The latest buzz is about a big, big idea that will be coming out of Google in the coming months. They are planning a new internet. Here is what Om Malik wrote in Business2.com today.
“What if Google wanted to give Wi-Fi access to everyone in America? And what if it had technology capable of targeting advertising to a user’s precise location? The gatekeeper of the world’s information could become one of the globe’s biggest Internet providers and one of its most powerful ad sellers, basically supplanting telecoms in one fell swoop. Sounds crazy, but how might Google go about it?
First it would build a national broadband network — let’s call it the GoogleNet — massive enough to rival even the country’s biggest Internet service providers. Business 2.0 has learned from telecom insiders that Google is already building such a network, though ostensibly for many reasons. For the past year, it has quietly been shopping for miles and miles of “dark,” or unused, fiber-optic cable across the country from wholesalers such as New York’s AboveNet. It’s also acquiring superfast connections from Cogent Communications and WilTel, among others, between East Coast cities including Atlanta, Miami, and New York. [Remember Google has $7 BILLION in cash burning a hole in it's deep pocket.]
Such large-scale purchases are unprecedented for an Internet company, but Google’s timing is impeccable. The rash of telecom bankruptcies has freed up a ton of bargain-priced capacity, which Google needs as it prepares to unleash a flood of new, bandwidth-hungry applications like video and telephone-over-internet. These offerings could include everything from a digital-video database to on-demand television programming.
Google has also leased thousands of square feet of office space in NYC, says Web Pro News, where communications hubs are located. They will need these when they launch their scheme to take over the internet.
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