Google Launches Free WiFi in Mountain View
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Google has launched a free WiFi service for it's hometown, Mountain View this past week. On Thursday they send a letter to the mayor of the city requesting free WiFi for the whole city. "Google is in a unique position to offer free access to the Internet, since we have the ability to subsidize and earn revenue indirectly when these Wi-Fi users get on the Internet and access our and our partner sites," Minnie Ingersoll, a product manager at Google, said in the letter. The plan calls for a mesh network and will have 20-30 access points per square mile by installing routers on telephone polls. This comes into problems because the city doesn't own all the polls. Apparently a electric company or oil company (I'll double check that) owns a 1/3 of the telephone polls, but Google plans to work something out. I don't think that Google will expand this to the whole state, or country but this is a great step. The Internet should be accessible to everyone.
