
Starbucks’ WiFi goes Google - Maxious
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/starbucks-wifi-goes-google.html
======
sdkmvx
What does this even mean? Google provides the leased line to the store? The
store obtains an Internet connection the normal way, but then tunnels to
Google? Or is Google's level of involvement that they have paid for an ad in
the SSID?

Google Fiber is a nice business opportunity for them, but that requires
infrastructure. This comes with none of that. It's not even a precursor to
Google Fiber rollout. Either they are getting a similar-quality leased line to
_one_ place, or it's just an ad. And even if the Starbucks uplink is "Google
Fiber", the wireless connection itself will be a huge bottleneck, as it always
is when you have more than around five devices communicating at once.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
> Or is Google's level of involvement that they have paid for an ad in the
> SSID?

They're paying for the increased speeds in exchange for the ad, yes. It seems
pretty clear to me that Google wants to brand itself with the word 'fast'.
This goes as far back as the original Chrome commercials. I think it's rather
smart.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
> It seems pretty clear to me that Google wants to brand itself with the word
> 'fast'.

And it's rather peculiar that we all associate AT&T with 'mediocre' thanks to
their Starbucks wifi sponsorship.

~~~
sangaya
I've actually never thought of AT&T as 'mediocre' because of a Starbucks
relationship. I view them as 'mediocre' due to a decade of terrible,
unreliable, and spotty cellular service. It's amazing what service we'll put
up with just because all of our friends and family are using that same
provider.

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VLM
"you’ll know your new network is ready to go when you can log in to the
“Google Starbucks” SSID."

LOL either the real one will be up or someone running a MITM attack.

It is an interesting area that has not been tackled by a startup. I have no
idea how they'd tackle it. But it would be nice to know when I connect to some
random network if I'm on the real thing or just some spoofed SSID. Yeah yeah
connect to your VPN... but another layer of security, or a reduced level of
threat, never hurt anything. Maybe a free VPN would be the point of the
startup, "Don't trust your internet access? Connect to us!"

Also this would have been a cool place/idea to roll out guaranteed working
IPv6 connectivity. This may very well be the case, although unpromoted.

~~~
gizmo686
In order for that to work, I think you necessarily need the cooperation of the
network owner, and an informed end user. Given that, it seems like the
technical solution is basic public key cryptography. Give the access point a
public key (possible the same key it uses for https), then all the user has to
do is validate that the access point is using the appropriate certificate. You
could provide software that automatically validates networks when you connect,
and/or provides a more user friendly way to do so.

The biggest problem I see is that their is no way to automatically distinguish
between a MITM, and the vendor simply not participating.

~~~
VLM
"informed end user." Or it could be a free automatic feature of Android 4.4.
The almighty GOOG has the unusual situational advantage of being the same guy
doing the WIFI and doing the phone/tablet OS. The only place AAPL has them
beat is they sell the wifi access point devices too.

They could release an ITMS app for iDevices, I suppose.

My relatively new android phone is running 2.3.7, so somehow shoehorning it
into an android app would be more useful than adding to a OS I probably won't
have access to for years.

Its going to need to be cross platform for the laptop users anyway.

Note that as a startup idea you don't need to be .mil grade and encrypt and
verify every packet. Something as simple as a notification pop up along the
lines of "Holy Cow you are in Great Danger!" would be more useful than the
present nothing.

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joonix
What is Starbucks' incentive for making wifi faster? Do they really want to
encourage the people who sit there all day on laptops?

Will the Google wifi require a login via web browser before given internet
access? My phone is always auto-connecting to attwifi but it ends up
paralyzing my phone because nothing works until I go to the browser and agree
to their terms.

~~~
dkrich
Starbucks derives much (if not most) of their success from product
positioning. It's no secret their coffee is just meh in comparison to any
other coffee shop. People frequent Starbucks because they love the brand. A
lot of things comprise a brand. The logo, the music, the smell, the brown
tiled floor, the atmosphere, and yes, the wifi they offer.

If Starbucks partners with Google it isn't really a play to make the free-
loaders more comfortable from an operations standpoint, it is about improving
their brand image. Once you know they have faster wifi, it will be one more
aspect of the brand that you are drawn to, even if it isn't to use the wifi.
It may sound absurd, but I believe this is more of a marketing play than
actually improving the customer experience.

~~~
arjunnarayan
Starbucks coffee is actually pretty darn good. Sure, if you live in SF,
Seattle, Portland, or New York City, you have access to niche coffee shops
that can really do better. But objectively speaking, Starbucks coffee is
really about 90% as good. And for the rest of the country it _really_ raised
the quality of coffee. 20 years ago you got bitter swill anywhere except the
above trailblazing cities. Today you can get a properly pulled espresso with
perfectly microfrothed whole milk anywhere in the country, which is a pretty
mean feat. In a decade or two we've hit Italian levels of coffee quality.

~~~
dragonwriter
> But objectively speaking, Starbucks coffee is really about 90% as good.

"Objectively speaking" about a matter of taste is always improper.

~~~
pbreit
But coffee quality is not strictly a matter of taste.

~~~
dragonwriter
"good/bad" quality is completely subjective.

There may be objective qualities that have statistical correlations to
people's "good/bad" assessments, but that doesn't stop "good" and "bad" from
being subjective.

~~~
pbreit
quality is not completely subjective...sorry.

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brianbreslin
2 years ago I would have been excited at this news. Today I see it with a
sense of trepidation. Times have changed.

~~~
taopao
Why?

~~~
minimax
If you were nervous about Google knowing all of your search history, e-mail,
and youtube activity, how do you feel about them being able to snoop on
literally every packet you send and receive? Also as a bonus they can now
track you by your MAC address.

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jusben1369
"Google has long invested in helping the Internet grow stronger, including
projects to make Internet access speedier, more affordable, and more widely
available."

Speeding up the wifi at Starbucks seems like it's about a 20% fit with this
mission statement. Ie - if this mission statement was really your goal there'd
be a LOT more options that Starbucks. Why try and paint this as anything more
than a mutually beneficial commercial agreement between two parties?

~~~
illdave
To be fair, they have to start somewhere and Starbucks are extraordinarily
widespread. Don't forget about all of the other things Google are doing to get
Internet access to everyone they possibly can (for example:
[http://www.google.com/loon/](http://www.google.com/loon/))

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bluedino
This is big. Well, not that big, but kinda big.

Starbucks and the Barnes and Noble cafes near me both use the same incredibly
slow AT&T wifi. The most I can pull down when the place is completely empty is
~ 150kbs, so I'm assuming they have a T1 circuit for internet.

To make it worse, the router they use appears to not do any traffic-shaping at
all. So with just one person streaming video or downloading app/OS updates, it
becomes excruciatingly slow. It's kind of rude to other guests when you use
the wifi to catch up on the last 4 episodes of Breaking Bad or torrent
something. There's also the wifi congestion when the store is very busy but
what can you do about that?

With that said, I'm curious as to what the _up to 10x faster than before_
means. If they offer a 10/15mbs connection, that would be a huge improvement.

All the independent coffee places in town either offer wifi backed by 20-30mbs
cable or 6mbs DSL, so they are much better destinations if you know you're
going to need decent internet access. Nothing like running 'bundle install'
and after 45 minutes you just pack it up and leave because you're getting
dial-up speeds.

~~~
EdJiang
This was a bit shocking to me, but I found out from an employee that attwifi
is actually off a 4G modem. Any wired connection should be better.

------
tnuc
It would be nice if google provided free wifi to public libraries.

The announcement talks about kids doing homework. They are more likely to be
in the library or McDonalds than starbucks.

~~~
maneesh
Head over to a public library after school, then head over to a starbucks, and
tell me which one has more high-school aged children in it.

~~~
superconductor
I can tell you: it's the library.

~~~
spjuza
It might depend on the location, but I have seen it both ways. Sometimes
coffee shops are much closer than a library to the student's house or school.

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untitaker_
Does that mean i will have to log in with my Google account now?

~~~
hunterwalk
Facebook's experiments with wifi in Bay Area coffee shops encourage you to
both login w your FB acct and check in to the location publicly on FB
timeline.

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bitwize
Does that mean their hotspots won't go to shit the second there are more than
two people in a given Starbucks location?

If so, way to go Google.

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zmmmmm
It's interesting that this is (apparently) a big draw for people to come
Starbucks. I kind of wonder what the big use case is.

I assume most people showing up at a Starbucks have smart phones with data
plans. So it's probably not for phones, but tablets and laptops. But then I
also assume the speed is not that great as the Wifi will be super heavily
congested. So you are probably not getting high bandwidth and a lot of stuff
will probably be blocked or throttled anyway. Which means most people could
probably just tether to their phone and get the same performance.

So then it's for a) those people who can't tether or b) those who can't be
bothered tethering?

These days I've virtually stopped using any kind of free public Wifi because I
don't trust the security and my data plan is enough for most of the things I
want to do anyway.

~~~
tadfisher
You've hit the nail on the head. Tethering is somewhat of a black art in the
US, as carriers have started clamping down on tethering users in order to
charge them $20 or more to access the same bits via another device.

Most Android users don't even have the standard tethering options here, as
carriers mandate that be removed and replaced with their own tethering apps
that enforce this restriction and protect their revenue stream.

And besides that, most users aren't technical enough to understand that you
can access the Internet from your laptop through your smartphone.

And besides _that_ , most carriers have limited data plans, so getting lots of
work done over a tethered connection is not exactly feasible.

------
subsystem
I'm not sure that people having to do their homework at places like Starbucks
and McDonald is something to be proud of.

Edit: I'm of course refering to the linked WSJ article. It's of course good
that the option exists, but sad that the poor basically has the same access to
the internet as someone hit by a hurricane.

~~~
gk1
I hope you don't mean for the students themselves. I live in NYC and know at
least two people who don't have a connection at home... I'm sure there are
thousands more.

Most (if not all) of our public libraries have Wi-Fi, but at any given
location you're more likely to be near a Starbucks than a library.

~~~
bluedino
> I hope you don't mean for the students themselves. I live in NYC and know at
> least two people who don't have a connection at home...

The low-income areas around me don't have a Starbucks, so it doesn't do those
kids any good.

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dchuk
Thank god. As someone who routinely visits coffee shops to help maintain some
semblance of sanity as I work from home most of the time, entering a nearly
full Starbucks almost always means the internet will be sluggish. Hopefully
this means I can actually stream music and work at the same time now.

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Sami_Lehtinen
Err, usually the slowest part of connection is WiFi. I never use wifi if I
want to get reasonable throughput or ping. I don't even live where the WiFi
band would be unreasonably congested. (connection 1/1 Gbps FTTH)

~~~
ghshephard
I'm what you would consider a "Knowledge Worker" and I haven't connected an
ethernet cable to my laptop for Internet Access in 18+ months. With 802.11ac
now available, the slowest part of a connection is almost always going to be
the speed of your internet connection.

I just came back from Singapore, and, between our Corporate Office down in the
PSA building, the WiFi at the St. Regis, the various hotspots I had to work
with on a client site, tethering to my iPhone, and the 2 mbit/s proxy on the
client site - I can tell you I would have paid upwards of $20/day to get a
solid 20 mbit/s connection if I could have - I never once saw a sustained
connection of > 10mbit/s - my WiFi was never close to being the slowest part
of the connection.

~~~
kalleboo
Public Wifi is near-universally terrible. Take WWDC this year. On the wired
download stations you could get 300-600 MBit downloads. On WiFi you were lucky
to connect at all. Heck, my experience is that wherever WiFi is available, 3G
is usually both more reliable and faster.

At home, living alternatively in Japan and Sweden with 100 MBps connections in
apartment buildings (=everyone has their own WiFi access point trying to
squeeze in 100 MBit/s of BitTorrent uploads), WiFi is a continual pain in the
butt and is often hampering my download speeds. I can't wait for 802.11ac, but
I just got this fully-decked-out laptop last year and am not looking forward
to spending another $3000

~~~
bluedino
> Public Wifi is near-universally terrible. Take WWDC this year.

You're comparing a coffee shop with 10-30 people in it to a conference with
5,000 people in attendance?

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rokhayakebe
This is part of a bigger plan to turn Google into a mobile carrier. 18 months
from now, you will be able to ditch your T-mobile, Verizon, Sprint
subscription and connect to Google Wifi nationwide using their Starbucks mesh.

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tswartz
>If you’re in a Google Fiber city, we’re hoping to get you a connection that’s
up to 100x faster.

I look forward to seeing how this new competition begins driving Comcast and
the other larger services to improve. In SF, if I had the choice to switch
from Comcast to any other company that could offer similar speeds I would.
Seems like Google Fiber makes Comcast and ATT's speeds look laughable.

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zimpenfish
Hopefully they'll bring this to the UK and we can get rid of BT Openzone.

~~~
disputin
And get something back for the unpaid tax.

~~~
zimpenfish
None of their tax was unpaid - they paid exactly what they were legally
obliged to pay. (Note that I don't agree that they were paying a morally
satisfying amount of tax but ...)

Blaming Starbucks for a broken tax regime where the government bends over
backwards to create obliging tax rates and structures for big companies is
dumb.

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cantbecool
I bet this doesn't please AT&T one bit. I always thought Starbucks internet
connection speed have been considerably faster. It always felt like I was
surfing in the internet on DSL circa 2001.

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miket
Hope it's less flaky than the Google-provided wifi in Mountain View

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obilgic
I wonder how much it is worth for Google to write "Google Starbucks" instead
of "Starbucks Google"

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znowi
Starbucks’ WiFi goes _NSA_ :)

~~~
MrKurtz
You seem to forget that they are replacing AT&T.

I guess being cynical is understandable but you shouldn't over do it:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2013/jun/19/google...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2013/jun/19/google-
chief-legal-officer-david-drummond-live-q-and-a)

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xcmm8
Great, so now you can get a NSA probe up the backside while you drink your
coffee. No thanks, Google.

~~~
jaynos
Because AT&T is so trustworthy in comparison?

~~~
Symmetry
In fact, AT&T is much less trustworthy: [https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-
back-2013](https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013)

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volandovengo
Why is Google doing this?

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pawrvx
Can only access Google's search engine.

