Google has denied that it is positioning itself as an ISP (internet service provider), despite considerable speculation.

A Google spokesman who declined to be identified said: “Google has no current plans to be an internet service provider outside of our pilot Wi-Fi projects in Mountain View and San Francisco. Our IPv6 allocation simply reflects planning for the day in the future when the services we currently provide via IPv4 will need to be accessible via IPv6.”

Wired.com comments: “Several sources have reported over the last year that Google has been quietly acquiring inactive or ‘unlit’ optical cable — otherwise known as dark fiber — a key ingredient used to build data networks.”

Alex Lightman, CEO of Innofone said: “This is why Google bought mobile dark fiber. It’s to go out and go: ‘All these bozos in America aren’t rolling out IPv6, so we’ll do it if they aren’t going to.’ ”

The New York Times is reporting on an agreement between Google and Dell Computers. Google’s CE announced the agreement on May 25th. The agreement is to install Google software on millions of new Dell computers over the next few years.

The executive, Eric E. Schmidt, said the arrangement meant that Google’s search toolbar would appear on the screens of new Dell systems, and that Dell users would be directed to a Web page branded by the two companies.

Mr. Schmidt, speaking at a Goldman Sachs Internet conference in Las Vegas, said the companies would share revenue from the deal.

While financial terms were not disclosed, many analysts assumed that Google would pay Dell a fee for the arrangement. If that is the case, said Safa Rashtchy, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, this will be the beginning of a era in which Google pays for alliances in order to maintain its growth rate.

Spokesmen for both companies declined to comment.

Mr. Schmidt said that this would be first of several agreements with Dell. The time period of the deal was not disclosed.

This agreement will increase Google’s exposure to millions of consumers since these Dell computers will be using Google rather than Microsoft search technology.

Google Reaches Agreement to Have Its Software Installed on New Dell Computers

Doug Bowman, of Stopdesign, has signed on with Google with the goal of improving and standardizing the user interface across the Google empire.

The cat’s out of the bag. I made the announcement here in New Zealand at Webstock, so I’ll confirm that, yes, the rumors are not just rumors. After a bit of negotiation and a lot of internal debate, I recently accepted an offer to join Google as Visual Design Lead, a position that did not previously exist there. I’m charged with helping the company establish a common visual language across all their collaborative and communication products. This includes products I’ve already had some hand in like Blogger and Calendar. But it will also include other highly used products like Gmail, Writely, Page Creator, and other projects in the pipeline.

Doug is the designer behind the designs of many popular web sites including Blogger, Wired News, Capgemini, and Adaptive Path.

It sounds like we can expect a face lift at Google in the not so distant future.

About Douglas Bowman

Going to Google

At a lunch for New York journalists this week, Eric Schmidt, Google’s grown-up CEO, said: “Office is not the business we’re in,” despite the purchase of Writely. Google could do with a good rich-text editor, he intimated.

Well, here at Google Future we’ve been saying that for a while in the face of a stream of speculation that the G-guys were planning an all-out assault on Microsoft’s cash cows. The meme was carried along by such luminaries as Jason Calacanis who thought this was exactly what they had in mind.

However, recent damp-squib releases and leaked performance forecasts which talked the company down, have all contributed to the realization that the denizens of the Googleplex are human after all, and not some posthuman advance of the species.

The fact remains, Google is not a software company. Google Pack proved that. The company is essentially a search-based advertising agency with wide aspirations to control the markets of a wide range of media, including IPTV, the next big thing.

Schmidt also said that says that fears over the loss of “network neutrality” are largely unfounded.

The Register reports: “Intriguingly, Schmidt said no infrastructure or service provider has yet to ask Google to pay a higher toll. Comments by AT&T chief Ed Whitacre [suggested] that content providers need to pay more to guarantee traffic quality for data moved over his company’s pipes.”

It’s hard to see how the current freedom enjoyed by everyone on the Internet could be dispensed with in “the land of the free”.

“On the other hand, Verizon’s expensive fiber investments leave plenty of capacity to spare to carry internet traffic such as the web page you’re reading alongside the IPTV services it wants to introduce. And it’s hard to see who else is going to invest in bringing the USA’s increasingly antiquated network infrastructure up to date.”

Google’s acquisition of large amounts of “dark” (abandoned) fiber, plays into this question and surely points the way forward for the company. An online Office has been a red herring Agatha Christie would be proud of.