Google says Fiber is going so well it's pausing itGoogle says Fiber is going so well it's pausing it

Google has decided that it’s doing so well with fibre that it needs to take a break and give everyone else a chance.

That was the picture it tried to paint on its latest blog post – bizarrely entitled “Advancing our amazing bet”. The post was written by – spoiler alert – the now former CEO of Google’s Access division Craig Barratt, who said it’s all been a great journey and it’s doing so well and it’s on a great trajectory… so he’s stepping down. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

“…thanks to the hard work of everyone on the Access team, our business is solid: our subscriber base and revenue are growing quickly, and we expect that growth to continue. I am extremely proud of what we’ve built together in five short years,” wrote Barratt.

“Now, just as any competitive business must, we have to continue not only to grow, but also stay ahead of the curve — pushing the boundaries of technology, business, and policy — to remain a leader in delivering superfast Internet.”

Yup, sounding good. Keep going.

“We have refined our plan going forward to achieve these objectives. It entails us making changes to focus our business and product strategy.”

Wait a minute, something doesn’t sound right here…

“These changes to our business and technology will have some immediate implications.”

Ahhh… this isn’t going to be good.

“Some of our efforts will remain unchanged, but others will be impacted.”

“For most of our ‘potential Fiber cities’ — those where we’ve been in exploratory discussions — we’re going to pause our operations and offices while we refine our approaches.” And then came the sucker punch we spoiled for you earlier – Barratt’s slinging his hook.

Google is already a world leader in many areas and it can now add turd-polishing to that list. Positioning a pause in operations and the departure of its CEO as evidence of how well everything’s going shows a level of gall even Samsung’s comms team must be in awe of. Google must have got through an entire jar of Turdo this time so here’s a replacement.

Looks like AT&T’s self-indulgent blog post wasn’t wide of the mark after all. It might have been petty, needless, arrogant and ill-advised; but it wasn’t wrong.