Sarasota Loses Out on Bid for Google Fiber

The search engine and technology giant, Google, has chosen the land of Dorothy and Toto to test its high-speed broadband network over Sarasota.

It was announced Wednesday that Kansas City, Kan. was the town to lure Google.

Across the nation last year, municipalities were making pitches and filling out applications to land Google fiber – along with jobs, money, etc- for their perspective towns.

Sarasota was no different. , home to , , among others, changed its name to Google Island for a day.

Then-Mayor Dick Clapp even swam with sharks at Mote to show support. Local  entrepreneur and co-founder of the HuB, Rich Swier Jr, could be seen on CNBC promoting Sarasota.

Swier said he was obviously hopeful Google would come to Sarasota, but he was not banking on it.

“I wasn’t really expecting Sarasota to be chosen because of our lack of infrastructure for broadband,” Swier told Sarasota Patch. 

On its blog, Google wrote, “After a careful review, today we’re very happy to announce that we will build our ultra high-speed network in Kansas City, Kansas. We’ve signed a development agreement with the city, and we’ll be working closely with local organizations, businesses and universities to bring a next-generation web experience to the community."

More than 1,100 cities applied for the fiber.

Swier said it is hard to be upset with them picking Kansas because the process brought great PR to Sarasota and it helped make government officials more aware of broadband/technology capabilities. 

“Google was an opportunity, a long shot, but more importantly, [we] saw it as a way to educate the general public and leadership,” Swier said. “Once that door was opened and on the table, there was some really key decisions to, I think, create a much better future for broadband in Sarasota.”

Some evidence of that, Swier said, was the creation of a broadband task force to look at city and county projects where installing broadband could be a possibility. Sarasota has already laid fiber optics during a traffic control system project.

Swier said it is important to take the momentum and interest born from this project and channel it into action for broadband in Sarasota.

“We can’t go back and change the past,” Swier said. “We need to be more aggressive in public-private partnerships. I think this is what is going to make us competitive.

“We don’t have to sit passively and wait for the next opportunity to arise,” he added. “Nothing is stopping us for developing ultra broadband.”