On the 10th of February, 2010 Google announced their plans on building and testing ultra high-speed internet access. Posted from their official blog at http://googleblog.blogspot.com:
“We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.”
The last day you could submit an application was March 26th, 2010. The response was phenomenal. Over 1100 cities applied with over 194,000 responses from individuals. Besides filling out the online application for their community, quite a few communities performed some stunts for Googles attention. Here is a list of a few of the stunts that have been done.
– The first was Topeka, Kansas changing the name of their town to Google, Kansas for 1 month. This obviously got Googles attention, because on April 1st, Google changed their name to “Topeka” for a day for an April Fools prank.
– In Duluth, Minnesota, the head of city government jumped into an ice cold lake. In response to that, the mayor of Sarasota, Florida climbed into a huge aquarium and swam with sharks.
– In Madison, Wisconsin, Roman Candle Pizzeria created a pizza called the Fibertron, with lots of fiber, and colorful like the Google logo. Also in Madison, a local ice cream shop created Google Fiber ice cream with M&Ms and granola to match Google’s colorful logo.
– The residents of Grand Rapids, Michigan rallied downtown dressed in Google colors. They released a half mile long string of balloons to represent the fiber-optic lines.
– The residents of Greenville, South Carolina spelled out “Google” using more than 2,000 LED glow sticks.
– Rancho Cucamonga, California changed its name to “Rancho Googlemonga.”
– Leo Laporte, popular internet icon stated on his “This Week in Google” podcast to shave a “G” in the back of his head and color his head with Google colors if his community Pedaluma, California was selected.
While everyone is competing to have their community selected, I am sure Google is enjoying the free advertising and publicity. Here is an excerpt from another blog entry from Google upon the closing of the submission process:
“Since we announced our plans to build experimental, ultra high-speed broadband networks, the response has been tremendous. Hundreds of communities and hundreds of thousands of individuals across the country have expressed their interest in the project. We’re not going to be able to build in every interested community – our plan is to reach a total of at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people – but we hope to learn lessons from this experiment that will help improve Internet access everywhere.
So what’s next? Over the coming months, we’ll be reviewing the responses to determine where to build. As we narrow down our choices, we’ll be conducting site visits, meeting with local officials and consulting with third-party organizations. Based on a rigorous review of the data, we will announce our target community or communities by the end of the year.”
Of course I am hoping my city is nominated. I would love faster internet, I could submit News Blaze articles quicker! Our city made a website, http://www.googlefiberhuntington.com as well as using social media such as Facebook to let Google know how interested we are. As quoted from Google, it looks like we will be waiting until the end of the year to hear the announcement, but to some, I am sure an announcement that their community will be getting Google Fiber would be a perfect Christmas present.
