Google to Become an ISP - Cities Will Fall to the Google War Machine
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With the various tools used to determine geo positioning, a tourist at the San Fran Visitor Center on 5th and Market Streets using his PDA, for example, and doing a search query for musical events in the city could see ads for a concert at the Sony Metreon on 4th street, between Mission and Howard sts. The man could even pull a map of the location, only a block away from where the user performed their query.
There’s no need to find a local newspaper and hope it has listings for musical events, or to find a yellow pages (if you can, most often when out and about. nobody has a copy you can use) just the ad you want, when you want it.
Google is currently bidding on developing a wireless network in conjunction with the city of San Francisco, which if successful will allow them to expand to other large markets and then move into the mid level markets across the United States and begin to build out their network. If Google wins the bid, it will only help them win future bids in other metropolitan areas. However, if they do not win, they are still in the game. Philadelphia, where the author lives, recently formed a non profit group named by the mayor and the group has chosen Earthlink Inc as the finalist to provide high speed internet access to city residents.
There are currently over 300 communities in the United States considering WiFi access for their residents. The Earthlink Philadelphia network will be the largest in the nation once completed. Once the network is built by Earthlink, it will then be available for ISPs to lease, so they can offer service as well. Just the thought of the WiFi service in Philadelphia has driven the price of DSL service from Verizon to fall to $14.95 per month.
So even if Google doesn't win their bids, they can always lease the WiFi networks where they feel the need. Another thought is to send up their own satellites with the help of the guys over at NASA and provide access this way as well. This would also make for nice back up system should any community have internet access problems in the future.
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