Does Google Fiber Avoid the Biggest Cities?

Google has a reputation for succeeding in a singular style. The Harris Poll Reputation Quotient report has consistently ranked Google as one of the best-liked and most-trusted companies the past several years, and for good reason. Google’s primary-colored product line is diverse, innovative and effective. And when things aren’t working, Google is the first to admit it and move onto something else. Luckily for those discontented by the incumbent Internet service providers that are monopolizing and duopolizing communities around the nation, Fiber appears to be working. When Google announced plans to enter the broadband market five years ago, people were excited. And in 2015, Google Fiber customers in Provo (UT), Austin (TX), and Kansas City (KS) do not feel let down. Satisfaction polls show Fiber users wouldn’t switch to another company offering similar services at the same price. But with the product being Gigabit Internet at $70 a month, a lot of customers would tolerate buying from the Khmer Rouge, or maybe even Comcast. Google’s product -- lightning fast Internet -- sells itself. Fiber is proving itself more than an experiment, as Google will soon expand to communities in Raleigh-Durham (NC), Nashville (TN), Atlanta (GA), Salt Lake City (UT), and potentially San Jose (CA), Portland (OR), Phoenix (AZ), and San Antonio (TX). In 10 years, Google Fiber may be as prevalent as AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Charter or CenturyLink in a handful of big cities. But the biggest metropolitan centers remain conspicuously absent from Google’s plans. Los Angeles (CA), New York (NY), Chicago (IL), San Francisco (CA), San Diego (CA), Las Vegas (NV), Seattle (WA), Houston (TX), Jacksonville (FL), Detroit (MI), Boston (MA), and Philadelphia (PA), together make for tens of millions who may never get chance to be Fiber customers.