Google (s goog) makes no bones about the fact that it is a speed freak. It loves speedy websites and punishes those with slow websites. It wants faster wireless Internet. And with the recent launch of its gigabit to the home broadband program in Kansas City, Kan., the company has made it clearer: When it comes to broadband, faster is just better. Of course, that move disappointed a whole lot of people, including our own Stacey Higginbotham, who has been praying for better broadband in Austin, Texas.
Friday morning, Domain Name Wire, a blog dedicated to the domain name industry, reported that Google has registered more than 100 domains such as Alaska Get Online, Get Alaska Online, Get Online Alaska. The search giant has registered domain names for other states such as Alabama, Colorado, North Dakota and South Dakota, Arkansas, Arizona and so on. It also grabbed GetAmericaOnline.com. There may be more.
“Although it’s not clear if Google is the registrant, a company that registers domains for Google also registered HowFastIsMyBrowser.com at the same time,” Domain Name Wire reports.
Does this mean Google is going to start fiber broadband services in these states? I wish, but it’s not going to happen. I’m betting this is just another way for the company to start lobbying politicians and pushing for faster Internet across America. After all, the faster America gets online, the more it needs to use search to find something, anything. And that can’t be bad for Google.
“Although it’s not clear if Google is the registrant…”
Huh? Pretty clear to me
http://coolwhois.com/d/alaskagetonline.com
Registrant:
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View CA 94043
P.S. Stacey will be happy to know they registered “Texas get Online” too!
🙂
Thanks Todd. Actually that comment was about Howfastismybrowser.com
I actually think this is the American version of a campaign Google is currently running in Canada. Google has partnered with several Canadian service providers to push businesses to enable businesses to create free websites.
http://www.gybo.ca/
The idea seems to be to promote Google’s small business products (apps, adwords, etc.)
http://www.gybo.ca/about
The Google Apps Marketplace is a major a competitor of Businessapps.bell.ca, which is powered by AppDirect, so we’ve been following it pretty closely. I’m guessing it was a test run for the US campaign. NYtimes.com did the same thing with their paywall
http://www.financialpost.com/news/York+Times+rolls+paywall+Canada/4457011/story.html
They seem to have been having a lot of success with it, so they’re probably preparing to launch it.
Om, please give credit where credit is due–I reported and published this a day earlier, on June 16th, on my blog http://www.billhartzer.com/pages/google-to-encourage-americans-to-get-online/