft does is akin to the electric utility deciding to install peppermint colored utility polls.  So just where is Google going?

After all they appear not to want their people to get cold, wet, or associate with the common person.