From: "John Beamish" 

Cringely says it's Google.  Not yet ... but soon.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_001510.html

I spoke recently with an old friend who is a bandwidth broker. He buys and
sells bandwidth on fiber-optic networks around the world. And he told me
something that I found not completely surprising, but I certainly hadn't
known: Google controls more network fiber than any other organization. This
is not to say that Google OWNS all that fiber, just that they control it
through agreements with network operators. I find two very interesting
aspects to this story: 1) that Google has acquired -- or even needs to
acquire -- so much bandwidth, and; 2) that they don't own it, since
probably the cheapest way to pick up that volume of fiber would be to
simply buy out any number of backbone providers like Level 3
Communications.

Google loves secrecy. That they've been acquiring fiber assets hasn't been
a secret, but the sheer volume of these acquisitions HAS been. Why? One
thought is that it kept down the price since people didn't really know it
was Google snatching up this stuff (they've done it under a number of
different corporate names). But if price was the issue, then why hasn't
Google just bought the companies that own the fiber? It made no sense until
I scratched my head and thought a bit further, at which point it became
obvious that Google wants to -- in its own way -- control the Internet. In
fact, they probably control it already and we just haven't noticed.

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