Private company
Google WiFi
Municipal wireless network deployed in Mountain View, California
Google WiFi was a municipal wireless network deployed in Mountain View, California. It was funded by Google and installed primarily on city lightposts. Google had committed to keeping the service free until 2010.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0
Last updated Oct 21, 2026.
Overview
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Google WiFi was a municipal wireless network deployed in Mountain View, California. It was funded by Google and installed primarily on city lightposts. Google had committed to keeping the service free until 2010. The initial service was shut down by Google on May 3, 2014 at their Mountain View base, and provided a new public outdoor WiFi.2
Products and brands
Around the summer of 2012, the network declined significantly. Users in some neighborhoods could not get connections, and the connections that were obtained in other areas had problems. Mountain View stated, "The city has received many complaints in recent months regarding the performance and reliability of the free Google Wi-Fi system in Mountain View, particularly at our library."
Computerworld reported that "An August field test by IDG News Service found it impossible to get a working connection at numerous points around the city, including City Hall and the main library." Users at the library do not use the Google WiFi connection but rather the wired Ethernet connections that the library makes available at many tables.
The city does not know what is wrong with the network except that it does not work. Google believes that video streaming on the network saturates its capacity. An article describes the network's decline.
From Wikipedia’s article on Google WiFi, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3
Timeline
- 2005Founded Founded1
Links
- WikipediaGoogle WiFi
- WikidataQ4118032
Sources
The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.
- 1WikidataGoogle WiFi on Wikidata
- 2WikipediaGoogle WiFi on Wikipedia
- 3
- 4Wikimedia CommonsGoogle WiFi photo by Google, Public domain