Google, we’re serious. And we haven’t even changed our name to Googlesboro.
At least not yet.
But tune in this weekend to the ACC men’s basketball tournament at the Greensboro Coliseum, and look for it — the GoogleGreensboro crate, the GoogleGreensboro T-shirts and “GoogleGreensboro’’ splashed across some college student’s chest. Really. There’s talk about that.
And that’s just the beginning.
We’re gunning to grab your attention any way we can — YouTube, Internet ads, wacky contests and a $10,000 marketing campaign — because we want to become a test market for the fiber-optic initiative you rolled out last month.
Of course, we love what we hear. Who wouldn’t? You want to offer affordable broadband access that is 100 times faster than anything we’ve got now. That is crazy fast.
We hear if the Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, were to scan everything in its collection — more than 32 million books and 61 million manuscripts — someone with Google Fiber would need only one day to download it.
One day.
But more importantly, we hear how your initiative could help reinvent communities by creating jobs, attracting people and spurring all kinds of innovation by building what essentially is a larger lane on the information highway.
And in our city, where unemployment is higher than 11 percent , we need all the help we can get.
So, you’re our Willy Wonka, and we want your Golden Ticket.
You want to test-market your stuff in a city with between 50,000 to 500,000 people? We are right there, smack-dab in the middle, with nearly 260,000 people .
But it seems everyone and their grandmother is downright giddy over Google.
Durham wants to get thousands of people to spell “We Want Google’’ at Durham Athletic Park, the baseball home of the Bulls, and Topeka, Kan., will call itself all this month “Google, Kansas — The Capital City of Fiber Optics.’’
But think of us. You’ll see us. For real.
Dynamic Quest , a business technology company in Greensboro, has put Internet ads on Google within a 20-mile radius of Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif. That means whenever someone in your Google empire Googles, they’ll see a three-line ad that says in short: Pick Us.
They’re doing that for free.
Meanwhile, our city’s sea of bloggers have jumped on-board with various Web sites, including a Facebook page — Bring Google Fiber to Greensboro, NC! — that already has 3,644 members.
Then there’s www.googlegreensboro.com . Our city launched the site Friday, and on Monday, it began asking the creative among us to upload video clips and write blog posts that’ll give you an idea of how Google could make Greensboro a better place.
Greensboro’s RLF Communications orchestrated that for a price: $10,000. That includes managing the Web site, producing YouTube spots with local celebrities, coming up with promotional ideas and managing a contest that’ll get the attention of Rachel Whetstone , one of your executives.
It’s something called “Six Degrees of GoogleGreensboro Separation.’’ She’ll see it.
In a tough economy, where we in Greensboro all know somebody without a job, people wonder whether that’s tax money well spent. But think about the implications — more jobs, more innovation, more everything.
And think of Jay Ovittore . He’s 37 , a house painter who has no houses to paint. So, he sits at home for hours managing the Facebook site because he believes in your potential for his hometown.
“When you’re staring down the barrel of 11 percent unemployment, you have to do something,’’ says Ovittore, who moved to Greensboro from New Jersey when he was 17. “The same-old, same-old is not going to cut it.’’
So, Google, when you get our city’s proposal later this month, remember us.
We’re worth it.
Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com
Not all of the newspaper's content appears online.
*There is a fee for downloading some older articles.