First and foremost: To provide redundancy to their own network. In order for Google to remain reliable, they need to ensure that their providers can stay up. If that means having multiple backup routes from datacenter to datacenter then that's what it takes. It would even help them expand their growing network of data centers.

But what other uses would there be for such a robust high speed network? Well, there are many. Let me speculate on a few:

I have already mentioned, in previous articles, what I thought Google might be doing and I think ISP, data integrity and security are just drops in the bucket.

When I think of Google, one of the things I think of is this massive, decentralized network of computers running as one. Essentially, you have tens of thousands of servers acting together, thinking they are one unit.

So it would make sense that Google engineers would want to ensure that this network is maintained. But there has to be more to this.

So I started thinking. And I think this next phase of network building will be targeted around us - the Google users.

I think they are going to scale up in order to offer more web based versions of software we are already comfortable using. Remember, Google's mission is "to make the world's information universally accessible and useful." How can information on your home computer, or workstation be made accessible if you are on the road or otherwise away from your desk?

Now, in order to make this happen, they don't have to worry about treading on patents. They can make converters from popular packages (like Microsoft Office). Or they can even borrow from the open source community - there are many MS office translators out there.

So let's say Google does this - they build this huge network to allow us, the common people, to properly access information. What next?

Well obviously, they need to have a place to store these things therefore huge data storage centers are needed. We already know that they have file storage capabilities. The file storage capabilities of Gmail reflect what Google could be as far as file storage. This would allow users to store files online, accessible from anywhere.

Of course, like Gmail, they would probably want to be able to serve us ads relating to our content, so that might raise the ire of a few people (privacy rights you know). But to the average guy like me, I could care less. Sure serve me those ads, just give me my 1 gig (or 10 gigs?) of free storage space. And I can use my Firefox plugs to "remove" the content from the pages.

Then, of course, they will integrate the files into a sharing network, like Orkut, so that you could join or form your own community and share your files. Or they could make it so you could email (or share via an IM application) hyperlinks to your spreadsheet, or document, or presentation.

Of course, there wouldn't be much of a drain on Google's resources. After all, this is a technology which won't reach mass adoption any time soon. It will be the geeks, like myself, who join right away. So Google can monitor growth, and plan for expansion as needed.

But imagine the power Google will have? They will have essentially stolen some of Microsoft's key market - the Office system - and made it publicly available.

Imagine the power Google will have if they can move more and more common applications from the desktop to the web? Even if they don't move the entire app from the desktop, but give users the ability to edit and change these documents. That would be a huge bonus for users.

Then users won't necessarily need to purchase Microsoft products. Of course, the Microsoft products will likely be MUCH more usable, but to build in the ability to share documents between applications will be a huge benefit to users.

Soon users could share their Outlook calendar on the Google web, and book appointments etcetera.

But Google will have to ramp up its scalability and reliability to offer this on a mass scale. This is probably why Dark fiber is so interesting to them.

Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
Enquiro.com

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