According to the Palm Beach Post, holiday gifts are coming early this season as Google announced it started offering free Wi-Fi in 47 airports across the country.
The company will pay the wireless costs
for these airports through Jan. 15. It's also currently offering free
Wi-Fi to all domestic Virgin America flights until that time.
The
idea, according to a statement from the company, is to offer a gift to
travelers who may have to spend considerable time in an airport this
busy holiday season.
It's also a way for Google Inc. to get free advertising.
According
to PBIA spokeswoman Cassandra Davis, Google will be getting an
advertisement on the airport's Wi-Fi splash page — the screen that
appears when users try to access the Internet from the airport — in
exchange for footing the Wi-Fi bill.
PBIA already offers free wireless Internet to travelers in its airport.
"They're
basically using this as a way to sell their name and advertise their
name out there," said Michael Simmons, PBIA's deputy director of
finance, "and we make a little money, so it's definitely a win-win."
Simmons
said that Google is giving the airport about $20,000 over the
three-month period. He said it is the first time someone has advertised
on the airport's splash page.
Both he and Davis noted that the airport will continue to offer free Wi-Fi after Google's promotion is over in January.
Other
airports that Google is offering free Wi-Fi do not routinely offer free
Internet; an operator at Miami International Airport said that after
the Google promotion is over, travelers will again have to pay for
Internet access in the terminals.
Google is just the latest
company to offer a free Wi-Fi promotion in recent months. Yahoo is
offering free Wi-Fi for a year to users in Times Square in New York.
That promotion also began today.
Meanwhile, eBay will be offering
free Wi-Fi on more than 250 domestic Delta flights over Thanksgiving
week, Nov. 24-30. And car maker Lexus recently completed a promotion
for its new 2010 Lexus LS in which it gave a free week of Internet on
American Airlines flights.
Microsoft and mobile-advertising
firm Jiwire also started a free Wi-Fi promotion in airports and hotels
around the country, but it has a caveat: you must use Microsoft's Bing
search engine to do at least one search in order to get the free
Internet.
The decision to offer free Wi-Fi in airports during the
holidays appears to be a smart one, since travel tends to go up during
that season. PBIA's Davis said that about 500 travelers connected to
the airport's Wi-Fi on an average day, but that "in the past, holiday
season has meant more people in an airport and more users getting
online."