The World Wide Web may be finally living up to its name. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that the social giant and six other tech and mobile companies will partner on a new project to try and connect two-thirds of the world’s population to the Internet.
Internet.org is the ambitious new project that will use the power of compression technology and cheap, high-quality smartphones to make the web more frugal, ultimately giving access to 5 billion more people. This endeavor follows a similar thrust by Facebook rival Google, which uses everything from balloons to fiber connections to expand connectivity with Project Loon.
In a press release posted to Facebook, Zuckerberg argued that the motivation for helping widen global access was not simply in the best interest of the companies’ pockets involved. In fact, they will probably lose money in this pursuit.
What Zuck is troubled by are completely different numbers, ones not attached to dollar signs. If you can believe it, the group says that just 2.7 billion people on the planet have access to the Internet, and that number is growing by less than 9 percent each year.
“There are huge barriers in developing countries to connecting and joining the knowledge economy. Internet.org brings together a global partnership that will work to overcome these challenges, including making Internet access available to those who cannot currently afford it,” said Zuckerberg in an official statement.
Zuckerberg’s mission statement also addresses some of the road blocks that Internet.org will have to face – a major one being no return on investment, yet.
“The unfair economic reality is that those already on Facebook have way more money than the rest of the world combined, so it may not actually be profitable for us to serve the next few billion people for a very long time, if ever. But we believe everyone deserves to be connected,” he writes.
The actual website currently provides an overview of the project and its goals as well as a full list of partners. In the coming weeks, it should also provide news on Internet.org’s activities as well as interviews with technology leaders and experts. In the meantime, check out the video that seems to aim at pulling major heart strings.Â
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Source: Reuters
