Google Fiber Launches in Kansas City

Google Fiber has finally arrived in Kansas City, offering crazy-fast broadband speeds and a new television service on both sides of the Kansas / Missouri state line. Google is touting 1,000 Mbps download and upload speeds, positioning its service as 100 times faster than traditional broadband. Google compared the growth in processing power and storage to internet speed, pointing out that the latter hasn't kept up with the former. Google believes that its fiber will put data access speeds on the same exponential growth curve, saying that a Gigabit is only the beginning of its plans. Google also pointed out that the US is well behind other countries in terms of both speed and pricing.

Google says there will be no monthly bandwidth caps, and no overages. It even comes with 1TB of cloud storage through Google Drive. But Google Fiber is more than just internet — it will also be a "great new TV experience." Google Fiber TV comes with a Bluetooth remote and a search interface that looks a bit like Google TV, but cleaned up and much simpler. It can record up to 500 hours of HD shows onto its 2TB drive, and allows for powerful search and discovery. Google is also making a remote app for both Android and iOS, which will allow for voice search, in a custom interface, but the app will also do video streaming "in an upcoming version."