San Francisco — In what could be deemed as a thinly veiled endeavor to shine up its image, Google Inc., hoping to attract holiday cheer to harried travelers, on Tuesday announced an early Christmas present in the form of free Wi-Fi at approximately 47 major U.S. airports across the country running through January 15, 2010; ensuring that people can connect free to the Internet while they wait at airline gates and other areas.
The California-based Internet powerhouse said that it is participating with scores of airports and Wi-Fi providers like Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group and Airport Marketing Income and others to transform airports into free Internet hot spots through January 15 of next year.
Forty-seven airports, from Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando to St. Louis, and Charlotte, would be bestowed as part of the holiday cheer. And after the project is completed, the Burbank and Seattle airports will offer free Wi-Fi indefinitely.
“We are very glad to extend our Holiday Wi-Fi gift to the millions of people who will spend time in airports over the next few months,” said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google. “We know that this is a very hectic travel season for people, and we hope that free Wi-Fi will make both traveling and connecting with friends and family a little bit easier.”
“Google gets this year’s Wi-Fi Santa award,” said Boingo chief executive Dave Hagan.
As part of the service, travelers taking advantage of the free wireless networks will be invited to make donations to one of the three charities: “Engineers Without Borders,” the “One Economy Corporation” and the “Climate Savers Computing Initiative,” with Google promising to match contributions to a maximum of 250,000 dollars.
During The Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s holidays that brings one of the heaviest traveling crowd of the year. According to the US Federal Aviation Administration estimates, which anticipates that more than 100 million people will travel through the country’s airports between now and January 15, 2010.
And not to mention bad weather and other extenuating circumstances, which often extend travelers extra time in the airport after they pass through security. Wi-Fi is handy for road warriors, bored children, and others who just want to surf the Internet.
An unidentified woman uses her laptop at an airport terminal while waiting for her flight. (CREDIT: Flickr/n0nick)
What is more, according to a recent survey by the Wi-Fi Alliance, which stated that 50 percent of business travelers prefer overnight flights in order to be “reachable” during business hours, and an overwhelming 82 percent said being connected through Wi-Fi would help solve that problem.
“In addition to the obvious bonus holiday travelers will enjoy, sponsored access will increase overall Wi-Fi usage in the participating airports and help supplement the airport’s increasingly important non-airline incremental revenue,” said Hagan.
But what is in it for Google? It is all about advertising and branding, according to Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence.
“This does not really get Google any new awareness or usage, although it may incrementally generate additional searches from people who would not sign on otherwise. Some of those searches will generate clicks and revenue. I’m not certain how much this costs Google, but some percentage of the fees will be covered by the new clicks,” Sterling said. “Google has also got a charitable-giving promotion with this. So overall, it is mostly a feel-good promotion for Google. Bing is doing something similar.”
Last month, Google and Virgin America announced free Wi-Fi service on the airline’s flights during the holidays. Watch the video below to get an overview of the Google’s free Wi-Fi gift for the holiday travelers.
Click here to see a full list of airports where Google will be offering free WiFi.
Not wanting to be left behind, apart from Google, other major search engines like Microsoft and Yahoo, and eBay also are providing free WiFi hotspots around the nation this holiday season till early next year, at airports, hotels and even in New York’s Time Square.