mapping wifi, but not really

Posted Thursday, February 19, 2004, at 11:26AM by Eric Richardson

Alan wrote today about Google's new search by location and how you can use that to search for wi-fi access. Theoretically, that may be the case, but results for my area show that things are far spottier than they appear in Grand Rapids. Let's look at this search for wi-fi near 90007:

The first result, 555 Washington St., is in neither of the web results google lists for it. The closest thing it finds in the free wifi hotspots locations list is a different number on Washington St in Monterey. The 555 Washington address wasn't in the zagats pdf either.

Second result was a complete dud... One result that doesn't contain the address, and one file not found.

Third result same problems... Fourth and fifth are in New York, as are results seven, nine, and ten.

So in our first ten results we've got a Boba Loca (the URLs don't work, but I do know it's there and may well have wifi (most likely pay)) and the Omni Hotel downtown.

It's a cool idea, but yeah... Not really functional yet. It looks like having a lot of addresses on the same page just throws it for a loop. It's google, though, so I know they've got people a lot smarter than me trying to figure this out.