The Google Campus in Mountain View

Turns out that information does want to be free. Thanks to Stuart Brand for the quote and to Google for making the decision to push the free information ideal to extremes. Yesterday, the Internet colossus rolled out its first free WiFi system in the community of Mountain View, California. The next stop is San Francisco. What does this mean for the ISP industry?

Telephone and VoIP companies may have cause for concern as well. There are already reports that VoIP calls were easily made over Google's WiFi service. Though Google still maintains that it will not expand its WiFi offerings to the entire nation, telephone, VoIP, and cable companies will clearly see Google as a very real threat. At the very least, Google stands to take away some business from these companies in the Bay Area.

How will this act play against recent moves on the part of ISPs to restrict user access to certain sites? Is this a strategic, game theory move on Google's part to say to the industry, hey, if you want to limit access to us or make us pay you to carry our search engine and other offerings, well, we just might put you out of business. And they can do it too.

Interesting move.