I respect the management of Google. They are not tied to conventional ways of thinking. When they bought huge amounts of dark fiber (fiber optic cable that had been laid down in the internet bubble period, but was sitting unused). I figured they had made good investments while the cable was very cheap (pennies on the dollar). I watch with interest as they continue to build their own (with partners) fiber network. I am guessing this may be partially because they are smart enough to know the business oligopolies providing internet infrastructure will try to exploit their positions and government cannot be counted out to play their proper regulatory role, which is required in a capitalist system. And partially due to their huge bandwidth needs and projections for future growth.
And since those oligopolies are not very effective companies (that rely largely on paying politicians, in order to undermine the proper role of government in a capitalist system, to gain government granted monopolist profits). That increases the benefit of Google buying into their own distribution network since excess capacity can likely be sold at a large profit: the competing companies are so used to charging monopoly prices leaving lots of room for profit. The second point can be debated but I don’t think if the economy functioned properly, with intelligently regulated natural monopolies providing internet bandwidth, I doubt Google would invest in this, but, of course, I could be wrong.
Meanwhile, ITWeb reports that Google is looking to run a third underwater cable to South Africa.