Like one of those comic book supervillain crossovers where The Joker meets Lex Luthor or Doctor Doom takes on Magneto, the world’s biggest tech companies are battling one another — with Earth as their ultimate prize.
That might sound a bit melodramatic, but it also sums up a recent trend by Silicon Valley companies looking to bring the internet to our planet’s furthest reaches by launching their very own internet satellites into orbit. Far from some obscure skunkworks project from companies with way too much money, however, these launches have the possibility to finally make the world the hyper-connected place that tech giants dream of. At stake? The chance to connect every last person on the planet to the internet. Oh, and many, many billions of dollars, too.
Dispatches From The Front 