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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Affluent people, are not smarter then the general population, nor are they less prone to human mistakes.
What they do have is a lot of money, and a lot of people want their money. So that gives them Power.
When these people get in the upper crust, they are all fighting for power over the other guy in their class. So they are just focused on making more money, so they have influence over the other guy.
They may have sympathy for the little guy, however they don't want to raise them too high to a point where th
The product was not Profitable (Score:2)
Well Golly Gee! Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!
The product (the barefoot natives using the WiFi) were not a profitable product for Google. Colour me surprised.
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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.
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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.
Toronto, are you paying attention? (Score:2)
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 (Score:2)
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It matters not how many people want to be Google's product. What matter is if that product makes any money. If Google makes no money inviting these people to become its' product, then of course Google will stop offering to allow them to be product, since that costs them money and is generating no return.
These people can still be Google Product by using other Google Productizers such as GMail and whatever other crap Google uses to turn people into products.