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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."

2 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. 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
  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!