Pittsburgh, Seattle Announce Interest In Google's Fiber Trial

An anonymous reader contributes a link to a press release from the mayor of Pittsburgh that says the city has announced, along with Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and the University of Pittsburgh, that it intends to respond to Google's 1Gbps FTTH (Fiber to the Home) request for information. Seattle's mayor, too, wants in on the action, and more cities will surely pile on.

Comments

tax dollars for corporate capital expenditures

[SuperBanana]

I bet they'll receive tens of thousands of applications in the coming weeks.

And guess what comes next? A reverse-competitive bidding process, whereby various cities write off their taxes on both the profits and the capital equipment, waive requirements like community access programs, and more- just to get google to give them fiber-to-the-home, something that has no proven public benefit. Which is idiotic- I don't want my tax dollars used to fund capital expenditures for corporations!

Anyone else a little more than slightly freaked out by this move? Google now encompasses search, email, instant messaging, calendaring, social networking, blogging (both content production and reading), cellular and telephone services, online payment, and now actual last-mile services? What's left?

Why does it feel like in 10 years we'll be calling it The Gnet, not the Internet?