EarthLink bails out of providing Wi-Fi to dirty hippies — and everyone else

San Franciscans may remember EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff leaving them in the lurch when he abruptly backed out of the city's municipal Wi-Fi project. Well, it turns out Huff, like any sensible CEO, doesn't want to lose money on a venture that probably will minimize shareholder value. The Internet service provider is cutting its losses and abandoning all plans to build citywide Wi-Fi networks. A shame. We thought it was just San Francisco's toxic stew of entitlement, anticapitalism, and government dysfunction that drove EarthLink away.