Google Gets 4% Of All Homes In Kansas City To Sign Up For Super Fast Internet After One Week

Google would be the first to admit that its fantabulous new high-speed Internet in Kansas City is more of an experiment than a for-profit business.
That said, in its first week, the service has already signed up 7,000, of 4% of potential households, say the analysts at Macquarie Capital in a research note.
That means 7,000 houses out of a possible 165,000-ish have paid the $10 pre-registration fee.
You can't just call Google and get a new account like you can with other ISPs. Google hasn't rolled out the high speed network to Kansas City neighborhoods yet. It has divided the city into districts it calls Fiberhoods. It asked each Fiberhood gather up lots of interested households and apply. If the area gets enough, Google Fiber will come to them.
But even if Google can swoop in and nab 25 percent of Kansas City households, Macquarie estimates that Google will be operating Google Fiber at a loss for sometime.
25 percent paying an average of $100/month would generate $50 million a year. "We expect this initial rollout to be net negative for GOOG. It reminds us that this initiative is less about a long-term revenue opportunity for Google and more about pushing current Internet providers to increase speeds and innovate (which could benefit Google in the long run)," the analysts wrote.
Still Google is giving signs that Google Fiber will NOT be a one-city wonder. Google wants to bring it to more cities some day.

THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: Google Fiber Isn't A Test, It's World Domination

Markets are fighting back as Europe blows up and factory orders miss. Shares of GOOG are up strong. Investors continue look for Android momentum and monetization of smartphones and tablets; direction for Motorola; the resurgence of Google TV; continued growth and monetization of YouTube; expansion of social network Google+; and progress in other initiatives (location-based services, mapping, Google Wallet, Google Music, Google Fiber, etc.). The stock trades at approximately 11.8x Enterprise Value / EBIT.
Android's Lead Reduced (comScore via TechCrunch)
comScore released its latest quarterly figures on the state of the mobile market in the U.S. based on active users, and while the exact numbers are different, the basic picture is the same as the one that Strategy Analytics painted earlier in the week around smartphone sales: Apple’s iOS continues to see the strongest gains and Android has remained in the lead but with its lead reduced somewhat. There are now 234 million U.S. residents using mobile devices, with smartphone usage up 4% to 110 million, giving the country a smartphone penetration of 47%.
Google's Fiber "Proof Of Concept" Is Anything But (Launch)
Everyone wants fiber. The evil folks at cable companies and telecoms are sabotaging fiber in order to maintain their legacy businesses: be they content in the case of Time Warner or phone calls and text messaging if it's AT&T. As the Internet gets faster, you spend more time online. This is one of the core tenets of Google's success. Instead of adding features to Gmail, YouTube and Google search, they historically focused on making things faster. Why? Because speed drives usage. Google Fiber is not a test, it's a takeover plan.
Google+ Big Brand Adoption Growing (Search Engine Watch)
Three out of four of the Top 100 brands are now on Google+. In the past two months, Visa, Hermes, and Wells Fargo have all joined the Google+ network with their own fan pages. Growth is slowing, but that’s to be expected, given the astronomical adoption rate among big brands when Google+ was first introduced. Of those with Google+ pages, 30% have these pages display in search results for their brand name, according to the BrightEdge Social Share study for the month of July. That’s 6x higher than in February. BrightEdge surmises, "This could be due to the rising importance of social content in search results along with the growing adoption of Google+ by brands and users."
Google Snaps Up Social Media Marketing Firm Wildfire (The New York Times)
Google has agreed to acquire Wildfire, a social media marketing firm, for an undisclosed sum. Founded four years ago, Wildfire helps brands manage their social campaigns across sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. It has roughly 16,000 customers, including Spotify, Virgin, Amazon and Unilever. Facebook was reportedly the leading suitor for Wildfire Interactive, but Google won out. That's after Google attempted to buy Buddy Media, but lost out to Salesforce, which bought the company for about $700 million.
No More Acquisitions Relating To Google+ (TechCrunch)
This week in the tech news rumor mill: A source close to Google says that the company has put a stop to all acquisitions related to Google+, at least until the end of this year. Google is wary of both growing the Google+ team right now and providing the product with any additional resources until January. The Google+ project itself is not on hold but, if this rumor is indeed correct and Google is cutting back on expanding the team’s resources, this could be an indication that Google+ isn’t doing quite as well as the company’s glowing public comments would indicate.

Superfast broadband will be available in 90% of UK by 2015

Ed Vaizey said the UK was one of the most 'digital nations in the world', with a thriving e-commerce economy. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

 

The culture minister, Ed Vaizey, has said 90% of the country will have superfast broadband by 2015.
The minister insisted the government was working to put the right infrastructure in place for "the vast majority of the country" by 2015 to "future proof" the service.
Those who want "really, really fast speed" will then be able to connect to a network and choose to upgrade, he said.
Vaizey made his comments as a report by the House of Lords warned that the government's broadband policy had become "preoccupied" with delivering certain speeds to consumers when what was needed was a greater focus on access through a national broadband network.
The Lords communications committee concluded after a wide-ranging, six-month investigation that Britain would need a better broadband network to cope with future technologies. It raised concerns over the way Britain's network was being built, describing government strategy as "flawed" and liable to widen the digital divide between those communities with fast internet access and those living in broadband blackspots.
The peers said broadband should be treated as a vital national asset, like roads, rail and energy.
The report, Broadband for All – an Alternative Vision, recommends national planning for a "communications network of local, regional, national and internet exchanges where different operators can site equipment and exchange traffic, all linked by ample optical fibre that is open to use by competing providers".
"The delivery of certain speeds should not be the guiding principle; what is important is the long-term assurance that as new internet applications emerge, everyone will be able to benefit, from inhabitants of inner cities to the remotest areas of the UK," they said in the report.
The Conservative Lord Inglewood, chair of the communications committee, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "The current strategy is based around providing certain levels of speed across the country and we're not convinced at all that that is the right place to start thinking about a policy and a programme for rolling out broadband infrastructure."
He added: "What we need to do is to find a system, it seems to us, that enables people to get what they want and pay accordingly."
Vaizey said the UK was one of the most "digital nations in the world", with a thriving e-commerce economy in which people spent more online and used technology more.
He said there was a "very competitive marketplace" in Britain in terms of laying fibre optics in people's homes in two-thirds of the country, with "government intervention" needed in the rest.
Vaizey told Today that £500m had been put in place to support this, with funding from devolved governments bringing the total to around £1.2bn, plus additional funding for pockets of cities where broadband connection was poor.
"We have set ourselves a target that by 2015, 90% of the country will have superfast broadband," said Vaizey. "Generally speaking most people define that around the 35 megabits a second (Mbps) speed but we have said that 100% of the country should have access to 2Mbps. To put that in context, for example, if you want to watch the iPlayer on your computer you would need about 1-1.5Mbps."
He said he was "happy" the target would be met.
The highest speed broadband requires fibre optics in the home, but Vaizey said further improvements to broadband speed must be "demand led".
The minister for culture, communications and creative industries said one of the reasons ministers wanted to move to a superfast broadband policy was to try to future-proof the system by putting the "right infrastructure" in place for the vast majority.
Those who want "really, really fast speed" can connect to a network and choose to upgrade, he said.
Pressed on the fact that some European countries had faster connection, Vaizey said the government had the most competitive marketplace.
"I think the rest of Europe actually looks to us as leaders in this. That also includes price because there's absolutely no point in having superfast broadband coming past your door if you can't afford it. So we also want competition on price and we do have very low prices on broadband."