Bill Gates Criticizes Google For Not Doing Enough Philanthropic Work

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Bill Gates

In an interview to Bloomberg, Bill Gates criticized Google for not carrying out enough philanthropic activities and shot down the idea of floating balloons enabling broadband to rural areas. Read his full response below. Apart from this, Bill Gates discussed about his effect of philanthropic work so far, silicon valley people, his work at Microsoft now, educational policies and more.

One of Google’s (GOOG) convictions is that bringing Internet connectivity to less-developed countries can lead to all sorts of secondary benefits. It has a project to float broadband transmitters on balloons. Can bringing Internet access to parts of the world that don’t have it help solve problems?

When you’re dying of malaria, I suppose you’ll look up and see that balloon, and I’m not sure how it’ll help you. When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there’s no website that relieves that. Certainly I’m a huge believer in the digital revolution. And connecting up primary-health-care centers, connecting up schools, those are good things. But no, those are not, for the really low-income countries, unless you directly say we’re going to do something about malaria.

Google started out saying they were going to do a broad set of things. They hired Larry Brilliant, and they got fantastic publicity. And then they shut it all down. Now they’re just doing their core thing. Fine. But the actors who just do their core thing are not going to uplift the poor.

Source: Business Week

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