It may only be a plan for the US at the minute, but Google are moving one step closer to world domination by announcing plans to roll out their own broadband network across the United States. Their plan is to provide a 1Gbps connection to around 500,000 homes by building their own fibre-optic network. What is surprising however is that Google wants the price to be competitive with existing ISPs who offer slower speeds.
Apparently their overall plan isn't to go after customers themselves but to just install the infrastructure for doing so that third-party vendors and governments can go about finding users for it themselves. This means they are becoming an infrastructure supplier which is capable of inching it's way into many organisations and government departments which it otherwise may not have easily done. If they're using Google's broadband why not offer the organisation the use of Google Apps? I think this is likely to be how they'll sweeten the deal for organisations they want under their banner.
If you combine this with their many other areas of business such as the Google Search Appliances they sell to Enterprise customers, their email / apps, an operating system, a new HTTP protocol, a browser, a mobile platform and many more including their most obvious product: search; it means that Google are now well on their way to having their fingers in every aspect of our daily lives on the Internet. From a consumers point of view the advantage is that they can use a brand name which is recognisable as producing quality products with the added bonus that Google products have a habit of working faster when used together (a good example of this is how much better Google Wave runs on Chrome browser).
Google might not yet rule the world, but I think they're well on their way...
