According to Google, the new Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) technology provides in-home wireless access by connecting “your commode-based TiSP” router to “one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber optic cables strung through your municipal sewage lines.” For those who have just installed TiSP, Google suggests washing your hands before surfing the Net.
On April Fool’s Day, Google captured many of the Internet’s current buzzwords — and stuck them in the toilet. Sunday’s press release and accompanying Web site (www.google.com/tisp/) announced the Beta version of Google’s Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP), a “free in-home wireless broadband service that delivers online connectivity via users’ plumbing systems.”
TiSP has all the buzzwords that any self-respecting, early 21st Century Net project could want: self-installed, ad-supported, available for any Wi-Fi-capable PC, and requiring XP or Vista (with Mac and Linux support coming soon). And it added a new one, the codename for TiSP: “dark porcelain.”
Lest anyone think that Google was taking its eye off the ball, Larry Page, Google’s president and cofounder, offered assurances that the company had time to pursue TiSP because Google has “that whole organizing-the-world’s-information thing more or less under control.”