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Google’s Fiber ambitions for high-speed Internet access are slowly but surely coming together in the form of paid TV programming, and it’s something we should have seen coming.

Remember when we first learned of Fiber two years ago this month, when wacky political wonks jumped in shark tanks and ice-cold water to win Google’s hand for the Fiber? It was going to be some experimental test.

As I noted last year, faster Internet connections open new opportunities for programmers to write gaming applications and other graphically intensive programs. Google’s own YouTube video-sharing service would benefit greatly from speedier data facilitation.

Well, Kansas City, Kansas won Google’s hand last March, beating out almost 1,100 cities clamoring to be the guinea pig for Google’s proposed broadband test, which will bring Internet access speeds of 1G bps to thousands of homes in the city.

So did Kansas City, Mo. And now we know from Google itself that it has started laying fiber there.

What we haven’t really been able to put a finger on is exactly what services Google would pair with this ultra speedy broadband.

Well it seems Google was intentionally cagey and with good reason: it wants to challenge cable TV operators with a new paid TV service. According to the New York Post, which said the company filed for a video franchise license with the Missouri Public Service Commission to deliver to content to TVs in the state.

Wow, this coming after Ars Technica noted Google applied for a fixed satellite earth station in Council Bluffs, Iowa, some 200 miles northwest of the two Kansas cities.

That after we learned Google also applied to the FCC to test a residential gateway that has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

And after we also learned the company has seeded over 200 home entertainment devices with its employees in four U.S. cities to test streaming music from Google’s cloud over WiFi. Presumably, such as service would work with and complement Google TV.

Imagine the advertising Google could serve with all of that infrastucture, from pipes to hardware in the home, to consumers via YouTube.

Add it all up and Google is assaulting the home entertainment market AT&T U-Verse, Charter, Cablevision, Dish, Verizon FiOS and scores of others are ruthlessly cutting each other’s throats in.

AllThingsDigital’s Peter Kafka has a lot more perspective on the competitive angles and potential for content services.

If you thought Google was being disruptive with Google Apps, Android and Chrome OS, just wait until this takes shape.

Grab some popcorn. I’m a little jealous of the Kansas Cities. Sure I have Google TV and YouTube on my big-screen TV, but no high-speed broadband or paid TV channels.

For a company without major cloud computing collaboration clout, Microsoft has a good sense of humor regarding its competition with Google.

Coming from the underdog–if only because Google has over 4 million business customers, thanks to a four-year head start in Web-based collaboration software for businesses–”Googlelighting” is cute.

It’s a video that strongly suggests Google is a search business that just does cloud collaboration software on the side, stopping just short of calling Google Apps a sideshow to the main event, but you get that idea for sure:

The concept leverages the mid-to-late 1980s TV comedy “Moonlighting,” starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd as detectives. “Moonlighting” was Willis’ big break; he had been tending bar at the time.

What, you didn’t think Willis just jumped in as John McClane of “Diehard” fame did you? I digress.

The Shepherd character in this clip grills the WIllis character, called something like “Googen Apperson,” who is trying to sell her Google Apps collaboration software.

There are jokes about Google Apps not having active spell check, pivot charts and document editing without a Web connection. One good turn deserves another; Google makes fun of Microsoft for having too many features people don’t use.

It’s true Google’s offline access for is a work in progress. Microsoft also makes fun of Google’s frequent software iteration, particularly for its beta products, and the fact that it has killed off Google Gears, Wave and Buzz.

It’s pretty humorous, but is it effective? Not really. It’s too campy to be effective. Tom Rizzo, senior director for Microsoft Office and Office 365 and the leader of these competitive grenades, noted in a blog post introducing Googlelighting:

Many businesses find that Googlighting also means taking shortcuts, making assumptions about how people “should” work, and generally failing to build and deploy solutions which meet a wide range of business needs. If these concerns and current revelations about Google’s privacy policies have you troubled, this may be a great time to check out Office 365, the online collaboration solution for businesses who don’t want their documents and mail read.

So that’s the pitch, which is a little like the company’s Gmail Man approach from last summer. You have to love how Rizzo worked in the Cookiegate reference, in which Google circumvented Apple’s Safari rules to place cookies on iOS devices and Mac computers.

From what I know of Office 365, it’s pretty solid, but Google Apps also has a solid reputation.

The company landed BBVA bank as a big customer with 110,000 seats last year and tapped the Roche Group health care concern and its 90,000 users this year.

Of course, Microsoft is still Microsoft, the leader in enterprise collaboration software. I must also note that in the near term, Microsoft’s approach of offering cloud and on-premise software seems logical.

There are plenty of businesses that aren’t going to give up all of their Exchange/Office software licenses for all cloud, whether it’s Google Apps or Office 365. It’s just not going to happen.

So Google may be a little ahead of its time, but you can be sure ,Microsoft will be right there with them. This is great for every consumer, prosumer or corporate user because the rivals will keep driving each other.

Anyone else think this is just wrong?

There will no doubt be some search traditionalists and Google lovers who will see this as sacrilege.

I see it as another shining example of how Google+ is coming to be synonymous with Google. Or is Google becoming synonymous with Google+. Increasingly, the lines are blurring.

Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan doesn’t like it:

Personally, I find it intrusive. I don’t get why I want to go to the Google home page to share content on Google+. Rather, I’ll go to Google+, if I want to do that.

I see his point. The Google+ share box doesn’t offend me per se, but I’m not sure how valuable it is in this context. How many people are going to post comments, photos, videos or links to Google+ from the home page? I didn’t think so.

Rather, I think Google+ users who rely on notifications will find this particularly useful. Don’t want to be bothered with the noisy Google+ page? Go to Google.com to see your update alerts.

For Google+, placement on the home page is the ultimate ad, besting the Chrome download or Android Nexus phone links. The share box is also part of the search results pages, which is probably more useful.

You like the results you see? Comment on them, and send a link or two via copy and paste.

Indeed, as Sullivan noted, the search box as Google currently implements it is dumb. From Google.com, Google Maps, Google News and other sites, you have to copy and paste URLs to share pages.

Not very helpful, so there’s some work to be done there.

Every reporter under the sun painted Google’s use of cookies to insert its Google+ functionality on Apple’s Safari browser as an invasion of users’ privacy.

The rub is this: Google and a few other advertising companies have secretly tracked the Web-browsing habits of millions of people using Apple’s Mac computers, iPhones and iPad tablets.

Apple’s Safari browser is designed to prevent such monitoring to preserve user privacy, but Google and others tricked the browser into allowing the tracking via advertising cookies.

Google, which said the tracking was inadvertent and that the ad cookies did not collect personal information, disabled its code Feb. 16. Congress wants the FTC to investigate further.

Fortunately, less clouded minds such as that of John Battelle saw another huge wrinkle to this story.

That is, maybe this isn’t an issue about privacy policy violations so much as why Google resorted to Cookiegate in the first place.

Apple only allows third-party cookies in certain instances, which means Google and other online providers can’t rake in money there.

Why would Apple do this at a time when top browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox allow such tracking? Apple doesn’t make much money from online ads, and iAd has been anything but a smashing success.

Apple makes billions from its great consumer hardware, OS and applications. It doesn’t need the ad dollars. By preventing third-party cookies, it can keep browser makers that make money from online advertising from leveraging Safari for extra cash.

But let’s face it: The move is mainly aimed at hurting Google, for whom online ads provide 96 percent of revenues each year.

I don’t want to oversimplify Battelle’s views on the Web, which he generally sees as closed or open, with a whole lot of nuances thrown in the mix.

But he’s concerned Apple has broken the open Web, not unlike the way it eschewed Flash on its mobile devices. His argument works if you believe in (or even care about) the open Web–the idea that Web access and Websites should be open instead of closed. Sadly, average Joe Consumer doesn’t care, but that doesn’t make Battelle any less correct.

Battelle wrote:

Google circumvented Safari’s default settings by using some trickery described in this WSJ blog post, which reports the main reason Google did what it did was so that it could know if a user was a Google+ member, and if so (or even if not so), it could show that user Google+ enhanced ads via AdSense.

In short, Apple’s mobile version of Safari broke with common Web practice, and as a result, it broke Google’s normal approach to engaging with consumers. Was Google’s “normal approach” wrong? Well, I suppose that’s a debate worth having–it’s currently standard practice and the backbone of the entire Web advertising ecosystem–but the Journal doesn’t bother to go into those details. One can debate whether setting cookies should happen by default–but the fact is, that’s how it’s done on the open Web.

It’s hard for me to feel bad for Google, which got caught trying to get around Apple’s self-serving rule, which is masked as a a privacy control when it’s really a measure against online ad purveyors it has every incentive to keep at bay.

At the same time, I don’t feel Google hurt consumers. It merely sought a competitive advantage, just as Apple has tried to do, but barring third-party cookies. I agree again with Battelle’s point:

…Perhaps it’s because Apple considers anyone using iOS, even if they’re browsing the Web, as “Apple’s customer,” and wants to throttle potential competitors, ensuring that it’s impossible to gain access to “Apple’s” audiences using iOS in any sophisticated fashion? Might it be possible that Apple is using data as its weapon, dressed up in the PR-friendly clothing of “privacy protection” for users?

We don’t get mad at Google for tracking users via cookies placed on Android phones, so why should we, or the Federal Trade Commission, for that matter, get bent out of shape about this. We shouldn’t, and I won’t.

Here’s another thing to consider: The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, took the Google-is-gobbling-our-data-again approach. Why?

Because it’s greater theater than the Google-is-tricking-Safari-to-be-able-to-serve-online ads argument, which leads to the greater argument of competition between Google, Apple and Facebook.

Accusing Google of shredding user privacy will also attract more attention from federal regulators already gunning for the search engine giant.

Sometimes you read reports and just shake your head. That was the case for this DigiTimes report that said Google is rushing Android 5.0, or “Jelly Bean,” to market in the second quarter. The reason?

“Adoption of Android 4.0 has fallen short of original expectations, and Microsoft will launch Windows 8 in the third quarter of 2012.”

Huh? True, Ice Cream Sandwich is only on roughly 1 percent of smartphones and tablets, but that’s because OEMs haven’t launched new ICS gadgets or upgraded their existing lineups. I hardly think that is reason to characterize it as a platform that has fallen short of expectations. Carriers and OEMs always drag their feet on upgrades.

Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus has ICS as its native OS and Motorola’s Xoom has been upgraded, with the OEM announcing a more detailed upgrade schedule, much of which will take place in Q4.

But I think saying that the adoption of ICS–which has cool features like Face Unlock and Android Beam, not to mention new security support–has been slow is way past premature.

I’ll buy that Android 5.0 will be further optimized for tablet PCs, and could include Chrome considering that the Chrome Android mobile browser beta just launched.

But I think the publication is a little early with this report. Typically, new Android builds–major ones–come out at the end of the year or, in the case of Honeycomb, the beginning of a new year.

I doubt Google will race to push out Jelly Bean with more tablet perks so soon. Google might as well fork the OS again, and the company has vowed not to do that. That’s smart considering lackluster Honeycomb tablet sales.

I do like the dual-boot notion that DigiTimes posited that “brand vendors can either choose to adopt only Android 5.0 or add Android 5.0 to Windows 8 devices with the ability to switch between the two OSes.”

That’s an interesting interplay between open-source OS and the most proprietary OS on the planet.

Anyway, I’m still getting comfortable with ICS, including recently testing Chrome for Android on the Galaxy Nexus. I prefer not to worry about Jelly Bean until I’ve lived, breathed and digested ICS.

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