In the early 2000s, Greg Wyler, former founder of a semiconductor company, was laying fiber in Africa. He wanted to do something that mattered. Semiconductors didn’t matter, you know? But linking people to each other and to information did, he thought.

“The lesser educated version of myself said, ‘Fiber is the answer,'" says Wyler. "'I’ll run it everywhere.’”

He didn’t run it everywhere, though he did run it quite a few places in Africa. “Each connection, each time we connected a school, each time we brought internet to somebody, we saw their lives change,” he says.

In remote parts of the world, like where Wyler was, internet connections often have to come to the ground from geostationary satellites. That's slow, because geostationary orbit is far away. When kids participated in online classes, by the time the screen showed them raising their hands, the question had already been answered. Unacceptable, thought Wyler.

“But I was stuck,” he says. “The only [ground-based] internet was 5,000 miles away. I had two options: Run fiber 5,000 miles, or bring the satellites closer to Earth. So I did both.”

Wyler went on to found a satellite internet company called O3B, which stands for “the other three billion,” referring to the half of the planet that isn’t connected to the internet. Later, he founded OneWeb, which he hopes—believes, asserts—can "bridge the digital divide," by launching hundreds of satellites into low Earth orbit.

Wyler and OneWeb are representative of a movement that believes everyone on Earth should have the internet—and that it can come from above our heads, not below our feet. In the past few years, companies new and old have launched into the field, all trying to connect some fraction of our half-disconnected world. Which, historically, isn't a good bet: Satellite internet providers haven't had a great run, financially.

And while most of these new players boast humanitarian aims—and that's surely part of their motivation—it's not the whole story. The thing is, all those people they want to provide with the internet? They might not actually want it.

The challenge of getting aerial internet up is so great that providers are not necessarily firm yet on what happens when it gets down. For the low-flying satellites to work as intended, companies have to build hundreds (or thousands) of them. Digital delivery systems that fly in the stratosphere, like high-altitude balloons, have to stay aloft and in the right spots. Both are formidable technical challenges, taking years of development.

SpaceX, as usual, has some of the loftiest plans. The company, on its way to developing a satellite communications system for the well-heeled travelers it sends to Mars, will create one for earthlings who want to stay home. Its Starlink constellation, the company says, will eventually have nearly 12,000 satellites—more than have launched in the history of satellite launching—though for now, it has only launched two demo satellites.

In 2015, the year Elon Musk announced the space internet project, SpaceX got a vote of confidence from Google in the form of a $900 million investment—money that some speculate was thrown toward the internet effort. But Google (or, if we’re being precise about it, Alphabet’s subsidiary X) also has its own global internet blueprints: Its Project Loon launches high-altitude internet balloons to the stratosphere, far below the realm of satellites, where the flaccid, floating jellyfish catch a ride on wind currents to their destinations.

Google isn’t the only member of the Frightful Five with a loony internet idea. And why would it be? The more people who are on the internet, the more people who are on your site. And if we know anything about the web's whales, it's that they can never get enough to eat.