Google, the world’s biggest online search engine, wants to turbocharge your Internet connection.

The company said Wednesday it is getting into the broadband service business with trials for fiber networks that will deliver Internet access speeds that are 100 times faster than what most Americans are getting today.

With its announcement, the Internet juggernaut added to a fast-growing list of industries it has barreled its way through. Tuesday, it announced a social networking feature directly aimed at Facebook. Late last year, it got into the cellphone business with a smartphone to rival Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry. The list goes on: The book, music, video, newspaper and map businesses have all been shaken by Google’s steady march to place its marker on those industries for the Web.

“Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone,” wrote Google product managers Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly in the blog titled, “Think big with a gig: our experimental fiber network.”

The company said it will build fiber-to-the-home connections to a small number of locations across the country that will deliver Internet access speeds of 1 gigabit per second. It will take bids from municipalities beginning through late March to determine what areas would be part of its experiment. Google said access prices for consumers would competitive and that its network would reach at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people. A source who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the company doesn’t currently have plans to expand beyond the initial tests but will evaluate as the tests progress.

Why are they doing it? To experiment with applications ultra-fast broadband access could support. The firm also wants to try out new ways to build fiber networks and share those lessons to other network operators. Google, a proponent of open-access policies, said its network would give consumers a choice of multiple service providers.

The company emphasized it would adhere to network neutrality rules it has pushed for with federal regulators. Such rules would prevent a carrier from treating content differently. That could include favoring Google’s applications on the network over others.

“We hope this will serve as an example to other network operators that the open model should not be feared, but should be emulated,” said Markham Erickson, executive director of the Open Internet Coalition. “Profit and openness and mistakenly seen to be in conflict; in fact we believe they are synergistic and amplifying.”

Some of the fastest connections through cable, DSL and fiber access cap off around 20 to 50 megabits a second. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt told The Washington Post during a visit late last year that ultra-high-speed Internet connections were imperative for a next generation of applications to take off for the Web. Currently, he said, most network services fall short.

At such speeds, a rural health center could receive streaming three-dimensional medial imaging over the Web and discuss health issues with a physician in a Los Angeles, for example. Downloading high-definition, full-length feature films would take about five minutes, Google said.

Google has been experimenting with broadband service for years. It has been running a WiFi network in its headquarters city of Mountain View, Calif. It is also advocating at the Federal Communications Commission to use unlicensed spectrum, called White Spaces, for broadband services.