Google to Offer Free Wi-Fi?

meaning writes "Business 2.0 reports on the possibility of Google building a national broadband network and giving Wi-Fi access to everyone in America. From the article: 'So once the GoogleNet is built, how would consumers connect for free access? One of the cheapest ways would be for Google to blanket major cities with Wi-Fi, and evidence gathered by Business 2.0 suggests that the company may be trying to do just that. In April it launched a Google-sponsored Wi-Fi hotspot in San Francisco's Union Square shopping district, built by a local startup called Feeva. Feeva is reportedly readying more free hotspots in California, Florida, New York, and Washington, and it's possible that Google may be involved.'"

Comments

Now

[JonN]

these are the real times we will all need a tinfoil hat. Who knows how Google will broadcast ads using a nationwide network of Wi-Fi

Next up

[Anonymous Coward]

Google to colonize Mars!

Google to build moon base!

Google to cure cancer!!!! OMG!!!

I'll believe it when I see it.

Idiots With Columns

[MrNonchalant]

Next Google will take over horse farming. And give us all ponies!

Seriously people.

Pricey?

[shinyplasticbag]

Based on how much difficulty people have had trying to blanket even smallish cities, I have no idea how Google could possibly cover a country the size of America with WiFi. How many thousands of hotspots would it take?

What they should do is bring back Ricochet...

Getting worried

[JanneM]

I like Google. Excellent search engine, great news aggregator, webmail done right. But I'm getting more than a little uncofortable about the reach of the company. I have been cutting them a good deal of slack, but I'm gradually coming around on that. They have enough data on me and my habits that they probably can map my relationships better than I can myself. They can know my interests, my taste, my foibles, probably what I'm working on, and the only thing standing between potential knowledge and actual mining of it is a non-binding, pretty vacuous "Don't be evil" statement.

And while free Wifi is great and all, that risks becoming another chokepoint - who will be able to compete in practice if the lazy, easy way is to connect to Google Wifi to access your Gmail account and get the latest news in the Google aggregator or perhaps do some comparison shopping with Google. And finding the store is easy - just click the Google maps link and you'll see exactly where it's at.

If the company ever does decide to be evil, they have a huge amount of subtle control over their users at their disposal.

Oligopolies or monopolies are bad, no matter who is holding it.

Re:Getting worried

[pthisis]

IMO, once google went public then "Don't be evil" lost all value. As a private company, you can have goals like that. As a public company, you can wind up in court (and your officers in jail) if you aren't acting to maximize shareholder value.

Now, I don't think they're evil. In fact, I think they're a pretty good business at serving my needs. But when it gets down to it, they're just a business.

Also in New York City (Bryant Park)

[GillBates0]

Wifi access in NYC's Bryant Park is sponsored by Google. From the official park webpage:

Special Thanks To
The Bryant Park Wireless Network is proudly sponsored by Google.

Re:new category: google rumours

[YrWrstNtmr]

Seriously... are there people out there that have nothing better to do than speculate as to what new thing will come out of google's labs next?

Yes, there are.

Re:Gentoo??

[mattbot 5000]

I use Gentoo; how does this affect me?

It won't--you still won't be able to get your wireless card working.

OMFG GUYS

[Bastian]

OHMYGOD I just heard that GOOGLE is about to come out with a new CPU ARCHITECTURE and it's going to run their own OS and it's so ungodly fast it's like a quad Xeon box but the basic model's only going to be like $500 or you can lease it for a year for the cost of having it shipped to you and it's so damn amazing and after they're done with that they're going to come out with their own distribution of Linux that will be a lot like Google's OS but faster and open source. Oh, and they're going to be giving away free cars in Central Park on September 4, so totally be there, and they're going to use the proceeds from all of this to bring back the dinosaurs - I swear to God! - and it's so cool because they're giving all this shit away for absolutely nothing but they're still making money hand over fist from it. Honestly, this is all true. They're like the coolest company in the world or something.

I doubt this will save much money for google.

[NickCatal]

From what I understand, Google already pays next to nothing for transit. It seems like everybody peers with them anyways. If anything they are using the new dark fiber to link up their datacenters and for internal uses to ensure that they can get more data to the enduser with less hassles. Google Earth alone has to eat up an insane amount of bandwidth.