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Google The Internet Communications Wireless Networking

Google Ends Its Free Wi-Fi Program, Station (techcrunch.com) 10

Google said on Monday that it is winding down Google Station, a program that rolled out free Wi-Fi in more than 400 railway stations in India and "thousands" of other public places in several additional pockets of the world. The company worked with a number of partners on the program. From a report: Caesar Sengupta, VP of Payments and Next Billion Users at Google, said the program, launched in 2015, helped millions of users surf the internet -- a first for many -- and not worry about the amount of data they consumed. But as mobile data prices got cheaper in many markets including India, Google Station was no longer as necessary, he said. The company plans to discontinue the program this year. Additionally, it had become difficult for Google to find a sustainable business model to scale the program, the company said, which in recent years expanded Station to Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria, Philippines, Brazil and Vietnam. The company launched the program in South Africa just three months ago.
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Google Ends Its Free Wi-Fi Program, Station

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  • Well Golly Gee! Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!

    The product (the barefoot natives using the WiFi) were not a profitable product for Google. Colour me surprised.

    • Could it be that it was just not slurping enough valuable data from the millions of travellers using the Indian Railways?
      As most of those don't own smartphones it does not surprise me.

      Google really does need to take a long hard look at itself. PRojects like this are more Philanthropic than business. Why not keep it going and make sure people know that it is you who is stumping up the Rupees needed to keep it going.
      Just closing it down is not going to win you many friends in India.

    • The article mentions cheap 4G as the problem. What it doesn't say is that Google wifi was largely useless because it was largely unusable once you are sitting inside a train. The amount of effort it takes to setup google wifi is so large for a non-tech savvy person who just bought his first smart phone, and the return so low compared to just keeping everything running on already 4G activated sim, it is no brainer.

  • Don’t be too surprised when your partnership with Sidewalk Labs rolls up in a few years - once they’ve collected all the monetizable personal data of your citizens, of course.

  • Corporations aren't the solution to everything. It's all fun and games when Facebook and Google want to come to rural areas and pretend they care about people by giving them free internet but as soon as the corporations pull out there's no one else who can come because everyone has been monopolized out of competition. Shouldn't have let google do this in the first place.

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