Google Wi-Fi launch (and 8 x treadmill = fun)

Yeah baby! IT Blogwatch-adelic! Google's free Wi-Fi has officially launched. Not to mention the eight-treadmill dance...

Om Malik blogs it like a Polaroid picture:

Less than a year after the search engine giant said that it would unwire its hometown of Mountain View, California, GoogleFi is now open for packets. The Mountain View network that cost nearly a million dollars to build went live at 9pm PST today ... offering a one-megabit per second connection for everyone ... Katie Fehrenbacher has been on the story and has tested the network, and gives the network two thumbs up.
...
[it] covers 11.5 square miles, features 380 access points, all supplied by Tropos Networks, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company. One in six access points is a gateway by Tel Aviv-based Alvarion. There are three bandwidth aggregation points in the network that are connected to GooglePlex using point-to-point gear from GigaBeam, an equipment vendor based in Herndon, Virginia. The network was designed by Google engineers and installed by WFI, a San Diego-based network builder.

Ryan shows us a map:

Each of the access points have been placed outdoors except in the Mountain View Public Library. That means if you want to receive the signal inside a building, such as at your business, they recommend that you purchase a WiFi modem. The image to the right was taken from their map of the city which indicates where their access points are located. I think you can safely say that they have “blanketed” the city of Mountain View with WiFi.

Ionut Alex. Chitu has more:

The service is free and doesn't include advertising ... Google also offers a free software that allows secure access by creating a virtual private network (VPN). By using the software, the Internet traffic will be encrypted ... Google's purpose of this initiative is to be an inspiration for broadband entrepreneurs that want to build high-speed municipal WiFi networks in other cities. Google says it doesn't plan to expand its initiative and that the wireless network for San Francisco is currently on hold.

Karl reiterates that point:

Google Doesn't Want to be an ISP ... While there have been ample predictions made of a national Google-Fi network (once they started gobbling up fiber and hiring gurus like Vint Cerf), Google yet again states very clearly they have no such ambitions, telling the NY Times their existing Wi-Fi operations exist simply for experimentation, and to "demonstrate the value of competition." That, and of course perfecting their real business: advertising.

Valleywag says, "Yeah, right":

Google, which will one day roll out national wifi, said yesterday that it will not roll out national wifi. The announcement was made as Google opened its Mountain View wifi to anyone with a free Google account. The next step for Google is San Francisco, where the company is working out a deal with the city to provide free wifi while Earthlink provides paid wifi. Mountain View now becomes a testing ground for the effect all experts fear: With wifi everywhere and cafes full of day-laborers on laptops, will it become really damn annoying to try to just hang out in a coffeeshop?

Michael Parekh wonders if it's a trick:

"Google says it has no plans for National Wi-fi Service". At first, I thought it might have been a trick headline, but nope, it's a pretty serious and straightforward story, told by the Times' venerable John Markoff ... [I have] been a cheer leader for experimentation, catalysts and robust initiatives for open, "almost free" broadband wireless (see here and here) ... dramatic and decisive catalyst in making this mainstream, open wireless broadband network a reality, much in the way AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo! and CompuServe (remember them?) were a catalyst in helping roll-out inexpensive, flat-priced, and ubiquitous dial-up internet access, with the help of ISPs like UUNET a decade ago ... relentless force of technology driven, price-performance curves being applies to communications. And I say this independent of whatever happens on regulatory front on the net neutrality debate.

Google's Minnie Ingersoll is on-message:

This network is a way for us to give back to and engage with the community where our headquarters are. As the product manager for Google WiFi, it has been has been tremendously rewarding to partner with the local government, the schools, the library, the neighborhood associations, and all of our trusted testers to introduce the power of free, wireless Internet connectivity to the city.
...
Another goal of this network is to promote alternative access technologies by using Mountain View as an example for organizations considering investments in the WiFi arena. We think successful mesh wireless deployments will promote competition, create cheaper access alternatives, and (if done correctly) foster open, standards-compliant platforms for content and service providers to showcase their applications without the hassle of the traditional walled-garden approach ... see our Frequently Asked Questions.

John Murrell asks, "Why now?":

Here's one way to move a Google project out of beta -- besiege the company with requests to test it. That's what happened in Mountain View, where eager residents pestered the search sovereign into moving up the launch of its free municipal wireless service.

Buffer overflow:

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And finally... What would you do with Eight Treadmills? [hat tip: John Klossner]

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk.