Google Aiming at Municipal Wi-Fi Again?

Google's direct revenue model scales almost in linear fashion with the number of people using the Internet, in large part because Google apps represent such a huge share of user engagement time with Internet apps.



That is why Google now appears to be considering deploying Wi-Fi networks in towns and cities served by Google Fiber. The new Google Wi-Fi effort obviously would leverage infrastructure assets Google Fiber has created. 

In fact, about 60 percent  of all Internet end devices and users exchange traffic with Google servers during the course of an average day, according to Deepfield.

That finding is based on all traffic from computers, mobile devices, game consoles, home media appliances and other embedded devices. Google’s device share is much larger if traffic  from computers and mobile devices, and not the other devices, is considered.

Google analytics, hosting, and advertising play some type of role in over half of all large web services or sites, according to Deepfield.

Since 2010, in fact, Google represented just six percent  of Internet traffic. In 2013, Google accounted for nearly 25 percent of Internet traffic on average.

Only Netflix represents a larger share of total bandwidth, but Netflix peaks last only for a few hours each evening during prime time hours and during Netflix cache update periods in the early morning.

The point is that Google revenue grows as the base of Internet users grows.

Those facts explain why Google Fiber exists, why Project Loon exists, why Google owns assets in the solar powered drone business, why Google has experimented with municipal Wi-Fi, is the new provider of Wi-Fi for Starbucks in the United States, created Android and Nexus.



Ubiquity of Internet access also is why Google has invested in spectrum or firms owning spectrum, for the purpose of providing Internet access.