> I suspect this is exactly what Google wants. They don't want the burden of bringing high speed internet to everyone, but they do want everyone to have high speed access.
I suspect this overstating the case significantly -- I think its basically right in that Google's prime motivation is to push the market toward widespread, ultra-high speed access. But I think that by the time they launched Google Fiber, and certainly before they expanded it to Austin, they also had a model where it was worthwhile beyond being a lever to move the industry, between direct revenue and the opportunity to use it as leverage to promote the Android ecosystem through the Nexus devices tied to it.
As with the Chrome browser, heck and even Android itself, what Google does with the prime motivation of moving the market (and preventing another vendor from getting/keeping a monopoly which they can leverage against Google) isn't necessarily a "burden".
I suspect this overstating the case significantly -- I think its basically right in that Google's prime motivation is to push the market toward widespread, ultra-high speed access. But I think that by the time they launched Google Fiber, and certainly before they expanded it to Austin, they also had a model where it was worthwhile beyond being a lever to move the industry, between direct revenue and the opportunity to use it as leverage to promote the Android ecosystem through the Nexus devices tied to it.
As with the Chrome browser, heck and even Android itself, what Google does with the prime motivation of moving the market (and preventing another vendor from getting/keeping a monopoly which they can leverage against Google) isn't necessarily a "burden".