Now U.S. Senator Al Franken has been enlisted to lobby Google in a bid by two midwestern cities to get free upgrades to gigabit internet connections. Comedy from the funniest man in Congress may give the towns of Duluth and Superior an edge in the increasingly clownish bids by municipalities across the country to win a piece of the Google action as well as bragging rights as the fastest town around. But below the surface, like where all those fiber optic cables might go, this is no laughing matter.
In his video Franken joins the ranks of the fake mayor of Duluth, the real mayor of Duluth, and the towns of Topeka, Kansas and Sarasota, Florida (temporarily renamed “Google” and “Google Island” respectively) in trying to curry Google’s favor through humor on YouTube — potentially one of the biggest winners in a world of ubiquitous ultra-speed broadband and net neutrality.
The competition for a ground-breaking Google experience is stiff — but so is much of the attempted humor by the above municipalities. Meanwhile Madison, Wisconsin, 16 towns in Utah, Huntsville, Alabama, and hundreds of other cities and towns are vying for Google’s attention more soberly, but have failed to attract the widespread attention that the pranks have. So Minnesota is wise to bring out the big gun that is Franken, late of Saturday Night Live and such unforgettable screen moments as gorilla-baiting Baggage Handler #1 in “Trading Places.”
Google hasn’t said when it will decide; the deadline for submitting a formal request is March 26. The request form itself is pretty straightforward — perhaps too much so, since it has brought out the inner carnival barker in public officials whose localities want in, jumping up and down, banging pots and pans and doing whatever else will get them noticed.
Their humor hides desperation, even though their goals mesh perfectly with the agenda Google is pursuing.
Given the sour state of the economy, which offers little cause for mirth, any American town or city that suddenly sees its broadband speeds increase 10,000 percent as a result of being connected to Google’s infrastructure will instantly become more attractive to spendy technophiles, start-up employers, telecommuters with jobs on the coasts and the latest flock of college graduates — many of whom currently migrate to hotspots (with hotspots) like Brooklyn or San Francisco.
Sarasota, Florida, appears to have gaffed in its video, by using a song Warner Music Group does not allow to appear in user-uploaded videos on YouTube: Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Perhaps Sarasota should have worried more, because now, more people are viewing the video on Facebook’s competing video service than on Google’s YouTube, which is no way to impress a would-be benefactor.
It’s clear what the recipients of Google Fiber stand to gain: the world, delivered by modulated light (updated). But what’s in it for Google?
Basically, Google is so flush with its cash, and so frustrated by slow American ISPs, that it has decided to step in and improve connection speeds itself or goad someone else to — all the better to increase traffic to Google, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, Picasa, YouTube, and so on.
The company’s thinking appears to be, “if you want something done right, do it yourself,” rather than depending on the oligopoly of entrenched internet service providers currently serving (but mostly under-serving) American consumers relative to those in other developed countries. But it might also be sandbagging in an attempt to do as little as possible to scare others into doing something.
Who can forget Google’s brilliant play in the 2008 bidding war for the 700Mhz spectrum auction? The search and ad giant was a high-visibility player but somehow managed to A) be outbid by Verizon and AT&T and B) still get all it really wanted: FCC’s openness regulations ensured that any compatible device — including those it had in the works — would be able to work with any network on the band.
Google makes its money connecting people with data and showing them ads along the way. Anything that increases the number of people on the internet and the amount of data they seek is good for the company. On most ISPs, YouTube videos can stutter or stop due to low connection speeds, even from “high-speed” providers. One way or another, Google seeks to quicken the net by connecting cities to high-speed fiber optic lines that transmit data with modulated light (updated) rather than the wire-based electrons employed by most ISPs (fiber-optic Verizon Fios excepted).
Wherever Google decides to put these pipes, they will be open-access, meaning that residents will subscribe via competing third-party providers — a gesture of goodwill that could deflect criticism that Google is trying to own the internet.
And then, of course, people will start scratching their heads and pointing fingers at their ISPs in the 99.99 percent of the country that doesn’t have it so good.
Senator Franken jokes as he kowtows to Google in the above video, but he’s also dead serious about courting Google’s fiber optic connection. Also no laughing matter: competition in the ISP market is so weak that it takes an act of GOOG to move things forward.
