First thing I found out is that my City needed a Gmail account. I pushed the button (like I was really a City) so I could partner with Google and be one of the selected cities to offer Gigabit broadband to my unsuspecting citizens in the “Think big with gig: Our experimental fiber network” US Google sweepstakes. Another GMail Account? Internet scam? …. But I am not laughing.
To bring us up to Giga speed this week Google, net profit of $9 billion in 2009, announced the nationwide sweepstakes and wants to partner with small cities with populations of between 50,000 and 500,000 cities to play around with fiber to the home. You could hear the lyrics in the air “Who has the Google ticket?” But I am not laughing.
The official Google sweepstakes blog states “Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York. Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Or collaborating with classmates…” blah blah blah, another blogger, but the official Google blogger…. ”Universal, ultra high-speed Internet access will make all this and more possible.” But I am not laughing.
Just what I need is to download Godzilla in 5 minutes. Zwingle Iowa (pop 98) needs to talk with Dr. House live in 3D at the drop of a Giga Google moment, but I am not laughing.
With only $9 billion in net profits Google needs to partner with someone. Really, our money (Your’s, mine, who cares?) is why they need your local councilperson to ping them. After all we are talking about (on the small end) a billion $ experiment so, if I am lucky enough to live in that small 50,000 pop Google Golden city, I can purchase “competitively priced” high speed tethered data. But this is 2010 and the Trillion $ world. So I am not laughing.
I am confident that someone over at Google saw Avatar in 3D to many times and wanted it on their Blackberry Google Fusion. But I am not laughing.
At one time around 1980 as President of the Iowa cable television I made the historic prediction that someday I would build a cable television system with 100 channels. I was scoffed at. They were laughing.
Google, for that killer App you referred to, and a free one to boot. I just added USTREAM to my iPhone and I can stream live video from almost anywhere on this planet without a tether. Now that is cool.
We need to dream otherwise we are not human.
Later Tom -
Meet me at the Parallels Summit in Miami February 22-24
More about Tom: NCC – the Hosting Business Broker Twitter: – TomNCC
