Google Fiber Gains A New Boss As Reshuffling And Rumored Sale Cloud Once Promising Business Venture
The future of Google Fiber is anything but crystal clear. It was reported in October of last year that Google Fiber had put a halt on its plans to expand in 10 cities and that job cuts loomed as it looked to make a shift from ultra high-speed wired broadband service to wireless deployments. It was mostly quiet after that, until now—Google Fiber is bringing on new blood to lead to the division.
Things can get a little confusion because of the way Google's business is broken down. There is Alphabet at top, the parent company of Google and several other businesses that used to fall under the Google umbrella. One of them is called Access. It's a division of Alphabet that includes Google Fiber, and it has a new boss in Gregory McCray, the former CEO of Aero Communications.
McCray joins Alphabet as the head honcho at Access just as the division is losing hundreds of employees. Alphabet has been reshuffling its staff, plucking employees from Access and placing them in different positions within Google. The ones that Alphabet has been reassigning were at the top of the layoffs list at Access last year after the company announced plans to halt its operations. Instead of handing out pink slips, Alphabet is placing them in Google positions it has identified as being key to its growth, such as cloud, YouTube, and hardware.
While all this is going on, there is speculation that Alphabet will end up selling Google Fiber if it can find a buyer. One possibility is CenturyLink where McCray is a board member, at least for now (it's said McCray plans to step down from the CenturyLink board).
So to sum things up, Alphabet is significantly thinning out its Google Fiber business, though it isn't necessarily giving up on it, hence the new boss. Apparently the workforce needed to focus on a wireless deployment is much less than what was required to build out ultra high-speed 1Gbps broadband, as it had been doing.
Things can get a little confusion because of the way Google's business is broken down. There is Alphabet at top, the parent company of Google and several other businesses that used to fall under the Google umbrella. One of them is called Access. It's a division of Alphabet that includes Google Fiber, and it has a new boss in Gregory McCray, the former CEO of Aero Communications.
McCray joins Alphabet as the head honcho at Access just as the division is losing hundreds of employees. Alphabet has been reshuffling its staff, plucking employees from Access and placing them in different positions within Google. The ones that Alphabet has been reassigning were at the top of the layoffs list at Access last year after the company announced plans to halt its operations. Instead of handing out pink slips, Alphabet is placing them in Google positions it has identified as being key to its growth, such as cloud, YouTube, and hardware.
While all this is going on, there is speculation that Alphabet will end up selling Google Fiber if it can find a buyer. One possibility is CenturyLink where McCray is a board member, at least for now (it's said McCray plans to step down from the CenturyLink board).
So to sum things up, Alphabet is significantly thinning out its Google Fiber business, though it isn't necessarily giving up on it, hence the new boss. Apparently the workforce needed to focus on a wireless deployment is much less than what was required to build out ultra high-speed 1Gbps broadband, as it had been doing.
