Hilarious in a way...

Of course Google would have problems with the very foundation of a technology needed for business when choosing to design the building themselves.

Like, they couldn't consult with a professional.

Seems very... on brand for Google now.

I kept reading it as Daniel Radcliffe and I was like why the HECK is he working there?

I appreciate that the "Gradient Canopy" roof is covered in solar cells and collects rainwater while also letting in natural light, so maybe the problem is they didn't do enough by not adding in some shielding, too.

I could imagine that those concave metal roof sheets reflect the electromagnetic waves all over the place, causing tons of interference...

Bad building layout could cause multipath issues though.

Yeah, whoever designed radio waves wasn't thinking about the potential for creative architecture!

To put it more descriptively, when you do industrial scale WiFi, you're supposed to design out the network during the blueprint stage, then go through with a signal analyzer to map out the radio properties when it's time to install the telecom

You can put an access point in every room or every 30 feet, and tune them to work seamlessly without interference. You can do the same with cell signals too. They even make cables that are also the antenna - they're cut with gaps in the shielding, so you can get perfect coverage inside an iron maze if you wanted to

It's all just a matter of cost... It's not cheap, but a few million dollars is just a line item at that scale

Which is also what you want really, if you have everything on WiFi. High density setups with really small cells so you can reuse channels. A building with high signal attenuation helps with that.

Having said that I'd never want to work for a company like Google.

PS:

Bad radio propagation means Googlers are making do with Ethernet cables, phone hotspots.

"Making do with Ethernet cables"? For me that's still the most reliable and secure way of doing networking on computers. You're at a desk, why not have a cable there. For mobile devices, sure. At my work every docking station has a cabled connection luckily.

That would be problematic on many levels.

But if they spend millions on WiFi hotspots then how they can pay the dividends to the shareholders? If you listen to them the company is barely profitable and more cuts are needed

I'm not even sure that would be a bad solution for us. Can something like a Raspberry Pi work as a hotspot?

I wonder what exactly it is that's messing with the signal.

Because if you walk to a meeting room with your laptop, you don’t want to plug it in every time.

Also phones and tablets are a thing.

Because WiFi speeds have increased to the point where they rival wired connections, and most people use laptops which make wireless more convenient.

Wired nowadays only makes sense if you need to move massive amounts of data, want to use PoE, ...or are in a high interference area. Kind of ironic they'd design a building that makes it the latter.

They mostly don't even give out desktops to devs these days, everything is in the cloud.

Multiple paths to the same device is one of the ways MIMO allows for faster WiFi. If the WiFi setup has been tweaked for the environment, this doesn't need to be a problem.

Google suggesting using phones as hotspots makes the interference suggestion more unlikely, I think. I suspect they just haven't done a good job at setting up their access points, which can be a challenge for large buildings (but shouldn't be a problem for a company like Google with their own in-house WiFi engineers).

Then again, this being Google, the team that designed the WiFi setup was probably shut down a month after they finished installing hardware and before they could make the software usable.

There's plenty in Big Tech to be cynical about, whether you work for them or not. Ars can get away with it.