danbruno.net

I would think that Google’s plan to offer free wireless internet service to all of San Francisco would be received as, well, a good thing. Not the case, apparently. Let’s see what Joe Malchow of Dartblog has to say:

Google has no on-site, large-scale networking experience and, I suspect, employs no RF engineers.

Probably true. It’s also true that Google had no experience in running a Jabber server before Google Talk, no experience in selling ads to personal sites before Google AdSense, no experience running a search engine before Google, and so on. I don’t think “we haven’t done it before” is much of a hurdle for them.

Regarding personnel, Google is a powerful and popular enough company that they can (and do) hire pretty much everyone they want. No worries there.

It also has no business plan with which to at least cover costs.

Well, it’s cheaper to upkeep a wireless network when you don’t charge for it, because the infrastructure necessary to charge people costs more than you would make with the fees. Google already makes a metric assload of money with their advertising programs, so I don’t think they need to worry about the setup fee. (EDIT: From the man five feet to my left I learn that Google may sell location-specific ads as well.)

But the young firebrand, undaunted by these, has submitted a plan to blanket San Francisco- the American city least deserving of such a gift, if you ask me- with high-speed wireless internet.

Hooray for ad hominem attacks! While we’re on the subject, Joe is a dirty, dirty Republican, so you can instantly discredit anything he says. Kerry ’04! (Kidding, of course. I’ve met Joe a couple of times; he’s a great guy and a very clean person.)

It would effectively kill every ISP’s subscriber base in trolly land. Sounds good for bloggers and bad for business in general.

That’s like saying that DVDs were bad for business because they obsoleted VHS tapes. New and better products are not “bad for business” — they cause other companies to get off their asses and provide competition. If we eliminated every threat to the status quo and declared them bad for business, there wouldn’t be any innovation.

Also, this isn’t just good for bloggers; this is good for anyone who has a wireless card.

A giant search company treating its overvalued stock as a slush fund for fun, costly, and risky experiments in order to bring the first whole city into the wireless age… that does not strike me as the best way for this important new market to be born.

Fun? Yes. Costly? Probably, but Google has the cash. (Whether their stock is overpriced is another discussion entirely, but hey, they’re not on the way down quite yet.) Risky? I don’t see why. They’ve publicly stated that this is a test run; the worst-case scenario is that they decide not to follow through. Incidentally, Google has already offers scattered small-scale wifi, such as in New York’s Bryant Park; this is simply the next phase.

Start-up will be nearly impossible for competitors and, when Google can’t sustain its largesse anymore (if it ever be able to; it is not a network company, after all) the whole city will be left high and dry as a traditional competitive market slowly builds up.

Monopoly is probably the most compelling argument. (Think nationwide wifi combined with Google Talk — they can put the phone companies out of business too!) Still, there’s room for competition — Google’s wifi plan for SF is only 300kbps. Whether anyone else will jump into the ring, I’m not sure. Ideally there would be some (shudder gasp) government intervention if Google became the only nationwide wifi provider. Also, as I said, Google has the drawing power to hire whoever they want to, so if they need network engineers, they’ll get ‘em.

As for sustaining their largesse — that’s the entire business model. Just about all of the services they offer are free, because, as they’ve said, they can’t be undersold (read: Microsoft can’t do anything about it). Based on their track record, I see no reason to be pessimistic.

EDIT: Our friendly repartee has been picked up by Computerworld. They side with me, but they spell my name wrong, quote me out of context, and misunderstand what I said about monopolies. Oh well.