#1G4Topeka to be renamed as Google, Kansas?
A movement has started to bring Google into Topeka as an Internet Service Provider and I can think of only a few that are against it (I’m looking at you, Cox Communications). It wouldn’t be the first time Topeka was officially renamed to fulfill corporate fantasies of having a city named after them.
Supporters with some high energy leaders have done quite the job to get:
- Think Big Topeka website created to centralize all the happenings around the project
- a Facebook group for the cause has 8,900 members that didn’t even exist a month ago
- Youtube channel to give an outlet to tell Google “Why Topeka”…although I will be honest - the “Why not Topeka?” I’ve heard is not a good strategy.
- That’s not a misspelling or some kind of h@x0r code in the title; lots of people are talking: #1G4Topeka on twitter.
- City Council & local businesses support.
One thing I’ve noticed is the lack of ideas that would truly max out the bandwidth Google Fiber would provide: 128 MB per second. That’s like downloading things 2x that of the speed that see when you copy files to a USB thumb drive. What I envision is this sort of speed would truly make it possible to work from the cloud. Microsoft is soon to announce Office Online. Excel in a browser. I work with 15-80MB files in Excel. Excel in a browser is not a realistic alternative for me. Yet. Google has been pushing this same concept: GMail, Google Docs, Calendar…heck Chrome OS is basically a laptop with only a browser. The faster your Internet, the more you use Google services. My grand idea on this kind of bandwidth involves a hologram of T-Pain & auto-tuning…but I haven’t quite worked out all the details.
It’s kind of interesting to see a change in the way people are viewing Topeka now that something like this is a realistic opportunity (albeit no way to gauge Google’s favoritism towards a city). It’s worth noting that any city has the opportunity to get a shot at this - they are looking for a community with 50-500k people.
If you live in Shawnee County and this blog was a bit slow to load, I present to you the official nomination link (which you probably already saw with the popup):
http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi
Update: Topeka Mayor Bill Bunten will issue a proclamation calling for Topeka to be known for the month of March as “Google, Kansas, the capital city of fiber,” he told city council members Monday. Story here.
Update #2: Google answers back by changing its name to Topeka (for April Fools). They never asked for permission to use the sweet logo I created for this post…think anything will hold up in court? Also, please don’t sue me Google.
