Google recently purchased a satellite startup Skybox Image Inc. This company designed small satellites which can collect daily photos of the Earth. It is obvious that this acquisition can help Google with its map products. However, according to this WSJ article, the real reason of Google purchased this company could be that Google wanted to extend their service by providing Internet access through the satellites.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/google-to-buy-satellite-imaging-company-for-500-million-1402421980
Providing Internet access through satellites is easy to bring back the memory of Iridium Satellite Constellation Project, a satellite phone project led by Motorola in 1990s. Iridium Project was designed to provide global cellphone service using satellites. But this project failed at a very fatal technical issue: satellite cellphones signals were very poor if users were in the enclosed environments, such as buildings or cars. Back in the old days, Motorola was really a big IT leader which was just like its mother company now. Of course the decadence of Motorola related to many factors, but the failure of the Iridium Project cost Motorola heavily.
Another potential problem of providing Internet access through satellites is that it could cause the anger of some governments. In South Korea, Google has to lower the resolution of its map because a high resolution map could leak some sensitive geographic data. Follow this logic, a seamless Internet service is definitely a even bigger threat than the high resolution map. Moreover, Internet service is still regulated, semi-regulated or monopolized by the government-own companies in many countries. Providing an overwhelming global Internet service might potentially hurt the relationship of Google with governments of these countries.
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