If you have deja vu, then, yes, this story was first discussed by Vint Cerf in his Searchblog interview....Google is - for now anyway - not claiming to have plans for a national Wifi network, even as it launched its Mountain View Wifi net officially today.
Reader Ed Brenegar writes: This is a year to change the customer relations game. With less commerce happening, presumably, there is more time for interaction. That interaction has to build the relationships...»
Yup, it makes the perfect gift for that officemate or colleague who you thought had everything... including you! If you order here, I promise to sign it, assuming we can figure out the shipping...
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Comments
Iam unable to understand the way google earns revenue by providing internet free?
Nation-wide would require a business plan, John. Its nice to give something away free in Mountain View - but the cost has to hit someones p&l.
Google makes revenue in many other ways then this. I guess there algorithm for their search engine is the money maker. I think it is good that they are inspiring competition in this industry. Plus Its Google.
There is a lot of money to be made via advertising on free networks (note commercial TV still does well with this general model). But Google probably would have done this anyway as it suits their vision and worldview well. Good for them and I hope they roll it out nationally eventually. I set up a bunch of public internet access stations here in Oregon and the nightmare was getting any broadband at all in rural places - let alone for free.
About a year ago I did an analysis of the cost/benefit of Google doing free nationwide Wi-Fi and it actually came out that it would be profitable for them. I had to make lots of assumptions on the cost side, but I took what was being put out in the press about the general costs per city. The kicker came on the revenue side: according to comScore data that I was using, I took the average minutes of online usage per user per month, and crossed that against the number of Google searches per user per month to get the number of Google searches per user-minute. And then I made some assumptions about the increase in the number of user-minutes from free wi-fi to get the number of incremental Google searches from free wi-fi. I'll have to dig up my numbers and may post them somewhere, but I remember thinking that it would come out net positive for them just from the natural increase in number of searches. They wouldn't have to do any incremental advertising to support the costs...just having people online more equates to money for them. Google is like air to an online person...they just naturally use it. Obviously more online user-minutes equals some level of more money for any major property (yhoo, msn, etc.) but Google's leverage on the generic user-minute is so much higher than anyone else that the economic model makes so much more sense for them than anyone else.
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