Google Station

2020: Project closure

In the middle of February, 2020 Google announced that it winds down the Google Station project on distribution of free Wi-Fi at more than 400 railway stations in India and a set of other public places worldwide.

The vice president of Google Caesar Sengupta noted that the program started in 2015 helped millions of users to appear for the first time free of charge the Internet. But, as the prices of mobile data fell in many markets, including in India, need for Google Station also disappeared. The company is going to close the program in 2020.

Google announced that it winds down the Google Station project on distribution of free Wi-Fi

Google also noted that it could not find a steady business model for scaling of the program which covered Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria, Philippines, Brazil, Vietnam and the Republic of South Africa in recent years. For many years of Google also investigated methods of monetization of the Google Station program, for example, using advertizing at connection to Internet service.

A year later after Google announced the program of free Wi-Fi in India, her richest person, Mukesh Ambani, started the telecommunication network Reliance Jio which offered clients a free packet of the 4G-Internet. Such step forced to review urgently other telecom operators the rates and made the Internet available. At the same time the popularity of the Google Station program began to fall.

Google worked with a number of the companies which provided free Wi-Fi for users in public places.

Now we work with partners to save the developed mechanisms and again to make them useful resources for society, - Sengupta noted.

One of partners of Google, the RailTel company, reported that it will continue to distribute free Wi-Fi at railway stations.^[1]

Notes