foxnews.com — Google has been toying with the idea of implementing free municipal Wi-Fi. I've always believed that it began as a whim, but became a subtle threat aimed at the major carriers who are saber-rattling over tiered service, threatening to charge Google (GOOG) more for its supposed free ride on their networks...
Aug 22, 2006 View in Crawl 4
robweberAug 22, 2006
I actually agree with this Dvorak article, however I'm not quite sure who's side he is supposed to be on with this one. Is it Google and other providers of this eventual free wi-fi, or the telco companies? He seems to be kind of sitting the fence and pointing out what could happen one way or another. I certainly feel no remorse for telco companies. Also, what is so bad at having targeted ads for your location? I would rather have that than most of the stupid ads I do end up getting most of the time.Another thing I have a problem with is this sentence right here:"What if suddenly — from this experiment — Google discovers that localized service combined with localized search and local advertising (specific to the target community, aka Mountain View) can not only pay for the system but provide a new profit center?" I find it very naive to believe that someone at Google hasn't seen this potential already. We're talking about a company that hires the brightest of the bright, and John C. Dvork thinks they haven't seen this potential yet. It is a good article, but as usual, Dvork raises up a big issue, and has no conclusions as to how this problem affects people in general, or how it can be "solved".
robweberAug 22, 2006
I think the point is now that Dvork has a target audience, that will continue to read his articles, he can just spout off whatever and know that people will read it.
twangoAug 22, 2006
Good points.Wireless ANYTHING is loaded with security problems.
Closed AccountAug 22, 2006
I always get excited when I see J.C. on the main page, thinking the "Dvorak" is concerning the keyboard layout. Do you think he uses it?
classicjbcAug 22, 2006
@coaxThe NY Times cookie doesn't corrupt your SOUL!
spthomAug 22, 2006
@ramallama:Exactamundo. All Google has to do is provide the threat of friendly competition against the telcos. That's probably a better defense against a tiered Internet than government regulation. Actually, I believe I remember reading Eric Schmidt say something to the same effect.
schmidtlAug 23, 2006
This sounds awesome but I really dont like that it says that now they can not only see what city you're in, but they can tell what street you're on. This sounds a bit like big brother tricking us into agreeing with him. Yay for google but they're still people.
marcamillionAug 23, 2006
I dont think they have that much clout. What these telcos dont understand is that they are playing with fire. They are trying to stick it to the web community, and hurt the bottom line of several major companies. Google, Amazon, MSFT, Yahoo, Ebay. Most of these companies have $Billions more cash, than the stupid Telcos, so given that they want to fight them, they can and probably will. I hope that the telcos do piss them off to the point that they retaliate and squash them. Everybody start building these huge wifi networks, and giving away free skype handset phones that work out cheaper for the consumer, would do the trick.
robweberAug 23, 2006
what i'm saying is that the 95% of the fodder you seeing on the news these days is professional journalism. i'd rather see FACTS presented that make sense and perhaps some intelligent thought and converstation from there. giving me a bunch of "well this could or could not happen based on the fact that I think so" type information and then leaving it at that is just crap.