Google's Holiday Gift to Travelers: Feeding Its Own Money Machine

The news says that Google (GOOG) is offering “free Wi-Fi” at 47 airports through January 15. Google issued a press release Tuesday, posted it to their blog and created a new website FreeHolidayWiFi.com. (They’re also sponsoring Wi-Fi on Virgin America flights).

My wife was traveling through two airports Tuesday and got to try out the free Wi-Fi. She also saw the airport advertising displays giving Google credit for this “free gift.”

However, there’s a problem with this story. At least two of the 47 airports (SAN, SJC) are ones that I regularly frequent that already have free Wi-Fi. They both had it last month and last year. So what does it mean to give us free something we already had? Does that mean Google (or the airport) is going to take it away? Or does it mean the airport already had the costs real low and thus it was relatively cheap for Google to buy sponsorship?

At a broader level, Google favors anything that commoditizes Internet access. An early example was when it began giving away free Wi-Fi in its adopted home town of Mountain View — and helping to end the mirage of paid municipal Wi-Fi networks.

Google wants Internet access that’s fast, ubiquitous and cheap, because in simple economic terms, Internet access is strongly complementary to wasting a lot of time feeding keywords into the Google money machine. And of course cheap Internet access also grows the market for all of Google’s Internet services — which will be helpful should it ever find another profitable revenue stream beyond search.

Author's Disclosure: None