Traveling this holiday season? Well, it seems that pretty much all of the major search engines have conspired to bring you free Wi-Fi. Mind you, they’re not working together to make this happen; it just seems to have turned out this way.
First up: Google. Google is offering free Wi-Fi to travelers at 47 airports, starting now and running through January 15, 2010. Google is also giving away the Wi-Fi on Virgin America flights that occur within the continental US. You can find the complete list of participating airports at freeholidaywifi.com. Thankfully, Sea-Tac is on the list; now I just have to find a reason to fly somewhere.
Bing is also giving away Wi-Fi these days as part of a national campaign to get people to break habits and try the search engine. In exchange for free Wi-Fi at a large number of airports and hotels across the country, all you need to do is perform a search with Bing.
Finally, Yahoo is offering free Wi-Fi at Times Square (you know — the one in New York City) for a full year. The service kicked off on November 10, so I haven’t been able to determine if the year of service ends on Nov 10, 2010, or if it’ll go all the way through Jan 1, 2011. Either way, you can tap into it by looking for the SSID “Times Sq Free Wifi.” You can read more about it at the official Times Square Web site.
