Google's Most Expensive Moonshot? Laying Internet Cables

Alphabet, nee Google, used its quarterly earnings report to give a bit more information on the financial performance of its moonshots, the "Other Bets" like self-driving cars and life extension that have little to do with its core business of online advertising.

Those hoping to see Alphabets’s fantastical businesses stacked up against one another were disappointed. The company didn’t break out how its smart thermostat business or life extension efforts did. It said, however, that the Other Bet it had spent the most capital on was Google Fiber, its high-speed broadband service. Apparently it really is expensive to bring really fast Internet to Kansas City.

The amount Alphabet spends on the project will continue to rise quickly, because every new city it enters requires its own set of tubes. Capital spending on Other Bets was $869 million last year, about 9 percent of total capital spending.