Google Fiber Heads To San Francisco; Faster Search Service Coming
Google Fiber, the super-fast Internet-access service spearheaded by Google’s parent firm Alphabet ( GOOGL ), is about to become available in San Francisco. Google Fiber’s Internet access will soon reach “some apartments, condos and affordable housing properties” in the tech-drenched Northern California city, using existing fiber networks rather than one built from scratch, wrote Michael Slinger, Google Fiber’s director of business operations, in a blog post on Wednesday. Using San Francisco’s existing fiber network will make the startup of the service come about more quickly, but it also means the service won’t be available everywhere in the city. Still, it’s a boost for tech-innovation hub San Francisco, where homes and businesses largely don’t have Web access that’s any better than in other parts of the country. Google Fiber started six years ago in Kansas City and the company has “committed to bring Fiber to a total of ten metropolitan areas,” said Slinger in the blog post. “To date, we’ve focused mostly on building fiber-optic networks from scratch. Now, as Google Fiber grows, we’re looking for more ways to serve cities of different shapes and sizes. That’s why we’re working with Huntsville, Alabama to tap into the city’s planned municipal fiber network.” Speed Needed For Mobile Web In other news, Google is also widening use of a technology that loads Web pages more quickly while consuming less data — in an aim to make it easier for people to navigate the Internet using their mobile phones. Google said Wednesday that it will display relevant pages in the Top Stories section of search-results pages that are built with its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) technology. AMP is similar to efforts underway by Alphabet-rivals Facebook ( FB ), and its Instant Articles, and Apple ( AAPL ), and its Apple News service, which also aim to speed up how quickly articles load on mobile devices. Pages built with Google’s new technology load about four times faster and use 10 times less data than typical pages, Google said. The AMP technology improves how ads are seen. Stopping ads from slowing-down readers’ access to online articles could help deflect one of the main threats that the industry says could be facing digital ad companies — the growing use of ad-blocking software. AMP works by having developers rewrite their pages in a slightly simpler and more limited language, and hosts the pages on Google’s infrastructure, according to a Bloomberg report . “No matter how many ads you put on the page the content comes first,” Bloomberg quoted David Besbris, a Google vice president of engineering for search, as saying. “If a user taps on something they will get the content immediately.” Alphabet stock closed up 0.5% in the stock market today , at 720.90. Facebook stock and Apple stock both rose more than 1%. Image provided by Shutterstock .