Starbucks’ WiFi goes Google

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/starbucks-wifi-goes-google.html

by Maxious • 13 years ago

197 136 13 years ago

googleblog.blogspot.com

untitaker_• 13 years ago

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

bluedino6• 13 years ago

And be asked to join G+

username223• 13 years ago

Doing so will allow you to take advantage of valuable products and services available exclusively on Google Plus (TM)!

hunterwalk• 13 years ago

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.

Sami_Lehtinen• 13 years ago

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)

jon-wood2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure having a synchronous 1Gbps connection really counts as "usually" in most of the world, but I guess in that case you'd want to avoid wifi to get the best out of it.

For the rest of us, wifi is far from the bottleneck. I'm currently working from a holiday home in the country where I'm sharing 2Mbps down with 4 other houses.

bitwize2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure having a synchronous 1Gbps connection really counts as "usually" in most of the world, but I guess in that case you'd want to avoid wifi to get the best out of it.

You must be American. :)

Seriously, most of Europe has had gigabit fiber, flying cars, and robot maids for nearly a decade now and in South Korea they're slowly phasing out the government in favor of a benevolent AI.

dalore• 13 years ago

Usually the slowest part of the connection is 3G (or worse 2G) via a tether or dongle. Wifi is an order of magnitude more

ghshephard• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

fpgeek2• 13 years ago

How many days were you in Singapore? Probably the best way for a traveler to get a solid unwired connection would be to buy a new phone (unless you're lucky enough to already have a device with compatible LTE bands) and then enjoy the wonders of prepaid LTE and tether ($7/week/GB).

Maybe it is just because most people haven't upgraded yet, but I have a 4G connection over 90% of the time on my phone (with good latency) and I can't remember a speed test under 10 Mbps down (20-40 typical). It's good enough that it takes my home WiFi (backed 200 Mbps fiber) working near-perfectly on the 5GHz band to beat it.

Encosia• 13 years ago

I've never seen more than ~5 Mbs at the Starbucks near my house even when it's empty. I don't think WiFi is the bottleneck there.

jonknee• 13 years ago

I guess that would make a difference if you wanted to transfer a few hundred gigs of video from an SSD array while at Starbucks, but for the rest of the world I think the improved speed of this free WiFi is a good thing.

bluedino6• 13 years ago

I've had a MacBook Air since 2011 and don't remember the last time I plugged into a network (except for my desktop at work).

VLM4• 13 years ago

"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• 13 years ago

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.

VLM4• 13 years ago

"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.

rikkus• 13 years ago

Last time I went to Starbucks, couldn't get onto my vpn. Do they block them?

bcoates• 13 years ago

802.11u and Passpoint (the WiFi Alliance's implementation of 802.11u) do this.

anologwintermut• 13 years ago

This is more of a standards problem then a start up problem. Minimally, you need to get something standardized using public key Identification.

Another option is to deploy something like secure in band wireless pairing[1] which prevents anyone trying to spoof an access point while you are in range of the existing access point. Essentially, the access point uses transmit/not transmit as an encoding mechanism for secure announcements. Anyone attempting to jam that can't because forging an announcement requires you to not transmit at key points [1] http://people.csail.mit.edu/nabeel/TEP.pdf

mkhalil2• 13 years ago

A MITM would steal your VPN credentials would it?

asperous• 13 years ago

I don't know how all VPN systems work, but if you are using ssh -D I believe that your first connection creates keys for your computer pair in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys and then future connections are fairly secure regardless of who is eavesdropping.

acdha• 13 years ago

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

Your big mistake was thinking that you should ever trust a network instead of using secure protocols like HTTPS or SSH.

mikeash5• 13 years ago

That's no different from how it is today, except the SSID will be slightly different. You have no way to tell whether you're logging into the official Starbucks WiFi or some black hat's stand-in.

There are quite a few VPN products out there advertised specifically to protect you while connecting to untrusted public WiFi networks.

zimpenfish2• 13 years ago

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

disputin• 13 years ago

And get something back for the unpaid tax.

zimpenfish2• 13 years ago

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.

subsystem• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

bluedino6• 13 years ago

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.

tsumnia• 13 years ago

Living in a college town, you'd be amazed how many people meet up at Coffee Shops to work. Personally, I'm like that as well. Something about getting out of the house and dropping $2 on coffee makes me force myself to work without distraction; it helps get you in the productive mindset.

Plus its a great way to retain customers; I'm more likely to go to my coffee shop of choice because of the hours I've sat there. Convincing me to 'move' shops needs a drastic measure (like putting Google in their store).

..now if my Starbucks would only have more outlets...

sdkmvx• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

alexeisadeski32• 13 years ago

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.

minimax4• 13 years ago

It sounds like Google is outsourcing the connectivity to Level 3. Essentially you'll have Google branded L3 wifi.

gonzo5• 13 years ago

Wayport (the outfit that AT&T acquired to do its public access WiFi play) also used Level 3.

Source: I was the Wayport CTO.

edit: I said Google acquired Wayport. It was AT&T.

bo10242• 13 years ago

Sounds straightforward to me -- Google is subsidizing the installation of faster, free wifi at all Starbucks. If you are asking what Google gets out of it, probably good PR, their name in the network SSID, and of course, the more people use the internet (on average) the more money google makes.

acchow• 13 years ago

the more people use the internet (on average) the more money google makes.

People tend to forget about these indirect effects - changes in habits, behaviours, economies. Anything leading to "more internet" or "more computer" in our lives will, almost certainly, lead to more revenues for Google.

dchuk• 13 years ago

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.

cantbecool• 13 years ago

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.

brianbreslin2• 13 years ago

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

taopao• 13 years ago

Why?

minimax4• 13 years ago

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.

brianbreslin2• 13 years ago

minimax summed it up.

xcmm8• 13 years ago

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

keithpeter2• 13 years ago

Well, the only way to avoid that appears to be to go off grid. Perhaps some coffee shops will begin to advertise lack of wifi, and perhaps even relocate to areas without any mobile phone coverage?

geekymartian2• 13 years ago

and without customers?

rdouble• 13 years ago

Coffee shops already do the no wifi thing. There's no wifi at Blue Bottle, 4 Barrel, Sightglass, etc.

jaynos• 13 years ago

Because AT&T is so trustworthy in comparison?

Symmetry• 13 years ago

In fact, AT&T is much less trustworthy: https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013

yuhong• 13 years ago

Not to mention that others snooping on open Wi-Fi is more likely to cause problems.

bluedino6• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

I can tell you: it's the library.

hnriot• 13 years ago

Why would they do that, your state taxes pay for the libraries.

VLM4• 13 years ago

Local prop taxes pay most of the library budget here, and why yes, they do have free wifi. And it rocks.

I'm usually logged into ancestry and google docs while I do genealogy stuff with the microfilm machines. Although as more "stuff" goes online over the years, there's less need to use the microfilm machines. I like the historical map collection and the local history reference books. They also have almost a century of phone books, which is interesting.

joeblau• 13 years ago

They do in Mountain View.

Sven7• 13 years ago

If you are in the ad targeting business, what demographic is going to produces greater yields - kids with no income or people who blindly overpay for shit coffee?

gonzo5• 13 years ago

You are aware that:

a) Google gives free access to public libraries in cities that get Google Fiber, and, b) AT&T WiFi services (nee: Wayport) also has McDonalds as a client.

Right?

With this announcement, you can be sure that McDonalds is considering their options. McDonalds competitors may well approach Google, too.

fpgeek2• 13 years ago

Getting better WiFi into a large chunk of public libraries requires making arrangements with thousands of cities and towns. Getting better WiFi into almost all Starbucks locations in the US requires just one deal with Starbucks. To me, that makes it seem perfectly natural for Google to focus on Starbucks and to reserve their efforts with public libraries for places where they have existing relationships like Google Fiber cities.

joonix• 13 years ago

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.

corin_• 13 years ago

Do they really want to encourage the people who sit there all day on laptops?

Presumably they do. Sure there are arguments against it, but on the pro side: if people are going to spend a day on their laptop, do you want them buying your drinks every X minutes/hours, or do you want them elsewhere?

x3c2• 13 years ago

Stronger argument against this is they'll lose customers due to lack of seating space.

ben1040• 13 years ago

If you have their combination loyalty/prepaid card and make more than 5 purchases on it a year, you get free refills on brewed coffee during a visit (so long as you bought the first cup with the card).

So they actually don't mind if you come in and order the cheapest cup of coffee they have, camp on a table all day, and keep coming back to the counter for free refills. They just care that you do it often, and that you minimize their credit card fees when you do it.

x3c2• 13 years ago

I'm sure they can/will monetize it once it impacts their bottomline. Like charging on time spent in shop or seat reservation charges.

mseebach2• 13 years ago

Starbucks has had free wifi for years. I think it's safe to assume they've figured out the business model.

bluedino6• 13 years ago

"Starbucks? The internet sucks there. Let's just go to..."

mseebach2• 13 years ago

Yup. When I travel, I look for a Starbucks when I need to get online (or want to get a coffee and space out on Facebook for a little while). That can't be an altogether bad thing to have people associate with your brand.

VLM4• 13 years ago

"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."

"Say hello to my little friend", which neatly encapsulates how I feel about stupid web login screens on wifi and exactly how I feel each time this app bypasses them for me:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.uk.syslynx....

aka "Wifi web login". Can be a bit touchy with some but I've not found one yet that it doesn't eventually work on. Once configured, it just transparently sits in the background, at work, or restaurants, or the library, or pretty much anywhere.

I would imagine there exists an iDevice work-alike.

mikeash5• 13 years ago

Unfortunately for us iDevice users, invisible background tasks like that are a no-go. Apple simply won't let you ship an app that sits around and invisibly logs you in like that.

Fortunately, iOS itself is smart enough to notice when your network has a login page like that, and will display that page on-screen automatically so you can click through it. Not as smooth as that Android app (which I'm now jealous of), but at least things don't invisibly fail until you figure out what's going on.

dkrich• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

saturdaysaint• 13 years ago

I hope that Google finds a smart workaround for the need to login on a web-browser - it is an annoyance every time I walk by a Starbucks.

There are a lot of subtle ways of regulating how long customers stay. In recent years, I've seen Starbucks replace cushy chairs with stools and rigid chairs that most people wouldn't want to spend more than 20 minutes in. I've seen more than a few restaurants block off wall sockets. And music can be effective at dissuading loiterers without them being too aware of it - even innocuous coffeehouse stuff can be fatiguing after so long.

rwhitman• 13 years ago

Well on the flip side they've been removing outlets and quietly replacing workspace-ready tables with shorter cafe tables that are hard to work for a long period of time on. So while the wifi would be "faster" the starbucks itself isn't conducive to a work session that would last longer than an hour or two

northwest2• 13 years ago

It might be that it wasn't really Starbucks' initiative and that it's rather Google who wants you to surf on their infrastructure.

If you remember their business model:

1. Own as many web properties and infrastructure (fiber, etc.) as possible

2. With that, get all the data you can on the user

3. This allows you to build the most precise profiles on users

4. Which in turn leads (besides the benefits for the NSA) to an optimal targeting of their ads (their main cash cow)

5. This leads to the highest margins/cash flow

tomkarlo2• 13 years ago

(1) conflates services and infrastructure, which is sloppy / oversimplified.

Google mostly gets from 1 to 5 by getting folks to use its services, not via its infrastructure directly. The infrastructure is primarily there to ensure that folks use the net more overall (and by extension, its services.)

That's not necessarily a bad thing: in return for a service you want to use, you're being shown ads targeted at you. To ensure you consume those services, they're made easy to access.

wilfra• 13 years ago

My experience is probably not typical (I move around a lot and rarely go to the same Starbucks more than a few times) but I'm only about 70% sure that any given Starbucks will have a connection at all. So I only go in if it's really convenient or I have no other options. That's to say nothing of the speed or reliability - both of which are typically mediocre to terrible.

If I knew with certainty that every Starbucks had a fast and reliable connection, I'd probably patronize them 50-100% more than I currently do. Hell, I'd be on my way out of this hotel in search of a Starbucks right now if I knew that!

mattmcknight• 13 years ago

If it's running faster, won't people be able to finish whatever it is they want to do faster?

rokhayakebe• 13 years ago

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.

jusben1369• 13 years ago

"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• 13 years ago

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/)

Recoil42• 13 years ago

Why try and paint this as anything more than a mutually beneficial commercial agreement between two parties?

I think you answered your own question. Why paint less, when you can paint more?

geekymartian2• 13 years ago

at least they are doing something right?

willchilcutt• 13 years ago

So you wouldn't be happy unless they provide internet EVERYWHERE at the SAME TIME? Seems like a ridiculous request.

znowi• 13 years ago

Starbucks’ WiFi goes NSA :)

MrKurtz• 13 years ago

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...

tswartz• 13 years ago

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.

miket• 13 years ago

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

bitwize2• 13 years ago

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.

pawrvx• 13 years ago

Can only access Google's search engine.

volandovengo• 13 years ago

Why is Google doing this?

obilgic• 13 years ago

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

zmmmmm• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

Starbucks’ WiFi goes Google

Related Stories