Google becoming the global internet operator

Google is building its own private backbone internet (from Cringely blog):

Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.

This means enoumous expansion to the existing internet infrastructure, thus in turn, heavy purchase orders for telecom and optical equipments, possibly worth of hundreds of millions. (Another reason why you should buy optical stocks.) Purhaps what's more profound is that the future of Internet will possibly be operated by Google in its entirety, with majority of the online traffic going through Google's own network without ever leaving. This gigantic amounts of data are mines of gold.

Note: It is interesting how Internet peering works.