A little less than two years ago, Google laid out plans to roll out a new lightning-fast Internet network that would make buffering and load times a thing of the past. That dreamlike service had only been available in three cities to date: Kansas City, Austin and Provo, Utah.
On Wednesday, Google announced that it had "invited" 34 cities across nine metropolitan areas to work with it in order to determine whether and how to hook them up with Fiber, too. Those cities include Atlanta, San Jose, Charlotte and Portland, among others.

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Judging by the headlines in local news outlets, you'd think these cities had just won a golden ticket.
"Nashville on the short list..." one headline in a Nashville publication began. "Google picks Charlotte," another publication's headline began. "Google Fiber takes a fresh look at Portland," said a third.
There's certainly reason to be excited. The introduction of Fiber in Kansas City led to a burst of startup activity, not to mention being a welcome option for average consumers. Rich Greenfield, a media analyst with BTIG, went to visit Kansas City in 2012 shortly after Fiber arrived there and described the general feedback this way: "It's amazing. Who wouldn't want it?"
The real debate wasn't whether consumers would have an appetite for such a service; it was whether Google was committed to making the investment necessary to build it out on a large scale. According to Greenfield, the announcement Wednesday answered that question conclusively.
"I think this went from science experiment to real business today," Greenfield told Mashable. "Most people had blown this off as not real because they would never launch in a major city. This is now serious cities."

So what exactly does Google gain by becoming a broadband provider? In a few words: anything and everything.
Greenfield and other analysts we spoke with rattled off a long list of factors that may be driving Google's thinking with Fiber. It can serve as a profitable standalone business, which is something that Google's CFO highlighted in a recent earnings call. It gives Google yet another avenue into users' homes and all the data that comes with it. It helps pressure other providers to embrace higher-speed network, which paves the way to support Google's future Internet applications.
"Google is working on the next generation of Internet application software that requires better bandwidth, so they are helping to enable that infrastructure," Greenfield says. Google might not singlehandedly build out that infrastructure — in fact, it most certainly won't — but just by trying it can force other providers to do so.
News of the possible Fiber expansion comes at an interesting time for Google and other Internet companies.A few days earlier, Comcast announced plans to acquire Time Warner Cable in a deal that further consolidates power in the industry. A few hours earlier, the FCC announced plans to overhaul net neutrality rules.
Andrew Frank, an analyst with Gartner, says it's likely that Google's continued investment in Fiber is intended to address each of these issues. It's in Google's best interest to ensure "that there's healthy competition in broadband services," which Frank says has the effect of "keeping prices down... and motivating infrastructure providers whether Google is one of them or not in pushing the envelope of quality and service."
As for the net neutrality policy, he adds: "If google and companies like Google can't rely on regulatory solutions to enforce net neutrality rules, then they are going out have to reply on market forces."
Even so, Frank isn't 100% convinced that Google is serious about Fiber becoming a serious, longterm business commitment for Google. "It's always hard to distinguish with Google true intentions and head fakes," he says.
The announcement on Wednesday certainly left some room for both.
"While we do want to bring Fiber to every one of these cities, it might not work out for everyone," Milo Medin, Google's VP of Access Services, wrote in the blog post, almost trying to break future bad news to some of these cities gently. "But cities who go through this process with us will be more prepared for us or any provider who wants to build a fiber network."
Any provider. Whether it's Google or not.