(usatoday) MENLO PARK, Calif. – By 2030, Facebook aims to have 5 billion of the world’s 7 billion humans connected to its social network, a 3.5-billion jump that could be accomplished in part by deploying autonomous planes.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the comments Monday during an event at the company’s new Frank Gehry-designed headquarters designed to celebrate Facebook’s 12th anniversary Thursday, which it has dubbed Friends Day.
Facebook also introduced a new way of measuring its global spread: as users doubled from 2011 to 1.5 billion, the degrees of separation between each user has shrunk from 3.74 to 3.57 degrees today.
“We want to finish connecting everyone, we’re going to do it in partnership with governments and different companies all over the world,” Zuckerberg said, pointing to a large wall photo of a boomerang-shaped drone Facebook has developed dubbed Aquila. “It’s solar-powered, and it’ll just fly around a city and beam down Internet access. It’s, like, pretty crazy, right?”
Zuckerberg has been talking about connecting the rest of the world for a few years now. And while the notion of Internet for all might sound like a winner, some watchdog groups and telcom competitors are concerned that Facebook's Wi-Fi vision — called Free Basics and now running in 25 countries — is aimed largely at funneling new consumers to its mushrooming service.
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