Back in February, Google announced they'd be deploying 1 Gbps fiber connections to between 50,000 and 500,000 consumers in one location in the United States. Google made it clear they have no interest in being a national ISP, and that this deployment would be an experiment aimed at testing video ads, exploring cheaper ways to get fiber deployed and collecting real world network data ISPs usually keep private. The announcement was a PR goldmine, as under-connected cities rushed to be chosen as the Google Fiber test bed.

We're getting close to a year since Google's fiber project was announced, and Google hasn't deployed a singly bit, or announced the trial location. The company today did however announce on their official blog that they're expanding fiber tests to a residential subdivision of 850 residences on the Stanford University Campus.

"To be clear, this trial is completely separate from our community selection process for Google Fiber, which is still ongoing," says Google Product Manager James Kelly. "As we’ve said, our ultimate goal is to build to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people, and we still plan to announce our selected community or communities by the end of the year."

Google says they're effectively looking at the Stanford University deployment as a beta -- using the information collected to help them when they finally do announce their larger trial location. Why Stanford? Google says the campus is close enough to easily monitor, Stanford was cooperative, and "the layout of the residential neighborhoods and small number of homes make it a good fit for a beta deployment."