With Google’s announcement that it plans to roll out super fast fiber to the home services in a few small locations, there are plenty of cities and towns hoping to be among the lucky few. But who knew it was a contest? Apparently the folks in Topeka, Kansas think that sucking up to the big G is the path to fiber optic nirvana. They’ve proclaimed that, for the month of March, Topeka shall be referred to as Google, Kansas. It’s not a legal name change — which (not surprisingly) would be a lot more complex, and likely wouldn’t pass — but just a proclamation that the city should be called Google for the month.
Of course, cities renaming themselves after tech companies isn’t all that new. Over a decade ago, some town in Oregon renamed itself Half.com in a PR stunt by the startup (which was later bought by eBay). And, a few years ago, a small town in Texas renamed itself Dish, Texas after EchoStar’s Dish Network, in exchange for every house in the town getting a free DVR and free satellite TV for 10 years. But this is the first time I’ve heard of a city pre-emptively (sorta) renaming itself to curry favor with a company.
But, if it works… I’m more than willing to rename my house Chez Google, if it means 1 gigabit per second fiber. Hell, I’m pretty sure I could convince all of the neighbors on my street to rename our street Google Ave. Just let us know…
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