The Internet giant Facebook thought its lobbying and ad blitz would work, and not face the united opposition of millions of Internet users in India.Though they each have around 1.Yet, there is some validity to the argument that Free Basics, being free, does allow people, who normally would not have gone on the Internet to go to this "walled garden” of a limited version of the Net, where they only access what Facebook, or the government, wants them to. It keeps out the vast universe of sites on the Internet, specially big ones such as Google, YouTube, Amazon, Flipkart, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Twitter, PayTM, eBay, Indian Railways, BSE, NSE, and the many millions of sites that make the Internet useful.”

If Facebook really wanted to offer free Internet, it could have used the Rs 100 crore spent on advertising to sponsor new users on the full Internet.It is only when this happens that the real benefits of the Internet to society will become apparent.For all these important sites as well as the small number of sites on offer on Free Basics currently access is free and the sites make their money by charging for advertising. To give one example, Evgeny Morozov, an eminent analyst and critic of the Internet, writes, "Google can use an algorithm to analyse our email communications and sell us the matching ads. For the sites on Facebook Free Basics, these operators (who have spent vast sums in building their networks) will not charge anything, but they will make it up by increasing the charge for accessing the rest of the Net.7 billion for Facebook. Telecom service providers such as Airtel, Reliance and Vodafone make money by charging per megabyte of data accessed.The writer is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist. With the well-publicised bonhomie between Mr Zuckerberg and our Prime Minister, it is not difficult to imagine such a chilling eventuality.What the proposal by Facebook offers for free is a limited bouquet of sites, including its own.

When a large American Internet company spends close to Rs 100 crore on a massive advertising campaign to push for a free service it is offering users of the Internet, something does not smell right.A danger that companies like Google or Facebook pose to civil society is that they are gatekeepers of vast amounts of personal data which they often sell, sometimes to security agencies. This can be done either by increasing competition or lowering spectrum charges and making 2G access to the Net more pervasive so that the use of Internet becomes as universal as the use of over 950 million mobile phones. This, point out critics of Free Basics, violates the principle of "net neutrality”, or paying equal sums for data accessed from any site. Yet, it is worth noting that for Internet companies such as Google and Facebook, data from their customers is of immense value. That would have given five million Indians full Internet access for a year. Facebook’s advertisements talk of "connecting one billion Indians to jobs, education and opportunities online”, but warn that "Free Basic is at risk of being banned, slowing progress towards digital equality in India”. 

Which highly profitable company, and its money-making partners in India, would give free Internet time "to connect India”, without expecting much more in return Free Basics, the rechristened version of Facebook’s internet. When a large American Internet company spends close to Rs 100 crore on a massive advertising campaign to push for a free service it is offering users of the Internet, something does not smell right. But the path to this lies not in leaving the tap open for foreign Internet operators but getting our own act together.That still doesn’t answer the question, what does Facebook gain by the Free Basics proposal.org is a platform to provide preferential access to a selective set of apps and developers. The main reason this not happening is its high cost.In a recent article, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook Tankless Electric Water Heater Faucet Manufacturers wrote, "Half the people who use Free Basics to go online for the first time pay to access the full Internet within 30 days Instead of recognising the fact that Free Basics is opening up the whole Internet, they continue to claim — falsely — that this will make the Internet more like a walled garden. The only counter is to lower costs to make the service more affordable. Its use as an aid to education, or to get vital information about agricultural markets or to deal more confidently with bureaucratic or legal procedures should not be under-estimated. 

Since Facebook is banned in China, India is the only large market left where an effort can be made to displace Google.”There is a real danger in India of personal data being sold to the government. Free Basics is seen as a way to get people away from Google in the two countries that still have a large, growing market — China and India.Internet can fulfil its educational and developmental role by paring costs to a minimum so that it reaches as many people as mobile phones. It implies users will not be charged for Facebook and other apps and content accessed on Free Basics, but will be charged for data usage in downloading and accessing content on other apps and Internet domains

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