It is worth reading this recent posting by Christopher Mitchell, on the Community Broadband Networks site, for an angle of the Google-vs.-all-comers battle not usually featured in the mainstream press. That angle is Google's significantly cheaper cost structure for data-movement of all kinds, and the commercial and technological possibilities this opens for the company. To return to one of my hobby horses: this is the corporate version of the advantage that countries or regions have when their transport / communication / utilities infrastructure is better than someplace else's. You don't have to know exactly what your roads -- railroads, airports, seaports, data lines -- will be used for. It doesn't matter: almost anything that people choose to do will be faster, cheaper, more responsive if it operates in this more favorable environment. The unfortunate corollary -- unfortunate for the modern United States -- it that almost anything that people try to do with decaying infrastructure will be slower, more expensive, and worse.
I am not equipped to judge whether the assertions and judgments in the article are accurate. For instance, this:
Milo Medin -- the head of the Google Fiber project -- is fond of saying, "No one moves bits cheaper than Google." Google has built an incredible worldwide fiber optic network.But assuming this is right, it suggests an aspect of the clash-of-Internet-titans that deserves more attention than it usually gets. (Fiber optic cable image from here. Routine disclosure: Many of my friends, plus one of my immediate family members, work for Google.)
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