Generally being a sole infrastructure provider is a very secure investment. This is because you can overcharge until a competitor enters the market and then when competition appears you can undercut them as you no longer need to recoup capital costs while your competitor does. This can stop competitors entering the market as there is not an incentive to do so.
There are a couple of factors that make this a reasonable investment for Google even though they're not the incumbent. The first is the old infrastructure is old enough that it is not capable of offering the same service as the new infrastructure without a significant amount of extra capital investment. Google also can cancel out some of what would be normal capital costs associated with a new entrant because they have related in house skills/services and the clout to bypass some regulatory capture.
This means that the incumbents lose a lot of their advantages as they're playing catch up too and they have to work-in legacy systems. They can't offer the same service on their old infrastructure and have to offer a lower price until they can. To make matters worse they don't want to be too obvious in what they can offer as they could be stung by the state in other places if they act in a way that shows they are consistently abusing their monopoly or acting anti competitively.
It's probably true that Google's investment is set to make money but I'd guess once you factor in opportunity cost it's not the smartest investment. But consider the other advantage they have is that they're not working in a vacuum, improvements in internet usage improves their core business, so even if they get out competed in this market it can help their overall bottom line.
There are a couple of factors that make this a reasonable investment for Google even though they're not the incumbent. The first is the old infrastructure is old enough that it is not capable of offering the same service as the new infrastructure without a significant amount of extra capital investment. Google also can cancel out some of what would be normal capital costs associated with a new entrant because they have related in house skills/services and the clout to bypass some regulatory capture.
This means that the incumbents lose a lot of their advantages as they're playing catch up too and they have to work-in legacy systems. They can't offer the same service on their old infrastructure and have to offer a lower price until they can. To make matters worse they don't want to be too obvious in what they can offer as they could be stung by the state in other places if they act in a way that shows they are consistently abusing their monopoly or acting anti competitively.
It's probably true that Google's investment is set to make money but I'd guess once you factor in opportunity cost it's not the smartest investment. But consider the other advantage they have is that they're not working in a vacuum, improvements in internet usage improves their core business, so even if they get out competed in this market it can help their overall bottom line.