Alistair Barr

A Google-led plan to overhaul how valuable airwaves are used for calls and texts is gaining momentum across the wireless industry, giving the company the chance to play a central role in networks of the future. Citizens Broadband Radio Service, or CBRS, is a fat slice of the US airwaves being freed from the military’s exclusive control. Instead of just zipping messages between aircraft carriers and fighter jets, the spectrum will be shared by the Navy, wireless carriers like Verizon, cable companies including Comcast, and even hospitals, refineries, and sports stadiums.

Frustrated by the hammerlock of US broadband providers, Google has searched for ways around them to provide faster Internet speeds at lower cost, via everything from high-speed fiber to satellites. In the process, it is changing how next-generation broadband is rolled out.

Telecom and cable companies have traditionally been required to blanket entire cities, offering connections to every home. By contrast, Google is building high-speed services as it finds demand, laying new fiber neighborhood by neighborhood.

Others, including AT&T and CenturyLink, are copying Google's approach, underscoring a deeper shift in US telecommunications policy, from requiring universal service to letting the marketplace decide. As Google's model gathers momentum, it stirs up questions about whether residents of poor or underserved neighborhoods will be left behind.

Google bought wireless-communications startup Alpental Technologies in its bid to extend fast Internet service to more places. Alpental was started by former Clearwire engineers including Michael Hart and Pete Gelbman.

The company was developing a cheap, high-speed communications service using the 60GHz band of spectrum, according to a letter the Alpental engineers wrote to the Federal Communications Commission in 2013.

The 60GHz band has been used for high-capacity networking indoors and to extend fiber-optic Internet service from one commercial building to others nearby. The Federal Communications Commision loosened some rules governing this band of spectrum in 2013, saying that it could be used to provide wireless connections of up to a mile at speeds up to seven gigabits per second. That could extend service without the cost of building new wireline networks in some areas, the FCC said in August. Most broadband Internet services offer much slower speeds, below one gigabit per second.

Google is facing fresh accusations of anticompetitive behavior in Europe over its Android operating system for mobile phones, even as the Web giant struggles to overcome separate concerns over its dominance of online search.

It said it filed with European Union regulators, Aptoide -- a Portuguese company that runs a marketplace for mobile applications, or app store -- claims that Google is abusing its dominant position in the smartphone market to push users away from app stores that rival its own, Google Play.

"We are struggling to grow, even to survive, in the face of Google systematically setting up obstacles for users to install third-party app stores in the Android platform and blocking competition in their Google Play store," said Paulo Trezentos, Aptoide's co-founder and CEO.

The Lisbon-based company, which says it has six million unique monthly users, said it planned to "join forces with other independent app stores to forge a common front" against Google. The complaint is the latest in a litany of antitrust woes facing the US search giant in Europe.

Google has given roughly 200 people and organizations, including a British police unit, the ability to “flag” up to 20 YouTube videos at once to be reviewed for violating the site’s guidelines.

The Financial Times reported that the UK Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit has been using its “super flagger” authority to seek reviews -- and removal -- of videos it considers extremist. The news sparked concern that Google lets the UK government censor videos that it doesn’t like, and prompted Google to disclose more details about the program. Any user can ask for a video to be reviewed. Participants in the super flagger program, begun as a pilot in 2012, can seek reviews of 20 videos at once.

A person familiar with the program said the vast majority of the 200 participants in the super flagger program are individuals who spend a lot of time flagging videos that may violate YouTube’s community guidelines. Fewer than 10 participants are government agencies or non-governmental organizations such as anti-hate and child-safety groups, the person added. In either case, Google said it decides which videos are removed from YouTube.

“Any suggestion that a government or any other group can use these flagging tools to remove YouTube content themselves is wrong,” a Google spokesman said.