Google’s efforts to either join or undermine the traditional telecoms infrastructure are getting ever clearer. The 700 MHz frequency auction is the most obvious effort, because it affects US telecoms policy [via Muniwireless] in a monolithic way. Taking a step back and looking at that bidding effort in combination with Google’s investments in ever-more data centers, dark fiber, power plants, peering-point processing, muni Wi-Fi, mesh networking, handset technology, this week femto cells, and whatever other pieces I missed, a massive distributed network infrastructure is forming. For the sake of argument, let’s include Google’s CPU footprint in 9000 enterprises, where the controlling contract is a two-year license to their search appliance.
It may be that Google originally launched many of these projects for operational cost and efficiency reasons, or as a Net Neutrality hedge, but the aggregated effort is turning into something much more.
I’d pay for a monthly analyst report on the growth of Google’s physical footprint and potential as an Internet access provider. Does anyone know of an existing report or want to get one going?