What's .Google want with 101 new .domains, anyway?

news.cnet.com — It's easy to dismiss Google's big play for a slice of the expanding Internet domain universe as just another side project from the Googleplex. Perhaps too easy. Google, we learned last week, has applied for 101 domains -- or, more precisely, 101 generic top-level-domains, or gTLDs -- and the number itself (surely the 101 Dalmatians reference was intentional) doesn't exactly suggest a new strategy on par with, say, Google+ orAndroid.
RT @wired: Google and Amazon are vying to control an (uncomfortably) massive chunk of the new Internets... t.co/iBeKoh6v
@PaulSloan: What's .Google want with 101 new .domains, anyway? t.co/Gg1aM7K1 #gTLDs
What's .Google want with 101 new .domains, anyway? t.co/ToBJY8Hg #gTLDs