Why Do Companies Want to Bring the Internet to Everyone?

Most companies today are trying to expand internet access by every available means — but what is the real motive? Is it financial gain, or service to communities?

In August 2013, Mark Zuckerberg announced his ambition to connect all of humanity to the internet. Days later he launched Internet.org, and in a ten-page paper argued that connectivity should be a human right — like food and water.

Zuckerberg has repeated this narrative in the press and before international organizations, asking audiences to imagine what an Indian child could learn online — and, for that noble-sounding reason, launched the Connectivity Lab under Internet.org.

The Connectivity Lab still explores ways to deliver the internet worldwide. Proposals include drones and satellites; a product already shipped is Facebook Zero — a text-only, image-free Facebook that costs users nothing, with carriers in developing countries waiving access fees.

Facebook is not alone in suddenly discovering that the internet is a universal right. Elon Musk’s SpaceX mirrors the same ambition with thousands of satellites. Google’s Project Loon beams connectivity from balloons high above the ground.

Global giants race to deliver internet to developing countries under the language of goodwill — yet they are for-profit companies, and what lies beneath is greater still.

What is unsettling is that Facebook, SpaceX, and Google are all for-profit corporations, not charities — they must serve their shareholders. Those interests have become clearer as news about these programs accumulated.

Eighteen months after Facebook Zero launched, Facebook’s revenue in Africa rose 114%. Facebook is working to make its brand synonymous with “the internet” in developing countries — in practice persuading new users that the internet equals Facebook.

SpaceX’s satellites were expected to carry internet service alone — yet in 2015 the company obtained an NOAA license to fly two prototype satellites carrying low-resolution panchromatic imagers.

The license stated imagery would not be used commercially but for inspirational educational purposes.

SpaceX did not widely use those prototypes; it designed a new generation and filed with the FCC, whose paperwork referenced equipment capable of recording video and transmitting it Earthward.

The first SpaceX constellation is 4,425 satellites at altitudes too high for useful imaging; a later tranche of 7,500 satellites at 350–400 km puzzled analysts like Carolyn Belle of Northern Sky Research: low orbits mean more maintenance and cost — why take that risk?

Google’s Mike Cassidy projected Loon’s upside: if 5% of the unconnected — 250 million people — paid just $5 a month, revenue could hit roughly $1 billion in the first month, ~$10 billion annually. Beyond that, Google Search already holds ~80% of the search market; more users watching more ads is the core business model.

At the end of the twentieth century, about 400 million people used the internet; by 2015 there were 3.2 billion. Giants compete to “connect” the developing world in the language of altruism — but they remain profit-seeking companies, and the full picture runs deeper.