Google's Sidewalk Labs First Project Is To Blanket NYC With Free Wi-Fi

Google's Sidewalk Labs, that focuses on improving city through technology innovations, is starting with bringing widespread Wi-Fi to big cities.

It will start with New York City, where it plans to bring free Wi-Fi.

Google side-project is buying the companies running New York's LyncNYC project that offers public WiFi from pay-phones.

The New York City rollout is pitched by Sidewalk as being the first step in a plan for world domination. It'll involve 10,000 access points from which the new venture, Intersection, will provide access, The Register noted.

The project will mean "you can walk down any street and access free ultra-speed WiFi."

Sidewalk is targeting issues of modern cities such as pollution, energy, traffic, communications, and cost of living. "It was formed to look at the confluence of the physical and digital world to solve urban problems," Chief Executive Officer Dan Doctoroff said.

"There are certainly places that it's immediately replicable," he said, adding that the idea is to "use technology not to make cities all the same, but enhance what makes them unique and individual."