There are quite a few factors outside their control, including existing infrastructure, local regulations, and local government willingness to accommodate Google: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/02/20...

In the middle of last year, Google announced that they will also look at other bay area cities like Santa Clara for Fiber. I don't see what happened to that and there is no more mention of Santa Clara in the latest post. Maybe it fell through? The last update I see is from the city claiming that the discussions have ended - http://siliconvalleypower.com/index.aspx?recordid=3191&page=...

I wish I knew the reasons for not picking a city.

Santa Clara was always included (and still is) in the potential San Jose rollout. As is Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Palo Alto.

A lot matters. For Charlotte, RST was installing a bunch of fiber and then they disappeared. GF is probably going to buy that up and use it.

They will probably hustle now. But their "fiber" wasn't true fiber like Google Fiber. RST's solution was fiber to a wireless node that would power multiple homes.