Google CIO To Unveil Free WiFi In NYC’s Chelsea Neighborhood | Hacker News Reader

Google CIO To Unveil Free WiFi In NYC’s Chelsea Neighborhood

techcrunch.com

50 pointsmacleanjr36 comments

Because if there's anyone who desperately needs free WiFi, it's people who live/shop in Chelsea.

Yes, that's a poor neighborhood right? lol

Public WiFi is useful when you're on-the-go.

SoHo and TriBeCa are next.

I get the snark, but their NY HQ is in Chelsea, so why not start there? Google also offers free Cellular inside some area subway stations.

it is also consistent with what they do in the Bay Area. Mountain View ( where they headquartered ) has free Google wifi. http://wifi.google.com

The people in Chelsea Houses [0] might appreciate it.

[0] http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/html/developments/manchelseael...

One saving grace is the High Line. I think it works well to serve public WiFi in places where tourists are going to be- they're likely not using their (expensive, international) data connections but need to get access to info.

WiFi like this already exists in Union Square and Times Square.

This was my reaction as well. I'd rather see them put it in a poor neighborhood.

I'm leaping to the conclusion that this is so that their employees can wander around the neighborhood testing google glass without having to rely on spotty carrier 4g.

Google expects to be making money off of this somehow. They are willing to go pretty indirect routes to make their money sometimes, like offering android for free in the hopes of driving web search. But the added revenue from search in a place already as connected as Chelsea seems like it would be pretty tiny to me.

So if they are doing this to eventually make money (and not as some sort of brand building, "look at us we're so generous" exercise) I can only imagine that they believe the data they will collect from that network will be more valuable than its cost.

There are ways to collect metrics from that sort of a network that don't freak me out. But wiring up a place of that size still sounds expensive to me (though that's admittedly just a guess). The data they collect feels like it would have to be pretty valuable to make up for it, and one sort of data that would fit the bill would be the sort of location based data you could collect from wifi. By triangulating signals using multiple routers , it wouldn't surprise me if they could get a pretty good guess as to which apartment that laptop is in. And that sort of data collection really does scare me.

Of course, there are more harmless sorts of metrics they could be collecting. And my shaky chain of reasoning based on a random tech crunch story could definitely be off. So I'm less saying this is what they're doing than there is the possibility that this is what they're doing. Please take it with a grain of salt.

No, they don't expect to make money off of it. They expect other ISPs to lower their prices dramatically/speed up their service like AOL did after the Kansas rollout.

http://www.qgazette.com/news/2012-12-12/Features/Time_Warner...

> like AOL did

FYI, AOL and Time Warner have no relationship at all -- they were spun out in 2009. Time Warner Cable is yet another separate entity from Time Warner as well (as of 2009). Totally independent.

Huh, didn't know that. Thanks!

I think this is exactly what "pretty indirect routes" means though. They give away WiFi here, ISPs lower prices and increase speeds, consumers have more bandwidth and lower barriers to entry, they use a lot more web services and use them in new ways, which means a lot more people using Google services. They make the pie bigger, everyone online wins, especially Google. And they make money from those services. Very clever.

This chatter of "what are they REALLY doing!?!?!" is so tired. By the way did you know that YOU ARE THE PRODUCT!?!?.

Yeesh.

What would you do if you were a multi billionaire with one of the largest, if not the largest, tech companies in the world?

I would probably do things like:

1) Try to give everybody in the world free internet

2) Try to build sci fi stuff like autonomous cars, or drones that protect rhinos

3) Offer free computing resources to non-profits that align with my view of the future

4) Fund projects that I find interesting. I don't care if they make money, because I have shitloads of money.

Honestly, my friends and I are mostly /already/ doing these things, just on much smaller scales (we're not billionaires.

Go check out a hackerspace some time. If you're in the Bay, go to Ace Monster Toys in Oakland, if you're in Phoenix, go to Heatsync labs in Mesa. I will buy you a beer if you do :)

"1) Try to give everybody in the world free internet"

Because, of all the areas that is just crying out for free or subsidized internet, Chelsea, Manhattan, with a median income of $81,000 and less than 4% below the poverty line, is just at the head of the line.

Google's NYC office is in Chelsea. It's a natural and easy spot to give out free Internet -- after all, there's a metric fucktonne (the only appropriate unit to use for the quantity involved) of fiber sitting there.

I think it's probably just to support their offices and employees located in Chelsea. They probably had to have some agreement with the city to have an open network if they wanted to put up antennas for their own use, or maybe they just figured--being the do-no-evil company that they are--that if they were canvassing the area with their own wifi that they might as well have a parallel network open to the public as a public-relations stunt.

this is not a parallel network - and the the heaviest use is no where near the Google building (Google has its own wifi network for its employees)

there is no personal information shared with Google, or anyone else. beyond knowing how many people are using the network, there are no metrics gathered. It cost about $115k to create, and about $45k a year to maintain.

Bit more technical detail here:

http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/334644/google-offers-...

"The entire network has a download speed of 150Mbps, and each location will have a download speeds of about 5Mbps to 10Mbps, to be shared among all users. The project has 29 antennas affixed to lamp posts, buildings and other locations scattered through the neighborhood. Wireless service provider Sky Packets set up the network, which is connected to the Internet through Verizon and Time Warner Cable"

Chelsea is becoming quite a tech hub: Google, Apple and Microsoft, eBay and many start-ups. This is a great move by Google and a great way to test out urban wifi in a tech-savvy neighborhood.

Where is the Apple office?

There is an Apple store

Yes. I was referring to the Apple store.

Isn't Microsoft in midtown?

Does anyone know if this is different from the free wifi they provide in their home town of Mountain View? It's so elusive. Always shows a strong signal but is rarely usable.

Google and Microsoft provide free wifi in my SF neighborhood. Though the signal is strong, it's apparently capped around 1/.25. Not only is the bandwidth horrible, but they drop you after one hour. Anybody forced to use these APs is surely going to resent the brand behind it.

no bandwith limits in Chelsea.There is no time limit. and the reason for the strong signal vs usability is the weak signal put out by the mobile devices compounded by competing rf signals in the area. the solution in Chelsea? - Hi-gain 2.4 antennas.

Personally I think the future is cell radios in everything, not a hodge podge of free WiFi networks.

I'm not sure about the technical limitations of LTE, but for densely populated cities (case in point: Manhattan) WiFi might be a better choice, even in an ideal world where mobile data cost much much less.

Google is interested in mobile applications that will use more than a few GB of bandwidth per month, like Project Glass maintaining a constant connection and streaming photos or live video.

Any interesting vision of the mobile future requires vastly cheaper bandwidth, one way or another.

That makes it rather easy to get new ideas for products, if a bunch of developers start using their wifi lol

What?

If you control the Wifi setup you can see the traffic passing through it, easy way to pick up ideas if a developer happens to be working on a project using it. Not saying that Google would do this, but they have done this in the past with streetview cars picking up and listening in on unprotected public Wifi connections

Your ISP could do the exact same thing, except SSL, etc., etc., etc.

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