Inside Google's San Fran WiFi bid
How does Google plan to wire San Francisco? And, more importantly, how does the company plan to make money while giving away access? PCWorld went through Google's proposal — one of 26 the city received in response to an RFP for citywide WiFi — and came away with a few answers. Location-specific advertising is one of the obvious ways Google would make money on the service. And while Google would provide 300kbps service for free, it would charge for higher-speed access, and would also sell capacity to other ISPs, who could resell high-speed access. Of course, this wouldn't be a Google product without at least some of the corpo-idealism for which the company is famous. In the vein of its "make money without doing evil" mantra, the company's proposal includes a statement that "we believe that ubiquitous, affordable Internet access is a crucial aspect of humanity's social and economic development, and that working to supply free Wi-Fi is a major step in that direction." As long as there's a way for Google to make some money in the process, that is.
