Google to Begin Transforming Kansas City into a Gigabit City
What does a former Port Authority building in NYC, dark fiber, gigabit-speed Internet, and Kansas City have in common? Google. In early 2005, the Internet search giant began aquiring high-speed fiber optic lines all over the world. The company also moved into a building atop “a major physical network node that allows tech and telecom firms to share space in proximity to improve network service and speed,” according to Time Business.
At the time, there was a great deal of speculation that Google might be building it’s own private Internet. In his 2005 article for Search Engine Journal titled “Google Building Alternative Internet,” Jim Hedger hinted at the reality to come:
Google has always prided itself on its ability to organize the world’s information and provide it free of charge to its users. The cost of Google’s services is bourn by the advertisers. Google might simply be exponentially increasing its online real estate inventory by enticing hundreds of millions of new registered users to take a look at whatever it is they are creating.
Assuming it is the coolest thing on the block when released and is faster and cheaper than its competitors (as most of Google’s new products tend to be), many of those new users will choose to stick around to use the services offered by a Google branded network.
With the announcement that Google would begin construction on the first gigabit-speed fiberhood this October, it seems that the search engine giant is indeed offering the “coolest thing on the bock.” So what exactly is Google doing in Kansas City? Here, it is right from the Google Fiber Blog: