Newley Purnell

Facebook says it’s helping millions of the world’s poorest people get online through apps and services that allow them to use the internet data-free. Internal company documents show that many of these people end up being charged in amounts that collectively add up to an estimated millions of dollars a month. To attract new users, Facebook made deals with cellular carriers in countries including Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines to let low-income people use a limited version of Facebook and browse some other websites without data charges.

Millions of first-time internet consumers from the Ivory Coast to India and Indonesia are connecting to the web on a new breed of device that only costs about $25. The gadgets look like the inexpensive Nokia phones that were big about two decades ago.

The internet fails to reach millions of women in the small towns and villages of India, so Google is trying to deliver it to them—by bicycle.

The company has built an army of thousands of female trainers and sent them to the far corners of the Subcontinent on two-wheelers, hoping to give rural Indian woman their first taste of the web. Each bike is equipped with a box containing internet-connected smartphones and tablets for women to train on. The idea is to give people who have never sent an email a better understanding of how being connected to the internet could improve their lives. Families that can afford to be online often chose not to be because they don’t see the value. Meanwhile, women are sometimes blocked by their families from new technology.