14 DAY TRIAL // A couple of months ago, Google announced several promotions offering free Wi-Fi in airports and in some flights in the US. This was seen as a nice gesture from Google and a lot of people most likely appreciated the move when they were stuck in airports during the busy holiday season. Now though, it has become apparent that the whole free Wi-Fi thing was all part of Google's evil scheme to promote the Nexus One. Or was it?
TechCrunch found that some people were tweeting that they were redirected to Google's new phone page, which features the Nexus One at the moment, the first time they connected to the Wi-Fi hotspots. Some people were upset, not enough to stop using the free Internet connection presumably, but enough to take a clear stance, so they tweeted about it. The fact is, Google did indeed redirect some people, but not all, to google.com/phone the first time they connected.
Another fact, which apparently was missed by others, is that Google has been redirecting people to Google product pages and other promotions from the get go. This isn't some unexpected change and it wasn’t exactly hidden either, Google said so when it introduced the promotion in early November. At the time, Google said people might be asked if they wanted to set their homepage to google.com or if they wanted to try out Google Chrome depending on their browser and other factors.
Google has been pushing the Nexus One through a variety of unconventional means, it has featured it on the homepage and a lot of Google blogs had a post about it. This was just another way of promoting its latest product and the only thing that changed is that instead of a Chrome page, people are presented with the Nexus One.
The free Wi-Fi promotion started in early November and is set to continue until January 15. Google partnered with airport Wi-Fi providers and provided 47 airports in the US with the free service. Wi-Fi regularly costs $5 to $10 in airports, sometimes even more. Along with the commercial promotions, people were also offered an option to donate to several charities.