MatthewVB

Google is coming home, to your home (and mine). How? Two words: energy (and dark fiber – but more on that in minute). Okay, that’s a few words – but deserves to be said again, energy. First, in interest of full disclosure, Google owns me. My email, my profiles, my docs — half of my online life is tied up in Google or at least connected to Google; all of this by choice. Okay, back to energy.

Google made a big announcement with their jump into organizing personal energy consumption with Google.org’s (the non-profit end of Google) PowerMeter. It’s no mystery that Google has a strong interest in being green (the photo above is of their Mountain View campus – note all the solar panels on the buildings) and that Google is a large consumer of energy. It was also big news last month when Google was granted the rights to buy and sell energy from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It appears that Google is not only generating enough energy for their needs via their various green installations, but is ready to start making some money by selling excess energy back to local cities.

Take the localization aspects of this and tie it in with Google dumping their own ISP-like network out into cities, and we have ourselves a mini-utility being formed. Cities are vying to have Google come to their town: the city formally known as Topeka, Kansas is now Google, Kansas (just for March). Topeka Google, Kansas isn’t alone. Greenville, South Carolina has also jumped on board with the launch of We are Feeling Lucky, a website devoted to getting Google to come to Greenville and lay down some dark fiber there. (They even have social media and hashtags working for them.)

Other cities playing the game:

• Duluth, Minnesota – probably the coolest website out of the bunch
• Columbia, Missouri

So – where is Google going? To your city. Anytown, USA is now about to be Googletown, USA.