Google and Facebook's Race to Bring the Web to the Developing World

At the 2015 Mobile World Congress, Google and Facebook spent much stage time focusing on the other end of the market of new gadgets and services. Each company has a plan to radically boost the number of people using its services by delivering or lowering the cost of Internet access for the billions who aren’t online.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president of products, laid out new details of Project Loon, Google’s outlandish-sounding plan to provide wireless connectivity via hot-air balloons. Facebook, too, is experimenting with Internet-providing drones and satellites, but is more focused on the ground game, according to Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg threw a little shade on both companies' efforts to create an aerial wireless network. “People like talking about that stuff because it’s sexy,” he said. “But I think that’s actually at the fringe of the real work going on.”