Pervasive as the Internet seems, less than half of the world's population has access to it, leaving some four billion people unconnected. This spring, engineers at Google's Project Loon will shift to the next phase in a grand plan to bring Internet to everyone.'
The goal: a network of high-altitude balloons that will rain 4G LTE signals down to anyone with a 4G device. With it, farmers in remote areas will be able to access weather data; rural children will be able to pursue online educations; and Google will have four billion more eyeballs on its search engine.
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Bring the internet to everyone? But that's everyone with a 4G device. How many of those 4 billion people could afford a 4G device? Or even be in a position to buy such a device? How many of them even have access to the electricity to charge that device?
More importantly how many of those people would find the whole idea of the internet so culturally alien that they would have no interest in it? How many of them are able to read?
Even in the supposedly technologically advanced parts of the world something like 25% of people do not access the internet.
Google's starting point for the whole excercise is fundamentally flawed. They pretend that their motives are altruistic but all they really want to do is advertise to these people. Maybe they need to wonder what they could actually advertise to these people or indeed how they would pay for it when they saw the advertising - how many of those 4 billion people have credit cards? Always assuming they could read the adverts if they saw them.
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