Nice holiday gift: Google is offering free WiFi in select U.S. airports starting today and available through January 15, 2010 (via DailyTech). Sounds like just the thing when your flight is delayed by three hours. Google's also doing good: "Once you log in to one of the Wi-Fi networks, you'll have the option to donate to Engineers Without Borders, the One Economy Corporation or the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. Additionally, Google will match the donations made across all the networks up to $250,000," Mashable explains. "Finally, the airport network that generates the highest amount per passenger by January 1, 2010 will receive $15,000 to donate to the local nonprofit of their choice." The catch, says CrunchGear, is that once you log in you'll get a prompt to set Google as your default search engine and try Chrome, but that "sounds less annoying that current airport Wi-Fi that generally has a gigantic banner somewhere on the screen reminding you that you're in a wonderful airport waiting to board an H1N1-infested plane."

It's not just Google--Marketing Pilgrim writes about other companies sponsoring free WiFi this holiday season. Yahoo! is covering Times Square for a year, for instance. And Microsoft is running a campaign that gives consumers WiFi access in exchange for performing one search on Bing (via PaidContent). GigaOM has found the only possible downside: "One can imagine it's going to get a lot harder to find an empty power outlet this season."