I nearly choked on my Cheerios this morning as I read a blog posted by TechCrunch announcing that the mayor of Topeka, Kansas had “officially” renamed the city to “Google”. This was done in reaction to an earlier announcement made by the search engine company about its plans to start selling 1Gb/sec fiber optic broadband internet service. Mayor Bunten and the City Council of Topeka clearly thought that changing the name of the City would be something that would help get the city of 120,000 people on Google’s short-list for testing.

This is a silly stunt, and it begs the question: is this worth the Topeka taxpayers’ dollars? I think so. In an age where the high-tech jobs represent 5.81 million jobs in the United States, getting fiber optic internet service in the city can mean attracting a piece of a rapidly growing industry. Additionally, I’m sure the Topeka Chamber of Commerce would kill for the chance to add FiOS to their selling points for major businesses in other industries. So, if “Google, KS” = FiOS in Topeka = More High-Tech Jobs… this looks like a win!

However, I hope this doesn’t represent a growing trend. Imagine if all the nation’s mayors started regularly brow-nosing big business in this same manner? Something about the nature of this government/business interaction makes me a little uneasy…

UPDATE

Mashable had some interesting commentary on Topeka Mayor’s motivation for name change.