Google has today announced (via TechCrunch) that Station, its free WiFi service available at 400 rail stations in India and many other countries around the world, is shutting down.
India and similar developing countries in Southeast Asia and Africa are where Google expects the “Next Billion Users” to come online. Given the different environments, the company is optimizing and creating new products to suit those needs. Today, Google announced and expanded a slew of India-specific features, including Station, Google Go, Assistant, and more.
The Next Billion Users will come online from developing countries around the world with Google making investments to build out features unique for those areas. Focusing on Nigeria today, Google announced a number of updates to its line of Go applications.
Google Station is the company’s high-speed public Wi-Fi platform that first launched in India two years ago and later expanded to Indonesia. The free service is now available in Mexico City starting today.
Google Station has brought WiFi internet connectivity to a plethora of rail stations over the last few years, but now the Mountain View company has secured a deal to bring fast public WiFi to other public places in India. Soon, the city of Pune will be the first city to receive “citywide” WiFi thanks to a new consortium formed between Google, Larsen & Toubro, RailTel, and IBM…
Just over a year ago, Google announced plans to put free, high-speed, public Wi-Fi into over 400 railway stations across India. However, that is an ongoing process that is far from over. Google wanted to expand the coverage to 100 stations by the end of 2016, and now with just a few days left in the year, it has lived up to that promise.
One of Google’s major efforts in India is to bring high-speed Wi-Fi to the country’s railroad stations. That effort has now been rebranded to Google Station and is expanding to other countries around the world.