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Google Offers Free WiFi for Mountain View, CA

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the right-price dept.

Patik writes "AFP reports that Google is offering free wifi internet access to all 70,000 residents of its headquarter's hometown, Mountain View, CA. Google expects the entire city to be covered by next June. Basic access will be free while Google retains the right to charge for premium services. This comes after Google made a bid to provide free access for all of San Francisco (pop. 744,000) two months ago, although that city is still considering the bid."

10 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by jshaped · · Score: 2, Interesting

    yeah, i'll probably be mod'd troll or whatever,
    but why is google doing this?
    (what are their secret motives?)

    i rtfa, and all i found was: "Under the terms of the deal, the basic wireless internet access would be free, but Google could charge users fees for premium services."

    so why would google spend so much money to provide this with possibly/probably little return?

    1. Re:Why? by ozydingo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Probbaly more than that, too; they'll most likely keep a database of what ip addresses visit which sites how often, thus further boosting their ability to taget people with specific ads.

    2. Re:Why? by TheCreeep · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Now this could be the mother of all targeted advertisments. Immagine yourself in a park in Mountain View surfing the web with on your laptop when you see a google add like "Fancy a hot, seamy, cup of coffe? Try Peggie's place around the corner."
      Or looking at some AMD benchmarks with an add telling you the nearest hardware shop.
      That would rock!

    3. Re:Why? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They grab location info from wherever they can as it is. You may have noticed if you've connected from a university IP block that you get adverts specific to that university's home town. Simiarly, if you use Google Maps, then the places you look at are used as source data for a short while - I used the maps place to find the way from my girlfriend's house to the nearest Apple Store, and the next time I searched for restaurants it prioritized ones close to where I was. Quite neat really.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. I think I get why by Dark+Paladin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You could say it's about advertisements. After all, the more people on the Internet, the more people searching Google, so the more money they make, right?

    But there's another side, and depending on how they do it, it could either be interesting or scary. I'm betting on the Interesting, but -

    With this service, Google will be able to track where everyone in this service goes, and then sell that data to others. Odds are, this would be like Tivo does it: track trends and report anonymous information. So if someone wants to figure out that people who watch "Monster Garage" also watch a lot of "Veronica Mars", they can throw up some he-man car adds on the later show to try and capture those eyeballs.

    In the same way, Google could sell anonymous research data to other firms. Something like "people who tend to visit Slashdot also tend to visit digg.com, news.google.com, etc". They don't have to give out individual "this person searched for this", but just trends - even searchable trends, like saying "these web sites reported on this item, and here's what the breakdown of those people who went to that site or searched for that item visited".

    Far more effective than the questionaires of "what computer gaming sites do you visit?". With Google providing the access, they can just tell the marketers directly.

    Anyway, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.

    --
    52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
  3. I always wondered... by Chickenofbristol55 · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Why a company (google or whomever), doesn't give free wifi to a whole state. Take New Jersey for example, highest population per square mile, 1030 to be exact. Which is 13 times the national average. Instead they're giving free wifi to cotton plant Arkansas (or similar places).

    Let the disagreements begin. 3...2...1... go!

    --
    public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
  4. how nice by external400kdiskette · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "but Google could charge users fees for premium services." and what would these consist of ... I mean you either have free web access or not, hard to see what their going to charge for unless they cut off basic services that people need (ie: browsing off google related sites) . their going to have to start finding ways to profit from other things to justify their share price, they cant stay fully reliant on adsense so it should be interesting to see how they profit from this.

  5. National Tryouts by MCSEBear · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Google has been buying an awful lot of dark fiber. I'm looking forward to them using it to offer free basic internet access across our nation. The large providers still don't offer any broadband connectivity options outside large cities. I'm in a rural area and there is no broadband option for me. Belive it or not the best option here is... AOL

    Other providers in the area don't even have dial up at a flat rate price. It's all dial up you pay for by the hour. Through a combination of Wi-Fi and IP over Powerlines, I'd love to see Google offer basic connectivity to the nation. Talk about not being evil! Then let google, the cable companies, and phone companies offer fiber to the home for those willing to pay for even more speed. It might be nice to see some actual broadband connections in the United States. Other countries are way ahead of us here!

  6. More like "What was this Microsoft?" by macklin01 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I could see MS being frightened of this if free WiFi access becomes widespread, and for good reason. If WiFi becomes nearly universally available, then web-based apps for things other than email access will be truly practical as replacements for and competitors to locally-installed apps. (Think of an ultra-cheap subscription-based or free Google-hosted OpenOfficeOnline over universally free broadband vs. locally-installed MS Office.)

    Google already has some good experience in this. Just take a look at Google Earth, which has a small local component that combines with a silky-smooth connection to Google's data. The thing is a just beautiful replacement for locally-installed mapping software (such as MS Streets and Trips). In general, online mapping software is pretty good. The only thing that really keeps people buying locally-installed map software is that they may need it when there's no web connection available. Make WiFi universally available, and that factor is a thing of the past. -- Paul

    --
    OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
  7. Bring it on! by tji · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I live in Mountain View, so I'm very interested to see what the offering will hold. I'll also be interested to see how wireless network access holds up on a large scale deployment with lots of users. Sharing a wireless network in a household with one to six people is easy. But, when I'm trying to access Google's wireless network along with all of my neighbors, will it withstand the load?

    Google has huge bandwidth to their corporate site.. What kind of bandwidth will the wifi network have on the backend? It could be very interesting if the 802.11G wifi has a big pipe servicing it, then it becomes more attractive than my existing 3+Mbps cable service.