About Google Fiber and fiber to the door in general, I always hear, “Durrrr, no one needs that much bandwidth. There’s just no use for it.”

Well, first, that’s not true. Not many people need it, but quite a few do. Not everyone just clicks on Facebook spasmodically and drools.

Second, bandwidth is something that needs to be present before the real killer apps develop. Broadband allowed Skype and similar tools to exist, not the other way around. Broadband built Youtube, and so many more. Those never would have existed without the infrastructure being there first.

I remember hearing the same argument in the 1990s when the first reasonably fast connections became available — that no one needed that blazing, uh, fast 5Mb/s and that dial-up was good enough for anybody, dammit. (I also heard that the internet was a fad a lot.)

It all repeats. One benefit of experience (though I think the value of experience is over-estimated) is that you get to see the same people make the same mistakes over and over again, and you learn to avoid them.