Google's benevolence becomes reality today.

Well, in Mountain View, at least.

After months of beta testing and anticipation, the Internet giant plans to open up its free, wireless Internet network to Mountain View's 72,000 residents.

The network covers about 90 percent of the city's 12 square miles and offers maximum data-transfer speeds of up to 1 megabit per second -- slightly slower than DSL.

The company moved up its launch of the network in part, it says, because of the onslaught of people asking to be testers. One thousand residents tested it this summer.

``The feedback was overwhelming positive,'' said Chris Sacca, head of special initiatives for Google. ``It's glowing, and in fact it's why we're launching the network earlier than we planned. It's hard to keep up with the requests to get on the network.''

To build the network, Google mounted 380 transceivers, made by Sunnyvale-based Tropos Networks, on light poles throughout the city. The devices will allow residents within 500 feet to connect wirelessly to the Internet.

The Mountain View-based company spent in the ``ballpark'' of $1 million on the project, Sacca said. And the company agreed to pay Mountain View $36 per light pole, or about $13,680, annually, although that number may grow slightly as the company plans to install a few more transceivers as residents request more access.

The money is a drop in the bucket for a company that collected $2.5 billion in revenue for the quarter ending June 30, analysts said. Ninety-nine percent of that revenue came from online advertising.

Still, why Google is investing time and money in a WiFi network remains anybody's guess.

Some analysts have said the network is another vehicle to generate advertising revenue. Some blogs joke that Google wants to use the network to motivate its roughly 1,000 employees living in Mountain View.

But Ellis Berns, economic development manager for Mountain View and the city's liaison with the company, has his own theory: ``It's really providing them an opportunity to better understand how people are accessing this technology and how this technology works.''

The company has said it doesn't plan to become a municipal wireless provider; rather it wants to study the new technology. Google has also joined with EarthLink to build a network in San Francisco, and Sacca is joining the board of the group pushing for a Silicon Valley-wide wireless network. Google did not submit a bid for that project, however.

``What I'd really like to do is inspire these networks to be built in other communities,'' said Sacca. ``One of the big questions has been, `Do they work?' The last few weeks for us has been the most exciting because it works.''

After all, he said, the more people use the Internet, the more they use Google.

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