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.”

With my undergraduate strategy classes, we just got through talking about mergers and acquisitions. This year, as in previous years, I made three points:

1. Due to egos and compensation, CEOs bias towards creating bigger but not necessarily better companies.
2. Adding revenues without increasing profitability does not improve a company’s strategic position.
3. When you are doing a major acquisition, there are two types of companies available: expensive good companies and lousy cheap ones.

I also point out that 99% of “mergers” are actually acquisitions, with a clear dominant partner. (NB: HP (HPQ)-Compaq).

Michael Bloomberg has done it, but Jon Corzine failed miserably. Both Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman hope to do it: translate business success into political success.

Michael Skapinker of the FT has a provocative column this morning about why this often fails — a column that says more about the failings of the political system than of the leaders.

I didn’t get why the NY attorney general is suing Intel (INTC), other than it’s the same publicity-seeking path his predecessor to get elected governor. Antitrust enforcement is a Federal issue, whether for the US DoJ/FTC/FCC or the Eurocrats in Brussels.

However, blogger Geoffrey Manne suggests that NY has an interest in hurting Intel and helping AMD, given that AMD is talking about building a $3 billion plan in upstate New York. For some reason, I thought the idea of Federalism and the Constitution was to prevent inter-state trade wars, but I guess both have gone out the window along with original intent.

With its open source release Thursday of its Closure JavaScript tools, Google (GOOG) is starting to suggest that it may eventually become a good open source citizen.

The newly released tools include a JavaScript compiler, a very broad JavaScript class library, and Java/JavaScript-friendly templates. All are released under the Apache 2.0 license, a very permissive license that essentially lets outsiders do whatever they want (rather than a viral or semi-viral license like EPL or LGPL).

James Fallows has a detailed comparison of the Nook and Kindle. Clearly by using ePub, Barnes is challenging Amazon’s (AMZN) proprietary vertically integrated content distribution system. One interesting angle mentioned by Fallows is that Google (GOOG) books is making its existing online (out of copyright) books available in ePub format, thus increasing the content available for Nook. (For now, Kindle owners have to convert the book to Kindle’s proprietary mobi format, presumably because Amazon doesn’t want other formats on its device.)

The Nook is based on the Android 1.5 platform and thus will run Android apps. B&N is mealy-mouth on whether they’ll provide an SDK. (First they need to enable the Android WebKit browser.)

“Early Tremors: Is It Time for Another Social Network Shakeout?” is the title of a new article this month by Knowledge@Wharton, published by the PR arm of the highly-ranked University of Pennsylvania business school. The article was highlighted on Wednesday by a Wharton column at Forbes.com and I read it after coming home from a discussion with my MBA students about Web 2.0 business models.

The conclusion of the article is a combination of optimism and skepticism:

Nokia (NOK) has wanted to be a vertically integrated mobile services and devices company: Its own app store, its own maps and its own music service.

How’s that working out, Nokia? The data is in on the latter, as PaidContent (and others) report:

A front page story in the WSJ Friday talked about Wal-Mart’s (WMT) price war for online books, with $10 bestsellers. The money quote is pretty good:

"If there is going to be a 'Wal-Mart of the Web,' it is going to be Walmart.com," said Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez in an interview. "Our goal is to be the biggest and most visited retail Web site."

Visiting the CTIA Wireless IT conference here in San Diego has called into focus the direct rivalry between the two largest carriers that account for two thirds of all US cellular subscribers. AT&T (T) is the innovative device company and Verizon Wireless (VZ) is the network quality company.

Neither was present at the MobileFocus press party Wednesday night, which featured the other two major carriers and four of the world’s five largest handset makers (plus RIM (RIMM) but not Apple (AAPL)). However, one of the keynotes Thursday morning (after the former and current Qualcomm (QCOM) CEOs) was by John Donovan, CTO for AT&T.

In a week of CTIA-related mobile platform announcements, industry analyst Gartner predicts that in the next 39 months, Android will rise from less than 2% market share to 14% market share, becoming 2nd in the global market after Symbian.

I don’t buy it: 14% seems plausible, but I think it implausible to assume that neither iPhone nor BlackBerry will get to 14% by then, given their strong recent growth. Also, by some estimates RIM (RIMM) is already well above 14%.

The world's richest Internet property has landed America’s largest mobile phone carriers, after launching a year ago with the smallest of the major carriers.

The result of 18 months of negotiations, this presumably ends the feuding between the two over Google’s (GOOG) efforts to cajole, incentivize or mandate open networks in a mobile version of net neutrality.

On Monday, Adobe (ADBE) announced Flash 10.1 (not Flash Lite) will be available in beta for Windows Mobile and webOS in 2009, and Android, BlackBerry and Symbian in 2010. Adding support for the Research in Motion (RIMM) platform to the previously announced list leaves only one smartphone conspicuously absent.

Apple (AAPL) has been conspicuously rejecting Flash for a variety of reasons, both implicitly and by explicit Steve Jobs pronouncements. It uses its terms of service to ban such technologies. PC World argues that Apple is fighting Flash to protect its App Store business model against encroachments by direct Flash downloads.

Like a lot of Mac fanboys, I went out and bought Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) when it came out. It was cheap ($49 for the family pack, $29 for the single copy) and supposedly was faster and more compact.

After installing it on one computer, so far as I can tell, there’s no news there. Yes, it’s 64 bit — which makes sense for a server but not my underpowered laptop or bottom of the line desktop.

The latest AdMob statistics show that the iPhone share of global mobile web browsing has risen from 33 to 40%. Interestingly, its share in Western Europe (67%) and Oceana is higher than in North America (52%).

By eyeballing it, the iPhone’s impact is diluted due an impressive 13% share here for Android. (Android is only 6% in Western Europe). Since February, Android has jumped from 2% to 7% worldwide, in part due to the new HTC myTouch (Magic).

The handset may not be God, but the Jesus Phone has certainly won another zero-sum battle for customer loyalty over the owners of dumb pipes.

Tuesday both Orange and Vodafone (VOD) announced they will carry the iPhone in the UK. Virgin Mobile (VM) is also said to be “desperate” to carry the phone, while the only uninterested carrier is 3 (the commodity 3G operator).

Former Fed Chair Paul Volcker is reiterating his argument for the need to bifurcate the banking industry: commercial banks that are important to the economy, and risky speculators who are on their own.

From Volcker’s speech Wednesday in Los Angeles, the WSJ emphasized limits on the acceptable activities for the former.

While online communities are an important source both for innovation and also for Internet users to gain value from Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 websites, many of the rules for such communities are still up in the air.

Physical communities have a lot of rules and conventions. Certain forms of political activity are legal on private property. Newspapers like the New York Times don’t print every letter critical of the newspaper, but it (and its local counterparts) will normally print some critical letters of the sort it deems appropriate.

The iPhone has been approved for sale in Korea by the local operators. KT (KTC) is known to be interested, while SK and LG (LGERF.PK) are not clear.

The WSJ account makes it sound like a temporary suspension of protectionist barriers to protect Samsung (SSNLF.PK) and LG:

I just saw the latest Mac ad, “Top of the Line”, which is a response to the latest “Lauren” ad of the “laptop hunters” series — the HP (HPQ) ad, not the original Microsoft (MSFT) ad.

Both ads are mostly true — perhaps a little more accurate when talking about their rivals than themselves. Windows machines are complex and prone to viruses, while Macs have limited options available, particularly under $1000. (There is the minor matter of whether or not “Lauren” is a paid actress.)