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Webpass Acquired By Google Fiber For San Francisco Rollout

The Internet Service Provider Webpass will be acquired by Google Fiber by the end of the summer.

The acquisition of Webpass was a giant step forward for Google Fiber.

Google Fiber acquired Webpass, one of San Francisco’s biggest Internet Service Providers.

Google Fiber, Alphabet’s current fiber-to-the-premises service, announced earlier in February of this year that is intended on expanding its service range to the San Francisco and the Bay Area.

Webpass was founded in 2003. The internet service provider offered residential gigabit connections in select areas which were built after 1995. It also focused on providing Ethernet fiber connection to businesses/ Webpass’ activity boasts with over 20,000 customers, and it has activity not just in San Francisco but also San Diego, Chicago, Boston, and Miami.

Google Fiber is currently an active service in Kansas City, Atlanta, Austin, Nashville, and Provo. Alphabet’s ISP also plans to be soon available as a service in Huntsville, San Antonio, and Salt Lake City.

With the acquisition of Webpass, Google Fiber can begin its San Francisco rollout. Fiber will not have to build out of its own network as it can use Webpass’ existing network instead.

To some extent, the acquisition implies that Google Fiber bought out a 20,000 customer base, an already existing fiber network reaching out in five major cities, and one less competitor in the market.

Webpass plans to continue to expand as before, in Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, as well consolidate its client base in San Francisco, San Diego, Boston, Chicago, and Miami.

The internet service provider also intends to carry on in rapidly deploying gigabit-speed connections via point-to-point wireless.

If the acquisition of existing networks and frameworks proves to be an efficient way of distributing its services, Google Fiber could rapidly expand in the following years to come throughout the United States.

With intentions to make their wireless connection speeds just as fast as their wired ones, future Google Fiber users would not need to be a part of an existing wired network. Fiber’s installation time could become something as simple as a phone call or an email if cable installation, management, and maintenance is no longer an issue.

The final details of the transaction are expected to be resolved at the end of summer, due to regulatory approvals. Webpass or Google Fiber have yet to disclose any financial details pertinent to the acquisition.

Google’s Wireless Speed Will Be As Fast As Its Wired Connection

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Google's wireless connections speed will be as fast as its wired connections. Future generations will never believe dial-up existed.

Not even the Jetsons had Wi-Fi at 1 gigabit per second!

On Wednesday, June 8^th, Alphabet Inc. hosted its annual stockholder meeting. Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of the Alphabet, took the opportunity to announce that the company is currently working on a new endeavor: Google’s wireless speed will be as fast as its wired connections.

Alphabet believes that wireless speeds could even outmatch the wired speeds thanks to current technological processes which yielded results in improving wireless signal accuracy as well as results in the advancement of computer chips.

Google’s Executive Chairman also hinted at the fact that aside from the advantages of higher speeds aside, superior wireless technology would allow users not to bother with cable installment and cable clutter, being easier to install, use, and requiring less maintenance.

The present time technology could allow wireless speed to possibly reach up to 1 gigabit, or 1,000 megabits, per second was the general consensus, after an in-depth discussion between Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Alphabet Inc. Larry Page, as well as Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat. Google Fiber, Alphabet’s current wired service also has a speed of 1,000 megabits per second. For comparison, the average Internet speed via a wired connection in the U.S. in late 2015 was hitting the gauge at 14.2 megabits per second.

Although the entire planning conversation took place on Tuesday, Alphabet has already started its efforts and trials in Kansas, the first location to see the general instalment of Google Fiber. Alphabet believes that they will be able to present an operational demo of a functioning planned wireless speed some time in 2017.

If Alphabet’s wireless speed will be as fast as its wired connection mobile technology and the way most users utilize their phones, tablets, and laptops will be forever changed for the better. Current upload and download limitations would be shattered and the cloud storage capacity of the generic Internet user would have to increase exponentially.

This is currently not the only Internet connection and speed service Google is working on, as they are are also making progress on Project Fi, a service which aims to allow users of certain Android phones to be granted Internet access by combining cellular coverage with Wi-Fi network resulting in overall better connectivity and performance.

The future of a world where wireless speed will be as fast as its wired connections, if not faster, appears to be on the horizon and the future of a world where this technology will be available for general use is not far behind.

Image Courtesy of YouTube.

Google’s Autonomous Car Will Be On Its Own

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The self-driving car will first be available as a service

Alphabet, Google’s parent Company decided that Google’s autonomous car will be on its own starting next year. The self-driving car will be a separate unit under Alphabet Inc.

Up to this moment, Google’s self-driving cars have been driving more than 1 million miles around San Francisco and Austin. Probably these will be the places where fleets of autonomous cars will be serving as transportation. The service will probably be provided at first in secure smaller areas such as college campuses or corporate office parks.

There is an intense race on the development of autonomous cars, especially since Google announced their intentions to rival Uber.

Besides using them as shared transportation, polls have shown that about a third of American consumers would buy an autonomous car of their own. At the same time, the majority of users are concerned about losing control and are being reluctant to leaving their lives in the ‘hands’ of the technology.

Thilo Koslowski, vice president at Gartner Inc. claims that taxi services deployed by self-driving cars would allow consumers to experiment and embrace the technology in their own rhythm. He is confident that this will help the entire industry and not just Google.

The autonomous cars are now part of Google X research division but they will become a company of its own, together with many other divisions under the umbrella of Alphabet. Other units to become stand-alone companies are Nest, which produces intelligent fire alarms and thermostats, Google Inc. search-engine, Google Capital and Google Ventures investment, Verily – the health-care company and Google’s robotics division.

Earlier this year, Google X hired auto-industry veteran John Krafcik as CEO of its autonomous cars project. At that time Google said it didn’t have plans to make a separate division in the near future.

The rivalry between Google and Uber goes ever further as Uber is also spending $10 billion to develop autonomous cars. The company has even hired Google’s ex VP of engineering to run their Advanced Technologies Center.

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google and Alphabet announced in September that their autonomous cars might come as a service in the beginning, which would give both customers and the Company the chance to test the new technology before it gets on the market as a personal means of transportation.

HIS Automotive analyst, Mark Boyadjis claims that Google could use the self-driving cars for profit in more than one way. He suggests that Google will probably continue their marketing tradition by displaying ads in their autonomous cars in the same way as their search engine.

Image source: flickr

Artificial Intelligence Is A Lot Stronger

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Artificial Intelligence Is A Lot Stronger

Artificial Intelligence is a lot stronger and we can see it with each passing day. Your mails are put in a precise and accurate order, you can have your voice searches translated for you on the spot and there are many more features which are showing us that artificial intelligence has come a long way. Google intents to make it even smarter, as they have already mentioned that machine learning will enhance its services in the years to come.

Alphabet proceeded to report its own quarterly financial results on Thursday this week and they showed that profit and revenue had gone up compared to last year. Sundar Pichai, Google’s new CEO, participated in the calla bout his first earnings. He did not hesitate to point out how much of an impact machine learning is going to make in the years to follow and he kept talking about it whenever the opportunity arose.

Pichai declared that “machine learning is a core, transformative way by which we’re rethinking everything we’re doing.” This might just be enough evidence that Google is planning on using machine learning in every service that they are already providing, or whichever one they will come up with in the future. We are going to be assisted by artificial intelligence in every moment of our lives.

But we cannot help but wonder if this is the right way or not. As far as we are aware of, human beings’ purpose in the universe is to accomplish as much knowledge as possible about anything. If machine learning is the future, what will become of human learning? Machines will ultimately learn enough to be able to assist us, or even grow their own consciousness. Yet if we are assisted at every moment, why would the majority of us struggle with learning anything at all?

If machines can do it, let them do anything we need. We will just sit around in our comfortable lives and do nothing. Is that “the way?”

We can already see that Artificial Intelligence is a lot stronger. It is only a matter of time until machines will assist each and every one of us in cleaning the house, performing any type of work and even learning. Two pivotal questions arise if we think about this: how far can we go with machine learning and is this the right way that will lead towards human evolution? It’s just food for thought.

Photo Credits staticflickr.com