Google has only been expanding to cities that give them extensive tax breaks and other perks that haven't been afforded to most other companies. This is a good thing as it allows Google to expand, but they would never do this unless they got these incentives, plus the guaranteed number of users pre-signed up for the service so that they can guarantee some sort of ROI.
The big telecom companies got massive tax breaks at various times over the last 20 years to deploy high speed broadband, and essentially defrauded customers and tax payers by not doing what they said they would.
Techdirt really has some of the most one sided and consistently terrible articles of any "news" site I've seen.
Here is some actual relevant information related to the Google Fiber concessions, mainly in that they don't have to build out infrastructure to the entire city (unlike Comcast etc), and other breaks not given to previous providers:
> Google received stunning regulatory concessions and incentives from local governments, including free access to virtually everything the city owns or controls: rights of way, central office space, power, interconnections with anchor institutions, marketing and direct mail, and office space for Google employees. City officials also expedited the permitting process and assigned staff specifically to help Google. One county even offered to allow Google to hang its wires on parts of utility poles—for free—that are usually off-limits to communications companies.
