An interesting speculative article by Om Malik in the upcoming issue of Business 2.0:
What if Google (GOOG) 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
The article goes on to claim that Google has already been purchasing dark fiber from distressed telecoms such as AboveNet, and points out that the bandwidth-intensive services (print, video, music, voice) that lie in Google’s future make it increasingly attractive to consider becoming a network itself, both for control and to avoid transit fees by peering directly to end user ISPs.
