Why Google's Ultra High-Speed Broadband Won't Be Coming to Seattle

Texas REALLY wants help from Google. Us? Not so much.

When Google first announced that it was looking for guinea pig communities to test out its ultra high-speed broadband, dignity went out the window almost as quickly as the applications. Topeka temporarily changed its name in honor of the Silicon Valley giant, Duluth's Mayor filmed himself jumping into a freezing cold Lake Superior and Sarasota's man-in-charge swam in a shark tank.

Google cares about more than just publicity stunts. (Which is good for Seattle, because we offered none.) But that doesn't mean our chances of landing faster, better internet access are any good.

In a post on its blog, Google's said it had received a whopping 1,100 government responses (represented by the small dots in the map above) and over 196,000 individual responses (the large dots are areas where more than a 1,000 residents submitted nominations). Meaning not only does Seattle have long odds, it also doesn't look like people here care enough about speedier downloads to fire off one little e-mail.