U.S. city renamed ‘Google’

GOOGLE CITY: The sun sets behind the Kansas Statehouse in downtown Topeka.

The U.S. city of Topeka has been temporarily renamed ‘Google’ in a bid to host the search giant’s trial of a new super fast broadband network. The Kansas city capital will unofficially be called as “Google, Kansas — the capital city of fibre optics” during March.

The company previously invited nominations of towns and cities to participate in the experiment that would provide up to 500,000 people with ultra high speed broadband at speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second — 200 times faster than the average UK speed of 5 mb/s. Mayor William Bunten backed the idea, proposed by a local activist, to help boost its chances of taking part in the trial.

“The City of Topeka welcomes the opportunity to participate in this unique technological experiment, if selected as Google trial community, to benefit our citizens in providing all opportunities to access Internet Technologies,”

The Telegraph quoted a statement on the council’s website as saying.

Mr. Bunten added: “We’re having a good time of it. There’s a lot of good things that are going on in our city. It’s just a little different, and will probably bring some attention.” Dan Martin, a Google spokesman, added: “People are hungry for faster speeds and improved Internet access.”