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Its funny that one of the monuments of capitalism has bad WiFi because the roof had to be very fancy and imposing.
They’re mostly soydevs, not network engineers.
Why do all thing need to look like these soulless glass metal and concrete blobs. Like bruh, why not build something cool lime a Roman Temple, European Castle, Viking Longhouse, Ancient Chinese Pagoda …
Epic (software company) has a really cool campus near Madison, WI where all of the buildings are different styles of architecture. One of them is a giant dairy barn.
Ok that is epic indeed
These are done by architects rather than designers. Usefulness isn’t a consideration, only form and aesthetics matter.
Architects are designers.
Those would be far more expensive to produce, needing specific skilled craftsmen. Not that glass production is easy, but compared to hand-carved wood and stone the labor hours alone is a staggering difference.
highly skilled labor shortage and time. eventually ai architects will 3D print incredible stuff that is completely unmaintainable.
I think glass metal and concrete blobs are cool.
“Make do” with ethernet? Charlie Brown, ethernet is the superior networking interface. People “make do” with wifi.
Yes, but tell that again when you and 19 other people bring your laptop to a conference room and try to login on the network at the same time.
Different things have different strengths, and losing one of those things means your experience will be subpar.
So, I haven’t worked in IT in a couple decades, but back in the late '90s/ early '00s, all the conference tables at the companies I worked for, had Ethernet ports built into the table towards the center, and a switch mounted under the table so that everyone could just plug in. Did they stop making those tables once WiFi became ubiquitous?
Yes, they stopped. The ports were never sufficient, people always wanted to move the table around, and the cables and connectors in the table were always breaking.
Besides, there are always people far from the table.
It’s true, they used to be more available and then they stopped making those tables for those reasons (and they were more expensive).
Yes, in a conference room setting with more than 3 people it’s better to have wifi, no disagreement there. In google’s case here it sounds like they’d bring a mobile hotspot in so everyone could see the documents together, which is not ideal but would work.
Still, they’d have ethernet for the video sharing so they could just put a router in each conference room (a huge pain to admin, but - it’s google) and everyone gets wifi in the conference room and no one is very slightly inconvenienced.
OR - y’know. Bring back the ethernet. Werd.
It’s absolutely making do. Having to plug an Ethernet cable in every time you take your laptop to someone else’s office, break room or conference room simply doesn’t work. Offices aren’t designed for it.
Conference rooms should have ethernet connected to the USB-C dongle that’s attached to the TV and the Jabra or whatever alternative you use.
Wouldn’t want to take my laptop to the break room, I go there to take a break from work, not continue it in a different setting.
I’ll agree on going to someone else’s office, or using your laptop in a meeting where someone else is connected up, but that’s where Wi-Fi works as the back-up.
Lol! One Ethernet cable in a conference room? What if someone else is using it? Next you’ll proudly state that you carry an Ethernet switch everywhere you go. But, you be you.
I just said wifi works as the backup solution if you’re not the one presenting. If you ARE the one presenting, wouldn’t you want to have a more stable connection?
Wireless sucks. Wired is always better.
Wireless is always better than no connection at all if you need a connection and you’re not wired.
Can’t realistically plug your phone into the wall every time you want to use the internet
The whole point of a mobile phone is that it’s mobile
Ok Zoomer.
We’re talking about offices where people generally use laptops for work. Why are you mentioning mobiles?
What if I want to move my laptop around the office, say for example to make a presentation, or work in a different area? If I’m just working on some documents online, I don’t need a fast connection, just 30-50Mbit is plenty enough for pretty much everything, including video calls etc
And what you’re telling me you never use a mobile at work? You still need a signal to make/receive regular phone calls
That’s true, which is why the article mentions one of the things googlers are doing is using their phone as a hotspot.
Y’see the phone gets it’s internet from the cell tower. It then passes the internet to the laptop via a local (i.e. 2 feet) wifi or bluetooth connection.
That’s an entirely different thing than enterprise-wide wifi. And if the building was blocking cell phone signals - well, first of all I’d be impressed, and secondly they would tear it down.
Moan and groan all you like, it doesn’t change the fact that wireless is almost always an option and wired is almost never an option.
Even desktop PCs come with wifi adapters. Finding a laptop with an Ethernet port is damn near impossible.
If ethernet is not an option, you’re just wasting time. Ethernet-to-USB dongles are cheap and plentiful.
It’s crazy that people with no experience with it have no idea why anyone would want to fuss with a direct wired connection when it’s objectively faster and more stable in every metric possible.
Assumptions, assumptions… My company is a communications company and actually produces networking equipment. Almost no one uses Ethernet because we have the knowledge and experience to implement reliable wifi. Perhaps your company should hire us since they’ve done such a bad job with their own implementation.
Don’t most of (maybe all) dell and lenovo laptops come with ethernet ports by default ?
And nowadays, with thunderbolt docking stations, you have more or less every connection available anyway.Don’t most of (maybe all) dell and lenovo laptops come with ethernet ports by default ?
Nope. Ethernet ports are gone.
Just gonna ignore those real-world examples and insist on fantasy land, eh?
That’s when you make do with WiFi.
You do know that laptops no longer even come with those Ethernet ports, right?
Yeah if you are forced to deal with a shitty Apple
Long time since you bought a laptop, or even looked at them? Even most Dell and Thinkpad mobile workstations no longer include an Ethernet port.
They include USB-C and most docking stations have… ethernet.
And in the offices I worked in nobody had a docking station. They aren’t everywhere.
Welcome to the future! Standard everywhere.
it’s called a “dongle” and it’s named after a guy named don. No srs look it up.
Lordy, I ain’t never heard about one of them before. You’re a genius!
Now look around your office and see how many people are using them. There’s not a single person in my sales office, whether sales or engineering that bothers with a dongle because we actually have a well designed, fast wifi network. It’s called “reliability” and you and your company should look that up.
From the responses here it sounds like many companies need to do the same.
You do know that most places use docking stations that connect laptops to multiple screens and… you guessed it… ethernet.
My last job was with a Fortune 100 technical company in a sales position. No one used a docking station and no one bothered with an Ethernet cable. Neither did any of the customers we dealt with. People with desktop computers were wired up but most everyone else used wifi all the time.
Not my last job with a Fortune 100 company. Nearly all of us used wifi all the time. Our engineering and software development groups did use desktop computers with Gig E though.
Not my last job with a Fortune 100 company.
Sorry to hear your company doesn’t care about productivity.
We get a second screen, power, and stable internet connection via docking stations.
to be fair, they did say sales
Sorry to hear your company doesn’t care about productivity.
My company produces networking equipment and actually knows how to implement reliable wireless and wired networks. If your company’s wifi network is unstable perhaps hiring a competent network design and implementation company would have been more cost effective than throwing more equipment at the problem.
Conference rooms, yes. Break rokms, yes. Offices? No. Use a docking station? Are you working solely from your laptop screen or do you dock and use monitors mouse and keyboard? Generally, there’s ethernet attached, too.
What do they think their precious wifi routers plug into?
An actual cloud?
When it rains are they terrified of losing their data?
And a lot of people do. Cellular and satellite internet is excellent for rural and certain business use cases. I have gigabit fiber, and I’m considering one of those in case the Internet goes out if fiber is hit or if we lose utility power (I have a battery backup system).
Yes. Those folks are scared when it rains too hard. The connection does become more unstable.
I still acknowledge that your point is valid for everyone else however.
I was just making a cartoonish joke about clouds leaking.
Wasnt thinking rain fade lol.
I’m enjoying ethernet on my phone too
You don’t get cellular data? Okay, sure it’s faster for that too.
Problem solved i guess, that’s progression.
lol your comment made people salty for some reason
I can tell that you’re being sarcastic. But if I’m playing ranked match on my phone, it’s always with an Ethernet dongle. Way more reliable and definitely lower latency.
People actually play competitive games in their phone? I thought that was just marketing spin so apple didn’t have to put graphics cards in their macs
It’s hilarious that you insist on the ethernet cable but not an actual computer.
I don’t have a gaming computer (i7 3770K with integrated graphics from 2012)
I bet there is a strong WiFi spot a few feet above the building.
lmao sounds like they just need to all stand right at the spot where the parabolas of the ceiling have a focal point.
The parabolas’ focal points are outside of the building, which incidentally is also the best place to be.
“Please return to the office. Or at least outside the office. We built the office inside-out accidentally”
Night at the Roxbury Deux?
Do you want a grilled human? Because that’s how you get grilled human.
Eat the
richsoftware engineers.
Don’t be evilOne anonymous employee told Reuters, “You’d think the world’s leading Internet company would have worked this out.”
You don’t think that’s exactly why they constructed that building the way they did? WiFi is much less secure than a wired connection. It makes much more sense to me that they knew it would make WiFi not work as well to get more employees to used wired connections for security reasons.
If it were for security reasons, they wouldn’t allow work devices in the WiFi at all (which is a very reasonable policy)
The solution is more Unifi hotspots
Just make every ceiling tile and outlet have one and you’ll have all the coverage you will ever need
Those are great, installed them at the last place I was a trainee at.
This is correct. As the article says employees are using their phones as hotspots so it’s not as if it’s a Faraday cage. Their IT guy should do a Wi-Fi site survey and install a few AC Pros.
I hope this is a joke. There’s no way a campus like this is going to deploy Ubiquiti.
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No, they’ll deploy all the Google Mesh wifi cans…
ez solution. It just costs money for new design, hardware, installation and maintenance but holy shit google double check your build plans sometimes.
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Nah, they’ll just add a chat app. Then destroy it.
They have to build it first and then use it for a few months and then demolish it
Didn’t forget renaming
First they have to kick out the people who were enjoying it
That’s the most fun part! We know you have been enjoying your new office and benefits (because we read your email), but please note in two months we will be discontinuing a this. We are releasing a new service you might want to try though, Google unemployment!
But unlike a lot of the other products they cancel, I’ll have actually known that this existed first.
Guessing the building was designed by an artist and not an engineer.
The architecture world is crazy
Glad to see Google is embracing evil even with it’s architecture now
I actually rather prefer ethernet. Much more stable.
I’ll take access point bombing for 1000 Alex. I see several in wall and wall-mounted varieties in the immediate future of that place… 😂
The moral is – Wi-fi intensity study should be part of modern architecture.
I’m all for 👍 architecture. Just consider Wi-fi before building it.
For this structure, I wonder if the best solution is – Just add more mesh points. Not elegant but what if there’s no better way?
That was my interest in the story. Technology is so ingrained in our lives. It’s weird more furniture doesn’t have power chargers and other cords better designed into them. It’s weird our houses and electrical codes haven’t caught up.
But this is just a huge step back. Unless I’m unaware of lots of other new and old buildings with similar issues.
In my country, from what I observed, not many study tables and work tables with power outlets. 1 may say, “Add usb-c sockets too.” But the future is hard to predict. Will there be usb-d? Will 150-watt charging be the norm for phones? The safe thing to do is just outlets. Power bricks for phones are cheap anyway.
Agreed. My work desk is barely four years old, and already its integrated USB-A ports and Qi 1 charger are outdated and basically useless to me. I’d prefer not having them. The power outlet is still fine though.
Your batteries last longer with trickle charging. If you’re at the desk most of the day, USB-A and Qi 1 is perfect, and should be adequate for another 5-10.
Neither of my last two phones came with a USB-A cable, nor did my wireless mouse or keyboard. The flush Qi 1 charger doesn’t even work because my camera bump is too big. Also, from what I’ve heard Qi 2 should produce far less heat while charging, which makes Qi 1 worse for battery life.
Sure, I could “make it work”, but I’d be happier with two electrical outlets or even nothing than the basically useless wireless charger and ports I have now.
No, please do not start adding electrical components to furniture en mass.
If you do, I give it 1, maybe 2 generations, until furniture is partially subsidized by tech companies and it becomes niche to NOT have a “smart couch”.
Funny you mention the smart couch because that’s the type of furniture that seems to come with USB charging stations a lot nowadays. But I hope most smart home devices remain a niche for a while. The open source and crafting community around them is pretty amazing and I’d hate to see it getting literally sideshelved for smart home prefabs.
I fucking love 👍🏻 architecture, gotta be one of my favorite genders
The two genders: engineers and architects
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To support MU-MIMO / beamforming (multipath signals for multiple devices) they could also just add more flat surfaces inside the ceilings to make radio reflections/echoes less complex so that the signal processing doesn’t get overwhelmed when the source is some distance away.
Plain absorbing material removes interference but doesn’t let you use MIMO tech as effectively, because the newer higher end routers can use those reflections to boost the signal
I thought of interference too. If the Wi-fi was bouncing all over, there may be many areas with destructive interference – weak or no Wi-fi.
It’s a Google office building, they definitely considered Wi-Fi before building it but they made a mistake. Compared to that building in England that turned into a glass death ray I think this was a less obvious mistake.
Obviously they didn’t do a Wi-fi intensity study.
Oh they for sure fucked up, I just mean that it was likely a mistake as opposed to them not caring. Pretty crazy for a huge corporation to overlook it though.
I’m pretty sure the problem is the shape and reflections. This type of design creates echoes from many directions which makes it harder to pick up the signal at a distance
