The news that Austin is Google Fiber's next stop has pundits scurrying around for more answers.
Now that Google has confirmed it's bringing its $70 per month, 1Gbps fiber-optic offering to Austin, it's fun to watch pundits trying to decipher its strategy.
Google is in the process of innocently pulling up dark fiber around the country and stringing fiber around a town, as if this is some great test. Or Google is pretending it is, as some writers posit, shaming the existing providers into upping their speeds.
None of this is true. Google is testing this, yes, but not as some sort of way to scold the competition. Google is testing how to implement and market fiber with plans to emerge as the top ISP in the country. This is not just for kicks.
The company sees what is slowing U.S. uptake of high-speed connectivity, mainly conflict of interest. Comcast, for example, could probably turn all of its users into 100Mbps users overnight without dropping a dime. But instead it offers various packages that require only a simple switch of a setting on the computer to implement. The company hates the idea that we'll all be using Roku boxes rather than subscribing to its TV deals.
Now is the time for Comcast and AT&T to climb up some polls and clip Google cables the old-fashioned way. I get the sense that's what Google is waiting for. I expect to see this sort of cheap trick to be employed sooner than later, although nowadays this sort of activity could be construed as terrorism and that means big trouble.
If Google can get past cheap network sabotage tricks, it could begin to roll out gigabit nationwide. In just a few years we could go from 16th in the world in overall connectivity speed to number one. This should have been a national priority some time back.
At some point though, you have to wonder if people trust Google enough to route all individual traffic through Google's servers. The company already mines Gmail for user information and keeps all Google search data. This is supposedly for market research but at what point do we say enough is enough?
Google leads the world in search, driverless cars, phone operating systems, mail services, and office in the cloud. Now it is going to be the most desired ISP. And what are Microsoft and Apple doing with their money? Sitting on it, mostly.
Anyway, my point is that Google fiber-to-the-home is not a lark. Whether the company will ever spin it off as a separate company, who knows, but it looks like a serious threat to Comcast, AT&T, and a few of the smaller gougers out there.
I'd like to toss an idea out there, which I suspect has been discussed by Google executives: how about making the third test market Redmond, Washington—right in the Microsoft back yard? That would be hilarious.
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