Google is Topeka, Kansas

Google has always been a big fan of April Fool's Day. This year they decided to return the favor to Topeka, Kansas, who in March changed their city name to Google in hopes of garnering attention to their bid for Google's ultra high-speed broadband initiative.

Like any good April Fool's joke, this one undoubtedly has many folks shaking their head - especially because a vast majority of people in the United States probably have no idea where Topeka, Kansas is - it's smack dab in the middle of fly over country if you're curious.

The Midwest, and especially Kansas, sometimes gets a bad rap for being a bit ... rural (and backwards politically but that's a different subject). On trips to New York and San Francisco, as well as outside the United States, a common response to "I live in Kansas" is "do you live on a farm?" I wouldn't mind living on a farm - although I think the plants and animals would probably regret it - but I don't, and most people in Kansas don't live on a farm either. So what?

Google's joke does a great job of illustrating the incredible reach of Cloud Computing.  Books and articles discussing the "flattening" impact of the internet on the global economy and multinational corporations are easy to find. The global economy is forever changed, etc, etc, etc. Hundreds of articles come out each day discussing how Cloud Computing will impact the enterprise - is it secure? is it robust? can I trust it? can it save us money? is it easier to use? is it enterprise ready? - the answers are debated (the "correct" answer is YES! YES! YES!)  But the real story gets far fewer headlines.

Small business, not the enterprise, drives the American economy. The democratization of technology has been well documented as well but most small businesses still have no idea about the true power that lay, literally, at their finger tips. When someone hands me a business card with @aol on it, I want to shake them awake, "Don't you understand what you've been given!" The broom closet server rooms are still the norm and "we just bought ACT!" can still be heard. This is changing fast, but not fast enough.

Cloud Computing offers a first in the history of technology. A company of 1 has access to the same industrial strength, enterprise grade software as a company of 10,000. The enterprise gets more attention simply because they're easy to find and observe. Traditionally big companies and institutions have also been the largest commercial consumers of technology. Big companies are important but not as important as our small businesses. Small businesses create more new jobs - as much as 75% of net new jobs in our economy. Small businesses create more new wealth - wealth that leads to better local schools, health, and neighborhoods.

Today small business is no longer a second class citizen when it comes to technology. Today you don't need server hardware and software. You don't need to make capital investments. Today small business has equal access. Today Google is Topeka, Kansas.