Google Offers Free In-Flight Wi-Fi During the Holidays

Google must have been real pleased with the results of its free Wi-Fi program last year since it's doing it again for the second year. This time, though, Google has partnered with airlines to offer free in-flight Wi-Fi rather than in airports.

"On the Chrome team, we’re big fans of innovations that make our lives on the web and in the browser better—and it all starts with more ubiquitous access to the Internet," wrote Sundar Pichai, VP of Product Management at Google.

"So for this holiday season, we’ve teamed up with AirTran, Delta and Virgin America to offer free Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi on every domestic flight from November 20, 2010 through January 2, 2011," he announced.

"We were excited by the response from last year’s free holiday Wi-Fi program, and thought that this would be a perfect holiday gift to help you stay connected to your loved ones as you head home," he added.

Google is happy to give things away, like most of its products, but now it's actually paying Wi-Fi providers to give people free internet, in the US for the holiday season.

But it's not exactly an altruistic move from Google, the company will be using the program to promote its Google Chrome web browser.

Last year, Google used the free Wi-Fi promotion to advertise the Google Nexus One. Now it's doing the same for Chrome.

Note that you don't need Google Chrome to benefit from the free Wi-Fi, Google will likely just direct you to landing page promoting Chrome when you first log in. Google offered free in-flight Wi-Fi last year as well, but only with Virgin America.

The Google-provided free Wi-Fi could be available in 700 planes and could reach as many as 15 million travelers. The holiday season is one of the busiest for airlines and it should mean a lot of potential users for Google. It remains to be seen if the move will have any effect on Chrome's growth.