[DanielHB]

I know google fiber kinda flumped, but if they are already doing their own power generation for data centers they might decide to sell that power to the public too. What is really scary is that I foresee a day where these big tech companies will see it is more profitable to serve utilities to people than web services. Then, after they have a monopoly in most areas, they will enshitify it too.

[Ekaros]

I don't think that will happen. Being utility is hard and margins are not great unless you get some government money like credit. And even those might go away with change in regime.

There just isn't enough margin or "free money" for someone like Google.

[direwolf20]

This is true, to supply software you can build it once and replicate endlessly, to supply email you need to run servers. That's commoditised and the team just sees a slider controlling number of servers.

But to provide power or internet you need to dig up the roads and lay a wire to every house. It's a totally different kind of business to which a tech person is completely unaccustomed. It would be more likely for a plumber or electrician to do such a thing. It's true a tech company could buy wholesale fiber access and provide internet on top of that, like they provide email on top of wholesale servers, but that's only one part of the business.

Tech companies are struggling to even build datacenters right now because of underestimating the work involved. They're really not used to things that don't scale by themselves.