Google goes in search of ways to provide its own internet services

From sending solar-powered balloons into the stratosphere to offering free wifi in parks, Google is quietly spending hundreds of millions of dollars on nascent internet services that may one day challenge the telecom and cable companies.

In recent months, Google has announced plans to bring free wireless internet access to 7,000 Starbucks cafés across the US&; it has asked US regulators for broader access to wireless airwaves; and it has launched 30 solar-powered balloons over the South Pacific ocean, designed to beam the internet to remote regions.

Then there is Google Fiber, the high-speed cable TV and internet service that was introduced in Kansas city late last year and that will be expanded soon to Austin and Provo, Utah. Fiber delivers internet speeds at 1gb per second, as much as 100 times faster than the average US network.