You read it right, this holiday season in the US (sorry Europe, Asia) Google from Silicon Valley is providing travelers at 47 US airports free Wi-Fi. The free service commenced November 10 and runs till January 15, 2010. At Seattle-Tacoma (SEA) and Burbank (BUR) airports, Google’s Andrew Pederson told us that the service will continue indefinitely. Google said, “… we like people online.” Rightfully so! This free offering from Google led to the ‘Virgin-Airlines-Free-Holiday-Inflight-Wi-Fi’ that was initiated about a month ago, helping drive the airborne leg. However, we were most interested in the airport arrangement and contacted SEA and BUR asking about the deal drivers – why forgo revenue that can easily exceed $100K per year?

Perry Cooper from progressive Seattle-Tacoma airport told us that they were very excited about the offer since they had a free Wi-Fi concept in their internal planning for 2010 and Google came along at just the right time. Seattle is now winding down a contract with AT&T, but expects everything to be in place in the very near future. At BUR airport, a spokesperson was not so optimistic about a free Wi-Fi future but this is where you readers can help. In fact US airports like SFO and LAX are not participating, probably because they do have exclusive service providers or advertising contracts and cannot participate; however, if travelers make it a point to contact their airport authority on the web or by phone and thank them if they participated in the free airport Wi-Fi from Google or tell them to adopt the Google deal if they did not…this could take off.

Check the links below for more information about participating airports. Further, send this Hot Topic to airport authorities in Asia, Europe and your backyard and help make a difference. We have all seen costly pay phones almost disappear at airports (killed by cell phones) and as a replacement, service providers and most airports alike, jumped on the paid Wi-Fi bandwagon. Gouging (yes, we said gouging) the traveling public seems natural in that greed driven environment. IFExpress has been on a mission for free airport Wi-Fi and we finally have a chance to change airports — so do your part. Remember, this is only a free service through the holidays. We recommend our readers beg their local airports and Google to keep this service alive after January 15, 2010. In many instances Google is installing the infrastructure and we fear that the airports may well turn them over to paid providers after the event closes.

There is one catch though, it is free, it is public, and there will be some bad actors trying to steal identities, passwords, and your money. There are a few safeguards and we have a link below to PCWorld’s common sense precautions you should consider if you do surf a la Google.

We should mention that Google has asked for charitable contributions in lieu of connectivity payments – they only ask that you contribute to a very worthwhile charity, Engineers Without Borders (link below). Come to think of it, a few of our readers could probably contribute an idea or two. Feel free to do so, these folks are only trying to make the world a better place thru brainpower.

• Google News Release
• Burbank Airport News Release
• PC World’s Precautions
• Virgin Airlines Release
• Engineers Without Borders
• Free Holiday WiFi

In Memoriam, we note the passing of long-time, IFE good guy, Gar Westfal. We knew him and loved the man like everybody else. Want a role model? Try Gar… he was the best!