Travelers who pay anything for Wi-Fi over the holidays are paying too much…In addition to teaming up with Virgin America to offer free in-flight Wi-Fi, Google will pick up the Wi-Fi tab for travelers logging on at 47 airports across the country now through January 15.

Regrettably, you’ll still have to pay at ATL which is not part of the Google gift. The list of participating airports is a mish-mash of some big majors (Baltimore, Boston, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Seattle) and some tiny ones…such as Central Wisconsin, Kalamazoo or Spokane.

We asked our contacts at Google why ATL was not on the list and here’s what they said: “We worked with a variety of providers to make this happen and reached out to all top 50 airports (and the relevant providers) in the U.S. – unfortunately not every airport or provider chose to participate (for a variety of reasons) but we are always open to consider adding other airports or providers should they be interested.”

If you find yourself at one of the 47 airports listed below, just fire up the laptop and select the option for free Wi-Fi. NICE! No credit card or lengthy sign-in process required. This is a good thing because I think the long login process using services like T-Mobile dissuades use more than the nominal fee…just my two cents!

The catch: when you sign on you will be asked if you want to set Google as your home page or try it’s Chrome browser. Also, Google will have access to some aggregate, non-personally identifiable information from each airport.

Delta’s partnering with eBay to provide complimentary Wi-Fi  on all flights equipped with Gogo Inflight Internet during the peak Thanksgiving travel week: Nov. 23-30. You’ll get a special promotion code for the complimentary service onboard. Once you log on, you will be taken to a special eBay shopping page, just in case you’ve still got a looooong list of gifts to buy. Delta now has 262 aircraft equipped with Wi-Fi including all Delta MD-88 and MD-90 aircraft and many 757′s. It will have 300 aircraft with the service by the end of this year.

AIRPORTS GETTING FREE WI-FI FROM GOOGLE:

2 Responses to “A Gift From Google and eBay: Even More Free Wi-Fi”