Google Wifi in Mountain View is horrible, I can't imagine this will be much better. 2.4GHz is always a shit-show in any major city. 5GHz is an option, but not nearly as many mobiles have it, and the available channels on each device vary wildly. Plus that would start creating noise for a certain WISP I have a fondness for and don't want to see them affected.
Google will pay for free wireless in S.F. parks
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: Google will pay for free wireless in S.F. parks
#12Google Wifi in Mountain View is horrible, I can't imagine this will be much better. 2.4GHz is always a shit-show in any major city. 5GHz is an option, but not nearly as many mobiles have it, and the available channels on each device vary wildly. Plus that would start creating noise for a certain WISP I have a fondness for and don't want to see them affected.
I've never actually successfully connected to it on Castro Street, although I only ever tried inside buildings. I thought it had been disabled or something, I didn't realize it was just like that normally. :(
Re: Google will pay for free wireless in S.F. parks
#13Link to similar article that isn't behind a paywall?
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Google-will-pay-for-free-... (Picked because it was also a SF area newspaper/news website, similar to Chronicle).
sfgate isn't just "a SF area newspaper/news website, similar to Chronicle", it is the same entity as the Chronicle. You'll notice that the page lined at sfchronicle.com has the sfgate logo in the upper left corner and the page linked at sfgate.come article has the Chronicle logo.
(You'll also notice that, URL differences and some presentation issues like font choice aside, the photo, caption, and the line of the article above the paywall fold on the Chronicle site are identical to the photo, caption, and first line of the article on the sfgate site.)
Re: Google will pay for free wireless in S.F. parks
#14Google Wifi in Mountain View is horrible, I can't imagine this will be much better. 2.4GHz is always a shit-show in any major city. 5GHz is an option, but not nearly as many mobiles have it, and the available channels on each device vary wildly. Plus that would start creating noise for a certain WISP I have a fondness for and don't want to see them affected.
5GHz comes with less range. As in life, there is no free lunch in wireless signalling.
Re: Google will pay for free wireless in S.F. parks
#15No such thing as a free lunch/wifi. I suspect Google want to capture data which they are currently missing out on due to people using 3G/4G networks. Also it doesn't hurt to improve their image in San Francisco. Non-paywall article: http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/24/free-wifi-san-francisco-goo...
For Google, $600k is a rounding error. It's the cost of one engineer. Even if somehow spending $600k could net a 10x return, it would still be relatively pointless. Remember, Google routinely kills off working products that bring in far more revenue and collect far more data. Google would have collected far more data from Reader alone. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and a charitable act is a charitable act. If you…
Just did the math (based on 2012 revenue and reported # of employees), and yup, $600k is what Google could easily afford for a single employee (with a good $400k left over for business expenses, per employee).
That's amazing.
Re: Google will pay for free wireless in S.F. parks
#16Until they won't.
Re: Google will pay for free wireless in S.F. parks
#17No such thing as a free lunch/wifi. I suspect Google want to capture data which they are currently missing out on due to people using 3G/4G networks. Also it doesn't hurt to improve their image in San Francisco. Non-paywall article: http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/24/free-wifi-san-francisco-goo...
For Google, $600k is a rounding error. It's the cost of one engineer. Even if somehow spending $600k could net a 10x return, it would still be relatively pointless. Remember, Google routinely kills off working products that bring in far more revenue and collect far more data. Google would have collected far more data from Reader alone. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and a charitable act is a charitable act. If you…
It's even less hard to believe when you look at what much smaller companies are doing in this department. Rovio (maker of Angry Birds) already provides free Wifi to a larger area of downtown Helsinki than Google is rolling out here, and they're a company that is 1/300 the size of Google (measured by revenue). That hasn't exactly bankrupted Rovio, so it's plausible that, to a first-order approximation, Google could provide free wifi to about 300 U.S. downtowns, if they really wanted to, without stretching themselves that far.
Re: Google will pay for free wireless in S.F. parks
#18I know there is a lot of negativity around big companies like Google doing "free" things like this. There is even mis-trust over a sense of unease at the notion of "there is no such thing as a free lunch." These feelings are totally valid, and they unfortunately can prevent the rest of the community from acquiring a valuable resource. Free wifi in San Francisco (One of the techiest cities in the world) feels like a "…
I've been curious, do you know how googlers are responding to PRISM?
Re: Google will pay for free wireless in S.F. parks
#19Google Wifi in Mountain View is horrible, I can't imagine this will be much better. 2.4GHz is always a shit-show in any major city. 5GHz is an option, but not nearly as many mobiles have it, and the available channels on each device vary wildly. Plus that would start creating noise for a certain WISP I have a fondness for and don't want to see them affected.
It has only worked for me when I was outside, but even then it was spotty. It would probably work well if you could mount a directional antenna on your roof of your house though..
Re: Google will pay for free wireless in S.F. parks
#20I know there is a lot of negativity around big companies like Google doing "free" things like this. There is even mis-trust over a sense of unease at the notion of "there is no such thing as a free lunch." These feelings are totally valid, and they unfortunately can prevent the rest of the community from acquiring a valuable resource. Free wifi in San Francisco (One of the techiest cities in the world) feels like a "…
many many Googlers feel VERY STRONGLY about not doing creepy/immoral things like that
Many Googlers != All Googlers != Google
How would you explain this? http://mashable.com/2012/02/17/google-caught-tracking-safari...