Why should You care if Google wants to give us free Wifi?
I love tech and wifi and google.
You will see nothing below about LBS (Location Based Services).
What’s the rush? Most people have internet at home, at work and on their cell if they like, Let’s try to get this right before we grant a monopoly in the way the Automobile interests quiety purchased all the street cars/routes and turned them into automobile roads only – not to the long term benefit of our society.
If a city designates a wifi provider as the official carrier, it gives that carrier somewhat of an official Yellow Pages designation (called branding in banking). Now with Google adding Click to Dial & VOIP abilities, suddenly a good amount of the local display advertising in the Local Yellow Pages and Local Newspapers is no longer relevant because any Merchant (even all the local ones who don't bother with websites) would be happy to pay for any call they receive from an interested customer - rather than a print display ad that has difficult to measure results (the old saw "Half my advertising budget is wasted, I just don't know which Half"). If you are a local merchant you will buy your ads with the official city isp because that is the one most people will use by default. Recall the huge fight Microsoft had to control the Desktop?
Search engines are wonderful, but they are not doing this free wifi stuff stupidly. Gates was recently quoted as saying in the future Search providers will pay people to surf.
Fine business models change. But now the local advertising dollars funding local news coverage is significantly reduced..
And more interestingly: Are local unique merchants given priority listings over big box nationwide chains in search results? Large companies can probably pay more for referrals. John Battelle has discussed the strange listing algorithms for search engines…
Maybe local governments should think about ways to promote or a least level the playing field for their valued merchants (Deli's, Auto Repair etc may never bother with websites)? Otherwise there may be even more "Malling of America.". Ok Google is going to really really hate me for saying this, but maybe something like top five listings go to locally owned businesses otherwise Google can’t use the city light poles.
And isn't this the perfect time to make vendors roll out wireless solutions that are disaster proof? And if it is disaster proof then let’s save everyone a lot of money and confusion and cancel all the contracts for private Public Safety networks on special bands. We only use one kind of electricity, one kind of water Remember the Internet was designed initially to survive a Nuclear Disaster.
Let's ask wifi and search engine vendors to work with society solve the very difficult privacy and anonymity issues. They won't unless they are mandatory for installation. Banks have dragged their feet on two-factor authentication for years, only now are there regulations rolling out in the US.
One person can’t very well fight large search engine firms terms of service. Or the way wifi hardware works.
But governments can.