Google is very quietly building data centers all over the country. They are also very quietly making lease and contract agreements that give them control over most of the country's backbone Internet traffic, even though they don't technically own the backbone ISPs.
There's a great deal of speculation that Google is doing this because Google believes that the demand for high-speed, high-broadband Internet traffic is poised to shoot through the roof, and by building these huge, high-capacity data centers all over the country, Google will be in a position to provide that broadband connectivity to small and medium-sized ISPs when placess like BellSouth can not.
Google seems to believe that Verizon, BellSouth, and the other "traditional" broadband providers have seriously, drastically underestimated the demand for broadband over the next few years. Right now, small and medium ISPs buy their broadband from such places, then resell it; Google believes that these places have so dramatically underestimated how much broadband people are going to use that they are about to get a very serious shock, and that Google will be able to step in to fill the need when BellSouth and so forth founder.
