Google Partners with Earthlink in Municipal Wi-Fi

tsalaroth writes "lightreading.com has an interesting article regarding the San Francisco Wi-Fi bids. Apparently, Google and Earthlink bid separately for building the municiple Wi-Fi, but have now joined forces. From the article: 'In this proposal, Google will provide a free WiFi service citywide and EarthLink will serve as the premium service provider.'"

Failed model given a makeover

[Grumpy Wombat]

Free internet access has already been shown to be a dud model. Think back a few years and you may recall a whole host of free internet providers who were going to make up the dollars with advertising. Do you remember any names? Probably not, they all went broke or changed direction.

So what's new with wireless? Not much. I for one would rather pay for add free wireless access (but not much- I'm never /that/ far from a wired point) than have to put up with adds. And if I'm going to pay, it has to have good geographical coverage, which is not that easy or cheap to do once you start looking at all the blind spots from irregular terrain or tall building in city centres. I'm sceptical about the advertisement value being greater than the cost of provision, though google must think so. I'll be interested to see if this has any legs in the long term.

Oi guys

[Dreamwalkerofyore]

Lay off of Google once in a while. They're agreeing to provide free wi-fi to a city. I know that everyone loves to trounce on anything that's big, but big companies are not always bad things. I frankly don't care if google handles all of my internet capabilities, because I trust them to do the right thing, and so far thay haven't proven me wrong. If we're still complaining about their decision in china, I think they did the right thing. They have clearly labeled warnings if chinese denizens search for something that's censored, and at least they have some freedom. What if Google was cut out entirely in China, and the only search engines that worked were something that's 100% government friendly? I'm not saying you have to like everything Google has done, but they have on multiple occaisions stood up for our privacy where other's have buckled, and until they decide to change that (which I don't think will happen unless there's a complete sweep of the Board of Directors), I will happily consume their goods and services.