Google Spreads Web to Rural India

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.