Except that Google does. Google has been buying up so called dark fiber all over the place thousands of miles, and while what they are doing with it is not public knowledge, at the least, they've got to be interconnecting data-centers and/or other infrastructure critical pieces on their own terms instead of AT&#38;T's. Additionally, I'd be that they take advantage of peering agreements to minimize their per byte cost of traffic (though one can only speculate if this manages to hit the 30% cheaper quoted in the article).<p>Of course, this happened later in the company's early-timeline, rather than sooner, but to say that Google doesn't own any business critical infrastructure feels disingenuous.