I always believed Google's primary reason for offering Fiber was to "inspire" current ISPs to pick up the speed pace.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/googl...
1) Google didn't want to be a service provider. ("Customer service? What's that??") It only needed to feign the threat to get the other real ISPs to pick up the speed. They were only committed enough to acheive that broader goal.
2) "Failure" is good for Google. It's a cover for where they are dominant. Shuttering Fiber isn't a failure. It's a win.
It’s a bug in Google’s promo driven culture. You don’t get promoted at Google by being good at your job, you have to show “impact”. That’s much easier to do by being on a new initiative. You don’t do that by improving and maintaining existing projects.
Amazon has the same “impact” driven promo culture. I haven’t worked at Google. But I did work at Amazon. From what I read about Google, it’s the same Hunger Games mentality.
Around the same time the FTC was considering (and did) raise the speed definition of broadband and they YouTube had a big push to make 1080p streaming smooth and accessible, and they were being held back by a lot of slow last mile ISPs.
Then everybody went mobile. So, now Google isn't quite as fussed about fibre.
Even if they were they couldn't get into a whole lot of markets. It sort of piggy backs off of municipal fiber which is a nonstarter in some places due to costs or it straight up being illegal.
Google also has Google Fi which is a mobile provider.