Alphabet hires Gregory McCray, ex-CEO of Aero Communications, to lead its Access division, which includes Fiber
Mark Bergen / Bloomberg :
Context & Ripple Effects
Alphabet is turning to a career cable-and-telecom operator to run the business Craig Barratt built: after Barratt spent 2016 exploring fixed wireless where fiber is too expensive and Alphabet pulled satellite veteran Tom Moore into Project Loon, it now hires Aero Communications ex-CEO Gregory McCray to lead Access, the division housing Fiber.
The hire reads as an attempt to bring operator discipline to a unit whose build-out economics never matched Alphabet's software margins — but the related coverage shows how unsettled the seat is: McCray exits after five months, Fiber president Dennish Kish and VP Milo Medin leave the division, and Dinesh Jain arrives as Access' third CEO in under two years.
First-order effects
- McCray takes direct control of Access and Fiber, replacing the Barratt-era engineering-led leadership with someone from traditional broadband operations.
Second-order effects
- The revolving door accelerates instead of stabilizing: within months McCray is out [[a:920645]] alongside the departures of Kish and Medin [[a:917941]], forcing Alphabet to recruit yet another telecom executive, TWC's former COO Dinesh Jain [[a:926473]].
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Alphabet's infrastructure bets get judged by the same bar as its software businesses — and repeated CEO turnover points toward Fiber being repositioned around cheaper access technologies like fixed wireless rather than universal fiber builds.
The trend: Alphabet keeps importing telecom-industry operators to make Google Fiber's capital-intensive model fit inside a software company, with each hire so far failing to end the search.