14 DAY TRIAL // Google is getting in the holiday spirit and has announced it's offering free Wi-Fi to all travelers in some 47 airports in the US. Seeing that these hotspots usually don't come cheap and adding the fact that many people spend more time in the terminals than in the actual flights especially during the busy season, the 'gift' is likely to be very welcomed.
"We're very happy to extend our Holiday Wi-Fi gift to the millions of people who will spend time in airports over the next few months," Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, said. "We know that this is a very hectic travel season for people, and we hope that free Wi-Fi will make both traveling and connecting with friends and family a little bit easier."
The list of airports features some of the busiest in the world and that, in total, handle 500 million passengers each year, about 35 percent of all air passengers in the US. The promotion runs from today until January 15, 2010. Access will be completely free, but users will be presented with the option of setting their homepage to Google or trying out Google Chrome the first time they connect.
At the same time, users will also be able to make donations to any of the three charities Google has selected, Engineers Without Borders, the One Economy Corporation or the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, and the company will match the sum donated up to a maximum of $250,000. Furthermore, the airport that will raise the biggest sum per passenger will also receive $15,000 to donate to any charity it sees fit.
Google has already announced another promotion with Virgin America to provide all of the airline's passengers with free in-flight Wi-Fi during the same period. In fact, Wi-Fi seems to be the holiday gift of choice, with both Microsoft and Yahoo announcing similar promotions.