Google looking to test fiber Internet at gigabit speeds for up to 500,000 people

Oh, hello there, crazy drool-worthy and inexpensive ultra high-speed Internet from Google! Yeah, that’s right, Google is looking to launch an experimental, ultra high-speed broadband network in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We are talking about Gigiabit fiber to the home speeds here. The only thing that currently comes close is Verizon FiOS, and their current download speed tops out at 50 megabits per second. Gigabit would be 1000 megabits (or, 128 MB) per second, which is just insultingly fast. Even better? They want to launch it at inexpensive prices in the launch/test cities. So, why would they do this, and what would be the benefit?

First, competition. Google wants to bring the price down while bringing the service level up, and they are putting their money where their mouth is and challenging other ISPs right on their home turf. If you had a choice between crazy-fast Google Internet and sucky Comcast, you’d likely end up going with Google in a heartbeat, since it’s like 200x faster, and less expensive. Second, Google is getting into the web apps business hard. It would be ideal for them for web applications and native desktop applications to have no difference in speed, and you can bet that they’d be deploying these tests to optimize the hell out of their web app products. Make no mistake, they want Google Docs to run just as fast in your browser as Microsoft Word runs when you launch it on your local machine.

We love this, and despite having a 50/20 FiOS connection, we want it badly. Google, bring this to Seattle, k?

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