Google "Yes" - Earthlink "No" -:)

The Mayor of San Francisco wanted but Earthlink this time stops Google's ambitious plans to offer free Wi-Fi to the city and use it as a testbed for new products and new business models with an edge to online advertising - what else?

Its really amazing to have the public interest on your side and to lose your industrial partner. Is that a plan against Google from the other competitors - perhaps. However, I am not sure if Google wants to take over AT&T's ISP empire and headache that I personally doubt it, thats not their field at all. But I agree with some analysts that they need a larger platform such as San Francisco to test their products, giving away free Internet. But in any case Earthlink was not the right partner to carry out that project with all the internal financial problems and the recent layoffs. Perhaps Earthlink was the last ISP that accepted to help Google to implement its plans, but really was or turned out to be a very weak choice

-E