Andrey Golub

FON "reloaded"- no more "free cakes for everybody", opium for masses, and no more "Wi-Fi Revolution"? 

It's only today I could walk through the Blog of Martin Varsavsky, one of my favorites "hero of the day" and Bloggers- Evangelists for some important movement in the modern world. 

There were lots of interesting news and thoughts in what Martin has produced since I read him last time. And among the other philosophical dialogs (usual for Martin), I found few very strong expressions, that, from my point of view, aimed to communicate to the readers that

a bit from my past: I remember I had a similar feelings once, two years ago or maybe more, when having put together all that I know about Google (incl. personal experience in applying to Google's positions :lol:), I felt that Google is no more the good power able to combat the Evil- Microsoft ;) Google had become few years ago just another commercial monster, means Evil in my philosophy of the FREE and SOCIAL world.

I remember once I was such a great fan of Google. I have some good Russian friends that now work for M$ in the MSN Search Team, and we spoke lots of times about why to work for Evil (M$) if there is Google ;)...  it's all in the past!

Well, of course it's all not so much serious about Evil and Good Power! J/K! 

Back to the FON and to its EvangelistProducer Martin. Here Martin says:

FON is launching WiFiAds, our ad supported WiFi platform with a 5 cent revenue share per ad shown available to all Foneros. Yes, I know trolls, we copied this one from Google but then so what? They are our investors!

So nothing. Nothing bad at all! Everyone would be happy to have Google as investor I think ;)

That was quite expected move from FON, and I was personally sure this kind of commercialization of FON will be the next after the bundle with Skype, after I saw the list of their investors for the first time.

Following this logic, the next step towards killing the spirit of "free" and "revolution" in the FON "movement", should be the thing that me and my friend Michael wish to see very much, since we had lots of discussions over the beer in Michael's kitchen when we were still neighbors. We spoke lots of times about if FON is good or bad :)

Obviously the next should be eBay (ebay is behind the Skype, inside FON), so just turn on your imagination!

They Martin says another important thing:

all Foneros will be able to both roam and make money with their La Foneras. Yes, sorry Linuses in order to get this privilege you have to call yourself a Bill, but don´t worry, we won´t tell anybody.

Nobody worries! ;) Linus or Bill, what's the difference if the project has already become commercial and nobody speaks anymore about something FREE, revolutionary, for the whole world, etc.

We're speaking now only about $$$, so what's bad if all Linuses will become Bills? nothing at all, it's so natural for all of us! ;)

And at the end of the same post, Martin says another really GREAT thing:

Check out the details of this new offering in our new web site cause I know all this sounds too good to be true.

My question is: that really seems to be too good to be true for anybody else?!

Also in another post, the pressure for to pass to Bills for everybody continues:

Fon has made an agreement by which Boingo customers can roam into Fon hotspots... If you are a Linus Fonero and would like to benefit from this agreement you simply need to go to our web site and change your status to Bill.

Here there is nothing to comment I think ;)

P.S. Stefano, please do not take it personally!

I joined FON only because there was "Linus" role and supported it with all available means, till the moment was a free and blah-blah-blah.

Now I as the project has passed to its phase II, so I wish you the best success but I'll leave.

P.P.S. Just to not make an impression that I have something about Martin (God saves me!), who I called "one of my proffered hero of the day" in the beginning of this article: it's not true, I enjoy the other Martin's writings, I know his other project and I respect him very much.

Also for that he is sometimes very strict and concrete (the same as me :lol:) in respect of the things that he does not like, like in this article Blackberry and Microsoft both on the way out... and all the previous story of how Martin has left MS Platform ;)

And I just love him for the phrases like this one- "And Vodafone has made a horrible web site for Blackberry that ONLY works with Internet Explorer. Nobody I know still uses Internet Explorer. Firefox rules."

END OF THE STORY. 

Keywords: FON, Fonera, Fonero, Google, Linus, Martin Varsavsky, Michael Tabolsky, Mircosoft, Skype, eBay, wi-fi, wi-fi revolution, wifi, Andrey Golub