p2pnet.net News:- When Google offers something for free, you know there’s a price-tag and that it’ll be directly linked to sucking in even more ad cash.

It notched up $2.5 billion in revenue for the quarter ending June 30 and 99% of that came from online advertising, says the San Jose Mercury News.

Now, “After months of beta testing and anticipation, the Internet giant plans to open up its free, wireless Internet network to Mountain View’s 72,000 residents,” it says. “The network covers about 90 percent of the city’s 12 square miles and offers maximum data-transfer speeds of up to 1 megabit per second - slightly slower than DSL.”

Mountain View is where Google googles and the network will also be “generally available” to the town’s, “office workers, daily visitors and the more than 1,000 Microsoft Corp employees at the Google rival’s 24-acre Mountain View campus,” says Reuters.

“We want to understand what’s different about how people search once they have an extra element of mobility,” The Guardian Unlimited has Chris Sacca, the company’s head of special initiatives, saying. “Google will also be able to trial location-based services and contextual advertising over its new wireless network.”

Location based services. Local advertising?

“Using a person’s position to provide them with information - including adverts for goods or services in the vicinity - is still in its embryonic stage, but is likely to be the next battleground for online companies,” says the story.

“What I’d really like to do is inspire these networks to be built in other communities,” The Mercury News quotes Sacca as saying. “One of the big questions has been, Do they work?”

After all, he said, the more people use the Internet, the more they use Google.

Meanwhile, together with Yahoo and Microsoft, Google has the distinction of being specifically named in Britain’s Committee on Foreign Affairs Seventh Report.

To the, “dismay of human rights organisations,” the three are among western firms which have, “recently adapted their products in order to gain access to the Chinese market, by developing technology which censors their web-browsers in accordance with government diktat,” says the Human Rights, Freedom of Expression section.

Also See:
San Jose Mercury News - Google launches free WiFi in Mountain View, August 16, 2006
Reuters - Google is everywhere in California headquarters town, August 16, 2006
The Guardian Unlimited - Google launches home town wi-fi network, August 16, 2006
dismay of human rights organisations - China Net censors named, August 14, 2006

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