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Milwaukee to make play for super-fast Google Web service
Mar 10, 2010 (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
There's a good chance Google runs your e-mail, knows what videos you like and tracks every query you make on the Internet.
Now Milwaukee is among the cities scrambling to entice Google to become the local Internet service provider.
Milwaukee officials will apply to be a part of Google Fiber, an experiment in which Google plans to choose cities to lay new fiber lines and provide Internet service that the company says would reach over 1 gigabit per second, 100 times faster than standard Internet access.
Jodie Tabak, spokeswoman for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, said the mayor's office received e-mails from residents late last month encouraging officials to apply. Officials were already interested in the project. "There's a bit of a swell," she said.
Google says it will build networks for 50,000 to 500,000 people. Google plans to roll out the service in at least one community, but could pick several. The company says it would charge for the service. The company wants to study how such a high-speed system works and share its findings with other Internet service providers.
"We're doing this because we want to experiment with new ways to make the Web better and faster for everyone, allowing applications that will be impossible today," James Kelly, a product manager on Google's Infrastructure Team, said in a video announcing the experiment last month. State, county and local officials have a March 26 deadline to apply for the project, Kelly said.
"We've already seen cities that are leveraging the opportunity by changing their names to Google," said Al Krueger, founder of Comet Branding, a Milwaukee public relations and social media agency. "Instead of Google doing all the talking themselves, this program gets their potential future customers to do it, too."
The intriguing part, Krueger said, is that if Google starts selling Internet service commercially after its testing period, "tons of people across the country, and likely more than if Google had taken a different approach, are going to know about the service already and may consider it."
Any wave of local support hasn't made it to the social networking site Facebook. A fan page promoting Milwaukee as a potential Google Fiber site on Facebook had only 178 fans on Wednesday morning. A similar page for Madison had 1,882 fans. Columbia, Mo., had 5,168 fans.
Madison might have another leg up on Milwaukee. The capital city already has a Google office. Officials there told the Wisconsin State Journal that the Google Fiber project could bring 1,000 jobs to the city and $97 million in infrastructure investment.
Officials in Appleton and Marshfield also are applying for the project, according to news reports.
To see more of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, or to subscribe to the newspaper,
go to http://www.jsonline.com. Copyright (c) 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
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