As if serving your search results, reading your email, providing you with your favorite videos, storing your documents, keeping your calendar, and helping you find your way with maps wasn’t enough, Google also wants to provide the pipes through which you get to all of its wonders. Behold Google Fiber, superfast internet that the web giant says is 100 times faster than normal broadband, at a fraction of the price (paywall) of its rivals.
This isn’t munificence on Google’s part. As Quartz has explained before, the more time people spend online, and the better their internet connections, the more online media they will consume, the more things they will search for, and the more Google services—and ads—they will see. As Google Fiber’s general manager said in a conference call (paywall) this week, “people do more of what they love on the web when speeds are fast.” Of course, if it becomes profitable on its own, that’s an added bonus.
As for the cities desperately wooing Google, they know that fast internet connections and marquee tech names like Google bring with them the promise (if not always the reality) of growth and jobs. And residents get great connections to stream movies and TV shows. Win-win!
Already running in three US cities—Austin, Texas; Kansas City, Missouri; and Provo, Utah—Google is now in talks with 34 towns and cities in nine metropolitan areas to extend the service to their residents. Here’s the full list of cities Google wants to cable up.
- Phoenix (Arizona)
- Scottsdale (Arizona)
- Tempe (Arizona)
- San Jose (California)
- Santa Clara (California)
- Sunnyvale (California)
- Mountain View (California)
- Palo Alto (California)
- Atlanta (Georgia)
- Avondale Estates (Georgia)
- Brookhaven (Georgia)
- College Park (Georgia)
- Decatur (Georgia)
- East Point (Georgia)
- Hapeville (Georgia)
- Sandy Springs (Georgia)
- Smyrna (Georgia)
- Charlotte (North Carolina)
- Carrboro (North Carolina)
- Cary (North Carolina)
- Chapel Hill (North Carolina)
- Durham (North Carolina)
- Garner (North Carolina)
- Morrisville (North Carolina)
- Raleigh (North Carolina)
- Portland (Oregon)
- Beaverton (Oregon)
- Hillsboro (Oregon)
- Gresham (Oregon)
- Lake Oswego (Oregon)
- Tigard (Oregon)
- Nashville-Davidson (Tennessee)
- San Antonio (Texas)
- Salt Lake City (Utah)