Google has thrown its bid in the ring, along with ten other companies, to build out SF's WiFi infrastructure—this in response to the city requesting submissions. The twist here is that Google is offering to do it for free, and to keep the resulting service free to users. The cost of the build-out, perhaps a few tens of millions of dollars, would be an ATM withdrawal for Google, and the white-knight factor would be huge. The contract award is not a gimme; the mayor's office said the decision would be made within weeks.
Google "Bids" for San Francisco WiFi Project
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. I think it's safe to assume that Google will (somehow) incorporate ads into this. If nothing else, knowing someone is in a certain city will help geo-target certain ads.
Also, though, they can use the browsing data of all those people to help with the search results. For example, if you search for 'Britney Spears' and spend 15 seconds on site A and 45 minutes on site B (and Google will know this), that tells Google alot about the relevance of both of those sites to 'Britney Spears'. That could go a long way to filtering spam sites who have made their way to the tops of certain keywords.
1. Can somebody fill me in on how google plans to profit from this? Why exactly would they do this as only a "community service"? Is there a possibility that they will then offer an upgrade to this service for users who want a faster connection?
As for SF. I can't see how they could possibly turn down this offer. It was said in the article "At some point free becomes less sustainable because there's no way to upgrade service and the networks when no one's paying for it." which makes sense, but lets face the facts. If google does this for free, and then years from now refuses to upgrade/maintain this service the city is out of $0.00 and then they could go with (and pay) somebody else.
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by mike