April 21st, 2006
Google co-founder sounds like he'd like to Wi-Fi the world
During an investor conference call related to Google’s first quarter fiscal year 2006 results announced late Thursday Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin offered some clues on where they would like to see Google’s services go.
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Larry Page said he hopes "we and everyone else in the world would be excited about good Internet access that is free, ad-supported and profitable."
Brin said the Wi-Fi offering is based on Google’s interest in "providing better, more transparent access to the Internet for our users."
That’s code for Google wanting to be an access provider, not just a resource that happens to pop up when someone uses their broadband Internet connection to visit the Google site.
But it was something that Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that really has me wondering.
He said the company was sitting on $9.3 billion of cash reserves, which he noted would give Google "sufficient cash to take advantage of (opportunities) if they make sense."
Like buying out an ISP and rebranding it with the Google label, and then maybe even including Google Wi-Fi in a forthcoming service bundle?
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
