It seems that every few weeks in 2010, Google is scheming up some way to get more and more involved in the lives of every single American in almost every single way. From social networking services like Wave and Buzz to the latest announcement that Google is teaming with Samsung to bring Android based televisions and a set-top streaming box to living rooms everywhere. One of the biggest projects of the years has been the announcement back in February that Google would provide Google Fiber for Communities with a speed of 1GB/second (which is 100 times faster than anyone has access to today, according to Google) to at least 50,000 homes in an American city and as many as 500,000 on first installation.
There has been a lot of competition on the pitches in the past few months with cities making ever effort to get Google’s attention, from changing their town name to Google (Topeka, KS) to staging a color coordinated message captured by flyover (Durham, NC).
A few Facebook pages (one here and one here) and individuals pleading the city have popped up over the past few weeks to gather attention in the Raleigh area for the City of Raleigh to support an official initiative to get Google to choose Raleigh as one of the lucky communities. There has also been a lot of chatter about it on a grassroots level but now there is also word that the City of Raleigh has prepared the information and answered all questions required by Google to officially throw their hat in for consideration. We aren’t sure when this happened, but let’s hope there will be a concerted effort by the city if they are serious. Our neighbors have a lot going for them as well, as profiled recently on The State of Things.
You can also nominate Raleigh by going here and filling out the form. More information and the entire “competition” here and watch the promo video below. Google sure knows how to get everyone to constantly give them free advertising.
Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone. Here are some specific things that we have in mind:
• Next generation apps: We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it’s creating new bandwidth-intensive “killer apps” and services, or other uses we can’t yet imagine.
• New deployment techniques: We’ll test new ways to build fiber networks, and to help inform and support deployments elsewhere, we’ll share key lessons learned with the world.
Openness and choice: We’ll operate an “open access” network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we’ll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way.
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