You've been reading about it for a while now, but “GoogleFi” has finally gone public–and folks are putting it thru it's paces. This is the public wireless network that Google has put together in Mountain View, California.
Yes, publicly accessible WiFi is a great thing. We in DC have OpenPark on the national mall for those who want to blog on steps of the Capitol or Supreme Court. But what if we started to use these publicly accessible networks to prove a political point–like net neutrality.
Imagine the headlines: No Yahoo! Search on Google's WiFi, or Google WiFi Prefers Own Base to Ebay, or Why Shop Amazon when Froogle's Faster on GoogleFi?
What if, for a day, Google selected a number of its own sites to which it could temporarily block or degrade access, and instead replaced the site with a message like:
Can't find the site you wanted? Don't worry, it's still there, we're just blocking it.
Why? Because today we can under the law.
If you don't want to be blocked and want to learn more about discrimination on the Internet and why net neutrality is so important, click here.
At least a select group of the public in Mountain View would better understand the issue. Maybe if we had a “No Net Neutrality Day” on a few of these muni-wifi networks, more people would get the point.