Perhaps. But if I could buy 5% of their stated capacity? (i.e. 50Mbps up and down) for $50, that would be a huge improvement. My theory is that Google realized

Perhaps. But if I could buy 5% of their stated capacity? (i.e. 50Mbps up and down) for $50, that would be a huge improvement. My theory is that Google realized they could not penetrate last-mile infrastructure in any significant way. However, by demonstrating an extreme amount of bandwidth is possible at reasonable cost, they could influence bandwidth/ prices/ availability over a much greater geographical area. I also find it odd when people exclaim how unnecessary certain technologies are until other folks step-up and show what can be enabled with these "unnecessary" technologies. On top of that, I also believe hyper-decentralized services would be easily possible as consumer connections approach/attain 1Gbps last-mile, So, it is weird (to me) for a major "cloud" provider to demonstrate and enble that potential.