Headin’ to the coffee shop to do a little web crawling? Think again.

Since wireless internet has become available, public access, especially in places such as bookstores and coffee shops has been quite popular. Such locations offer a place to eat, drink, and spend some quality one on one time with your and your computer, filling your brain with whatever it is you fill it with. In recent years, the abundance of public WiFi and rising costs in the current recession has caused many people to turn off their own home based internet and go hunting in the concrete jungle for a free ride. Now I’m not saying everyone or even a majority of public WiFi users are doing so because it is too expensive to pay for home internet use, merely that that occurrence has increased with the economic downturn. Consumers however aren’t the only group to be hit hard, retailers are just as susceptible. Moving back to coffee shops and bookstores, the increasing number of internet users who stay for hours on end all while buying a single cup of coffee are hurting sales and keeping potential customers away because of lack of seating space. Retailers aren’t sitting down (no pun intended) and are actually fighting back — not through violent back alley means, but to the digital techies who frequent such places, the alternative may be worse.