Ditch diggers drag for Google

Here’s an intresting bit of news from the Mountain View voice!  Google’s learning about laying fiber optic cable!!

For the ultra-fast broadband network Google wants to build in some lucky U.S. city, lots of small trenches will have to be dug for fiber optic cables. That led to a strange scene at Google on a recent Friday: basically a drag race between five ditch-digging machines.

The April 16 competition, which tore up a Google parking lot at 1206 Charleston Road, was organized by Google employees who not only thought it was the best way to select a “micro trenching” machine, but also to catalyze innovation among the manufacturers of such equipment.

The scene was complete with a checkered flag, a camera crew and a winner’s podium. Five different companies showed up to put their equipment to the test.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin looked on as the strange event began on a painted course about equal to the width of a soccer field. Earplugs were passed out to the crowd of onlookers, mostly Google employees. Crews of workers wearing hardhats manned the five machines, each one capable of plunging a saw blade into the asphalt to create a ditch a little more than an inch wide — just big enough for fiber optic network cables.

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