Today, a 400-pound gorilla, Barnes & Nobel, has joined the ranks of businesses delivering complimentary wireless Internet access to its customers.

Now, according to the bookseller giant, anybody walking into one of its stores anywhere in the country will have free and unlimited access to the Web. AT&T, responsible for Barnes & Nobile's paid Wi-Fi service since 2005, is supporting the move to free access.

Folks who work from home often head out to a local independent cafe or bookstore to take advantage of free Wi-Fi, offered for years by many establishments to draw in and keep customers. It's a great way to spend some time around others when you’re usually stuck at home alone all day. This appears to have escaped Barnes & Nobel’s notice.

“By providing no-fee Wi-Fi access, we are not only meeting our customers’ needs, but extending the sense of community that has always been in our stores,” said Barnes & Nobel CEO Steve Riggio in a statement. “This is a natural progression of our digital strategy to provide customers with more choices in how, when and where they want to read.”

As a part of the Wi-Fi offering announced today, Barnes & Noble customers will soon be able to opt-in to receive personalized messages from Barnes & Noble—such as a coupon to the in-store cafe, notices on an author book signing or details on where to find a new book release in their favorite genre—on their Wi-Fi enabled laptop or smartphone when they enter a store.

Barnes & Nobel shoppers can also freely download and preview any of the over 700,000 eBook titles with hundreds of thousands of public domain titles available from Google wirelessly. The company said its number of eBook titles is expanding everyday and expects to hit the one million mark soon.