Google to start home entertainment system + high speed internet service (faster than anything out)

Google Inc. is developing a home-entertainment system that streams music wirelessly throughout the home and would be marketed under the company's own brand, according to people briefed on the company's plans.

The effort marks a sharp shift in strategy for Google, which for the first would time would design and market consumer electronic devices under the Google brand. Google has up to now mainly focused on developing the operating system that powers devices such as smartphones, tablets and televisions and allowing other companies to build and brand the hardware that uses it.

Google's Android unit has led a multi-year effort to develop the new entertainment device, which may possibly stream other digital media besides music and is expected to be unveiled later this year, people familiar with the matter said.

The new device, along with Google's pending purchase of device maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., shows how serious the Internet giant is about wanting to control both the software and hardware process, a formula used by rival Apple Inc.

Google’s highly-anticipated plan to build an ultra-fast city broadband network kicked into gear Monday with the search giant’s announcement that it will begin laying miles of fiber-optic cable across Kansas City, Kansas and neighboring Kansas City, Missouri. Google said it aims to create a new “high speed infrastructure” that will allow local citizens to enjoy data speeds 100 times the national average. Google’s goal? To show off its telecom engineering chops and showcase next-generation web-applications. Oh, and maybe shame the big national broadband providers into improving U.S. Internet service speed, which currently lags behind many other countries around the world.

Google’s Kansas City network is not just a stunt: the company is implicitly making a broader point about the lack of broadband competition in the U.S., which is one of the reasons broadband is slower and more expensive here. If Google is successful, it could embarrass — or at least call out — existing ISPs once it becomes clear that much faster broadband speeds are possible in major U.S. cities. For comparison, Verizon’s ultra high-end FiOS plan tops out at 150 megabits-per-second. Google’s Kansas City network will boast blazing speeds of 1 gigabit-per-second, or nearly seven-times that of Verizon. (HD streaming-video to the living-room, anyone?)

Google first announced the project in February of 2010, saying it wanted “to make a meaningful contribution to the shared goal of delivering faster and better Internet for everyone.” Over 1,000 cities expressed interest, and last year, Google selected Kansas City as the first city for the test program (and later expanded to neighboring Kansas City, Missouri). Google spent several months hammering out the details with local officials, including where the company could hang its fiber cables on city utility poles. Now, all systems are go, Google’s Kevin Lo wrote in a company blog post. Google isn’t saying how much the network will cost, only that it will offer the super-fast broadband service at “competitive” prices for consumers. But let’s face it: Google isn’t going to match its sky-high search ad profits with this venture, and may actually lose money in the short-term. So what’s Google’s game here?

Enter Google. This isn’t the first time the search giant has used its clout to try to nudge the incumbent broadband providers. Google owns vast swaths of so-called “dark fiber” — unused cable that it picked up for cheap after the dot-com bust, and in 2008 the company bid $4.6 billion for a highly-valuable chunk of wireless spectrum known as the 700Mhz C Block. Verizon Wireless ultimately snagged the spectrum for $4.7 billion, but Google’s bid triggered FCC “open access” provisions that the search giant favored. Many analysts view Google’s ultra-high-speed broadband initiative in a similarly strategic light. In the end, it’s highly unlikely that Google will begin offering fiber-to-the-home broadband on a nation-wide basis. But Google will have made its point.

insta-cop that ISP.

biggest question is pricing... and if there is a bandwidth cap that'd be extra weak.

I pay $55 a month right now for 20down/2up but no bandwidth cap... probably on the more expensive side

Im in KCMO, and yeah, I have been waiting on this. Its on its way, but has experienced some delay because of the city and some political haters. But when that !! hits, it will shame any and all ISP's around, by a mile and a half.


I doubt they make it all across the nation though, the speeds they are planning to offer, at the cheap[..] costs that are floating around the rumor mill just......!! on everything. There is no way comcast and timewarner dont do, and spend everything they have to stop Google from being able to roll this out Nationwide.

i cant wait to drop comcast, hurry up google!

faster than Fios...

google selling wolf tickets

I dont think it's a complete lie. isp's are known to cap the data speeds, so do i think google will come with a faster service... yes. but Im not sure if they can get the speeds 7x faster