Wi-Fi a Contentious Tradeshow Beast

Reporter’s Notebook: How do you bring two of the world’s leading technology companies to their knees? Wi-Fi.

At a recent media day, Google provided Wi-Fi in a lecture hall for the 200 or so members of the media in attendance. At least there was supposed to be Wi-Fi. Technical glitches prevented that.

“We apologize. We certainly didn’t do this on purpose,” said Elliot Shrage, vice president of global communications at Google.

It took a few hours, but Google restored access after it rebooted some systems and essentially browned out Wi-Fi access to other parts of its campus to accommodate the press.

Gotta appreciate the effort.

Ironically, Google (Quote, Chart) was recently awarded the contract (with EarthLink) to provide Wi-Fi access to the city of San Francisco.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com. To read the full article, click here.