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Google Gives the Gift of Free Airport Wi-Fi
itwbennett writes "Google is giving you something to be thankful for as you travel this holiday season. The company announced today that it is offering free Wi-Fi at 47 airports across the US between now and January 15. If you haven't booked your flights yet, you want to factor this into your plans. Here's a list of the 47 airports, which cover about 35% of all US passengers, according to Google. The Burbank and Seattle airports will continue to offer the free Google Wi-Fi indefinitely." The HuffPo notes another altruistic note in Google's gesture: "As another way to pass on the spirit of the season, once they log on to networks in any of the participating airports, travelers will have the option [of making] a donation to Engineers Without Borders, the One Economy Corporation, or the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. Google will match the donations made across all the networks up to $250,000, and the airport network that generates the highest amount per passenger by January 1, 2010 will receive $15,000 to donate to the local nonprofit of their choice."
Sounds like Microsoft was doing this already to promote Bing, and that they've snagged O'Hare.
I'm curious tho - if they're picking up the tab for Boingo and so forth, are they also picking up the user registration information?
Portland, OR is not on the list...but then that's probably because travelers through PDX already enjoy free wi-fi courtesy of the Port of Portland and have for several years now. Now tell me again why other airports don't extend this courtesy already?
I was just in the Incheon airport and not only do they have free wifi throughout the terminal, but many internet PCs freely available for anyone to use. I guess the real news here is that someone passed up on an opportunity to charge $2/hr or whatever for wifi in this country.
From TFA:
In total, the gift will include 47 airports that together handle over 500 million passengers each year, or about 35% of the total number of annual passengers in the U.S. In October, Google and Virgin America announced that, during this same period, all passengers on Virgin America will have free in-flight Wi-Fi. Five of the airports participating in the program are also Virgin America destinations: Boston, Seattle, Las Vegas, San Diego and Virgin America's newest destination launching November 18, Fort Lauderdale.
What would be really awesome is free wi-fi on aircraft. Although I'd trade that for power in a heartbeat.
This is already being offered on some planes - AA, Delta, Virgin American, and Airtran all offer Gogo Inflight Internet. It's surprisingly similar in price to internet at airports, but I doubt that it offers anything particularly speedy.
This is a nice gesture of goodwill from Google... I wonder how much it costs.
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Today on SlaDo: Comments about the HuffPo report that The Goo giving free WiFi at the 'port.
Is this a surprise? None of the nation's biggest airports are on there because they're all locked into various Wi-Fi carriers like Boingo that charge $7-10 for a day pass.
It just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Let's all say it together - HuffPo. HuffPo.
Actually, I guess it doesn't really. What it DOES sound like is something that'd get a movie an X rating.
#DeleteChrome
Did google find themselves in need of a representative sample of travellers' network activity? Or some general positive buzz?
Fuck the season
Fuck the horse (or "raindear") it rode in on.
And fuck the "spirit" of whatever the hell makes you feel all twingly inside and more "giving"
You are either a good person or an asshole, regardless of the time of the year.
NO SIG
When Google and Microsoft give away free ad money to test their ad networks, they are effectively inflating the price of how much everyone pays for the ads.
Not really. They charge as much as you are willing to pay. The AdWords/AdSense prices are very low for well made ad campaigns for keywords with little competition but if you want to have the first ad when people search for generic, higly competed keyword (Like poker), you will have to pay like hell because so many others are also willing to pay for that place.
What google then does with the money only affects it's profit margins. It doesn't inflate the prices.
How's that for a reason not buy ads from them?
Regardless of what the company does, I will keep buying ads from them as long as it stays profitable for me (I am pleased with the amount/quality of visitors I get for what I pay).
This is a nice gesture of goodwill from Google... I wonder how much it costs.
Goodwill? Well maybe, but I suspect that they'll also be storing all that lovely user data about people's surfing habits. Airports have a lot of different passengers going through each day, so they'd get a good cross-section of the population. Also, as network traffic on airport wifis is predominantly from personal laptops, perhaps there will be less clickbots/spambots to screw up Google's statistics. They could also tailor their advertisements more effectively, showing people ads for local businesses in and around the airport, for example.
Knowing how O'hare is on delays, they wouldn't get the wifi running until May, and even then you'd have a ping of 12s or so with a 20% chance of your connection being canceled altogether.
My webcomic
I guess google will be keeping track of what all those holiday shoppers/travelers are googling? This is so much better than doing marketing research the old way ... Not that I'm a skeptic ... but I believe there is an evil, ulterior motive.
Has been for a while now.
er, that's its nickname.
I think someone has to whoosh me now for obviously falling for the troll bait... :(
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Great. Now how about some train stations to go with those airports? Boston South Station, New York Penn Station, Philadelphia 30th Street Station, and Washington Union Station would be a good start. Add Chicago Union Station and Los Angeles Union Station for those outside the Northeast Corridor.
Portland, OR is not on the list...but then that's probably because travelers through PDX already enjoy free wi-fi courtesy of the Port of Portland and have for several years now. Now tell me again why other airports don't extend this courtesy already?
As someone that works at an airport (and provides free Wi-Fi), I'll tell you precisely why more don't offer it: money. I work at a smaller airport where the cost of providing the service is low, but at larger airports, the cost of bandwidth and hardware is significant. Pittsburgh and McCarran in Las Vegas offered it as an incentive to pull in fliers, but the cost issue is a double edged sword at airports. With the state of the air travel industry being so bad, not only do airports not want to foot the bill for Wi-Fi, many of them don't want to give up the revenue from the paid Wi-Fi services some have. Airports are pretty desperate for money right now, and there's very little they can do to make it outside of rents and fees. It's not like they can throw an airline ticket sale to attract more fliers. That's up to the airlines. Airports are nothing but landlords, and they're completely dependent upon rent from tenants and fees from things like baggage carts and yes, Wi-Fi.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
If a plane can be brought down by a weak 2.4Ghz transmission, we have other *much* more serious issues to consider.
The planes should be tested against the most powerful transmission equipment that somebody could possibly smuggle on board the aircraft, not the other way around. RF shielding isn't exactly rocket science, and one would hope that any critical circuitry would already be shielded, given the crazy electromagnetic stuff that happens in the upper atmosphere where the planes happen to spend most of their time.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
"Brangelina" sounds like some kind of Laxitive Fairy
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