The other day I got a call from a friend who works in the telecom industry. For years, we’ve enjoyed swapping theories of eventual world domination by various powers in the tech sector. First, it was Microsoft. Later, it was the phone companies. This time, it was Google.

He pointed me to a recent column by noted technology writer Robert Cringely, who lays out a scenario by which the search giant essentially takes over the Internet. Google Inc., Cringely points out, controls more fiber optics capacity than anyone. (The company leases rather than acquires it, he theorizes, to avoid the scrutiny of federal regulators.) Google is also building dozens of data centers around the nation and the world, usually near hydroelectric power plants — where, Cringely says, it will get the lowest-cost energy it needs to run the servers that could start constantly storing and serving every page on the entire Internet. From there, Google could force the telephone and cable broadband providers, which would be choking on all the video people are downloading to watch films and TV shows and Google’s own YouTube, to strike “peering arrangements” so that Google’s data centers could help them manage the traffic.

My friend also noted columns that I and others have written speculating that Google might even ultimately bypass the phone and cable companies altogether and become a broadband provider in its own right, probably by investing in the new fixed-wireless technologies known as WiMax.

Such theories, my buddy says, are essentially correct — but they don’t go far enough. Google, he says, also dominates the advertising market online and knows all about the search habits of nearly everyone on the Web. “Soon, they’ll have enough data storage to ‘scrub’ every page on the Web,” he says, at which point they can insert highly targeted advertising onto anybody’s Web page. Since this would surely be perceived by the public as “evil” (therefore violating Google’s oft-stated credo), the company would probably offer to share the revenue with eager Web site owners — who would, in fact, be better off financially letting Google handle advertising on their sites.

In this way, Web sites that permitted Google to manage the ads on their pages would become “affiliates” in the Googleplex — and the old TV network media model would be reborn on the Web. Telco and cable broadband providers would be reduced to “dumb pipes,” selling access to customers of the ultimate media kingpin. That is, unless Google started giving away broadband access over its wireless network.

But wait a minute: Google controlling the Web? Last year, pundits (such as yours truly) were warning that the phone and cable companies were on the verge of ruling the Internet, by abusing their power as a broadband duopoly and granting the speediest and most reliable access only to Web sites that pay them more.

This year, it seems, it’s Google’s turn to be the demon. Fearful that the newly Democratic Congress will legislate “net neutrality” protections for Google and other Web sites, the handful of mega-phone and cable outfits will be spinning all kinds of Google domination theories. They’ll also be spending heavily to lobby against Google — and any legislation to ensure that no broadband provider can discriminate against customers on price or quality of service.

You can almost see the troops from both sides amassing on the hillsides. On Telco/Cable Hill, it looks like a pre-battle scene from “Lord of the Rings,” with swarms of lobbyists armed with every manner of projectile. But over on Google Hill, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a dozen tassel-loafered warriors around the fire.

Google, which opened a lobbying office in Washington only 16 months ago, finally hired some local talent in September: Two former GOP senators, Connie Mack of Florida and Daniel R. Coats of Indiana, are now registered to lobby for the company. But it remains vastly outgunned by the legendary lobbying strength of the phone and cable TV industries. Indeed, Google would have to open data centers in every congressional district to match the local clout enjoyed by the phone and cable companies.

Google is also just a beginner in campaign giving. Its NetPAC, started only in September, gave a mere $31,000 to last November’s candidates, three-fifths of it to Republicans. AT&T, by comparison, was the second-largest PAC contributor to Republican congressional candidates in 2006, according to CQ’s Political MoneyLine, doling out $1.3 million, while giving $553,000 to Democrats.

Company co-founder Sergey Brin, at 33 the 12th-richest American, told The Washington Post in June, “We are a seven-year-old company . . . we don’t have, you know, 30 or 100 years, or however long telcos have been lobbying Congress.”

Google has at least made a recent effort to stop annoying powerful politicians. Until last week, you could type “miserable failure” in the Google search box and get linked directly to President Bush’s biography on the White House Web site. But Google took the politically correct step of changing its search algorithms to prevent pranksters from planting those sorts of “Google bombs” on its search site.

But I doubt that Brin and his Google engineers can come up with a software fix for what’s in store for them on Capitol Hill this year.

Mike Mills is CQ’s executive editor for electronic publishing.