Google's Gonna Do What?!

[Commentary] By getting an extensive feel for fiber deployment, they'll get a better sense of where the economic value to Google lies.

Galen Updike, Telecommunications Development Manager at the State of Arizona's Government Information Technology Agency (GITA), recently made an interesting point. It's darn near impossible for private sector companies to financially benefit from broadband's economic development benefits to communities. That means someone has to do some serious eyes-wide-open examination of this nut to figure out how to crack it. However, there's serious upside to being the nutcracker. Google could provide investments and strategic relationships to those entities that become the actual network builders and service providers. In the end, these deals could work out very well for Google. And frankly, they work out best for consumers and businesses too because you don't want your content provider and your access provider to be one and the same. That's what leads to monopoly and duopoly strangleholds on markets, and goes to the core of why many of us are fighting for net neutrality.