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Comment by pnathan | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like a great opportunity for some hackers (hardware and software) to get together and put together a Secure Open Wifi protocol and reference designs.

I honestly believe this is solvable. Maybe there's no financial market, but it seems like a tremendous good.

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Maybe there's no financial market, but it seems like a tremendous good.

An Open Wifi protocol might be difficult to sell, but selling better routers should be possible. The current ones are ugly and difficult to use.

I think Google would be very good candidate for developing this kind of project. They'd get more advertising dollars too. :)

Seriously? We want a new network that big brother can't shut down or spy on so easy so your solution is to let the company that said "If you're worried about others seeing what you're doing maybe you shouldn't be doing it" running the show? I would trust Facebook with this before I'd trust Google with it.

I think we are talking about a protocol included in the WiFi standard which is implemented by whoever makes these devices. I'm not saying it should be some closed source proprietary 'Google' connection. They just have enough say in these matters that they could drive it forward.

I think your quote is a misinterpretation of Eric Schmidt: http://blogs.gartner.com/jeffrey_mann/2009/12/18/googles-eri...

It's arguable, but I agree with the author of the linked post.

It's irrelevant what exactly he meant. The bottom line is that Google can't be trusted and he said this explicitly in the interview. Whether that be because Google doesn't care about your privacy or because they are afraid of fighting with the Government is immaterial. The end result is the same: don't trust Google.

If you don't want to use Gmail for sensitive email, by all means don't. But this is just a silly knee-jerk reaction. Even if Google is the evilest company in the world, how could their development and championing of an open WiFi standard possibly compromise your privacy?

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