Over on seattlepi.com's Strange Bedfellows blog, my colleague Chris Grygiel reports:
On Wednesday, the Internet giant announced plans to build experimental broadband networks that could deliver speeds of 1 gigabit per second to a half-million Americans. With most DSL, cable and fiber-optic infrastructures delivering speeds of 3 megabits to 20 megabits per second, Google's proposed network would be ridiculously faster.
Why, other than world domination, would Google want to get into the ISP business?
Well, according to the official corporate position, "the purpose of this project is to experiment and learn" what application developers could create with faster Internet. But perhaps Google, which occasionally spats with existing ISPs over speeds and fees, wants to send a message: If you won't do it, we will.
So Google put out a request for information (RFI) Wednesday to see what American communities would be interested in Google's pilot program. And it took Seattle only a day to respond.
And in the middle of Microsoft Country.
I think now is an appropriate time to gauge Seattle's overall opinion of Google, the ever-expanding and highly profitable advertising company. Remember, Google's corporate motto is, "Don't be evil." But why would it feel the need to run a Super Bowl ad?
