why we should all care who controls the invisible infrastructure of the global internet on techwhy we should all care who controls the invisible infrastructure of the global internetcreditginko yangjuly 8 2020this article is part of the on tech newsletter you can sign up here to receive it weekdaysmy friends i vow to make you care about internet cables and metal poles in the ground please dont immediately unsubscribe from this newsletterthe magic of the internet requires a lot of very boring stuff behind the scenes we wouldnt be able to watch kitten videos on youtube without an elaborate system of hulking warehouses lined with computer equipment thick coils of wire that spans oceans and treesize poles laced with internet cableswe mostly never see or think about this stuff but one of the underappreciated ways that todays technology superpowers like google and amazon stay superpowers is their mastery of all the boring stuff that makes the internet possible this is the kind of advantage the tech superpowers have that is hard for governments to break apart or for rivals to compete withthe tech giants fingerprints brain power and dollars are all over the invisible backbone of the global internetfacebook on monday talked about undersea internet pipelines it is helping fund in latin america subsaharan africa and other global spots to help improve online access and speeds my colleague abdi latif dahir wrote this week about googles first use of highaltitude balloons to transmit the internet in areas of kenyagoogles internet balloons like facebooks failed attempt at internetbeaming drones might be pointlessly showy pieces of equipment where conventional cellphone towers are better suited but no matter this is the relatively glamorous tip of an otherwise boring iceberggoogle facebook amazon and other big american tech companies collectively spend tens of billions of dollars each year on things like massive warehouses of computer and internet equipment that let them speed along your instagram posts and home shopping purchasesyou might have driven by some of these computing centers and never noticed them but the tech giants efforts to make these boring workhorses more efficient and effective is one of the most important advancements in technology in the last decadeit doesnt stop there increasingly lining the worlds oceans are undersea cables that are partly or entirely funded by internet companies and are essential cogs in the internet and there are even way more boring projects like software that facebook helped design for wifi hot spots tailored to the demands of places like rural kenya where internet connections are spottythe internet powers arent doing this for selfless reasons they know that if they help improve the worlds internetcarrying backbone we are likely to spend more time googling watching youtube kittens and pinging friends on whatsappfew other companies can afford to build undersea internet cables have the same level of skill in running data centers or care so much about the internets boring backbone little companies and all us kitten lovers benefit from the tech superpowers mastery