In the race between Google and Facebook over global connectivity, everyone is winning | VentureBeat | Business | by Chris O'Brien

"Imagine all the people sharing all the world..."

"Tech companies are fond of leaning on digital utopianism to convince us that they’re doing something more vital for humanity than just selling dog food online. And in the case of companies that make money from our personal data and advertising, it’s in their long-term business interest to grow the pool of people sharing information over the Internet.

That said, this week Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai came to Barcelona in large part to talk about these efforts, and to rally more support for them. And perhaps the best evidence of the significant impact they have already had is the conference itself. Over the course of four days, there [sic] about a dozen panels related to the topic of how to connect the next 1 billion people to the Internet."

In the race between Google and Facebook over global connectivity, everyone is winning | VentureBeat | Business | by Chris O'Brien