Google's grand vision for the web "The solution is openness and transparency in government and connectivity for the individual," Mr Schmidt said when asked about how the world could become more democratic. So as more people in the developing world replace their current phones with smartphones, several billion people will engage with the wider world via the web. Nonetheless, at the Science Museum Schmidt said "Just imagine how much better the web will be with another 5 billion people online. More innovation. More creativity. More opportunity. He went on to say "If the past decade has taught us anything, it's that if you connect people with information they will change the world." All of that, of course, is in Google's interest - it makes money from people using the web, and is currently embroiled in accusations from European and American regulators that it has abused its power to promote its own products in search results. Schmidt disputes that the firm has done nothing wrong. Schmidt's argument, however, is that the web is, overall, an unrelenting force for good. In a connected world, he claimed "there will be no barriers to our imagination. Or our compassion. In this near future, citizens will fall into three camps, some ultra-connected and using driverless cars, others involved but not at the forefront and then a mass of new adopters, with smartphones in the developing world used to detect pollution or track the spread of disease. Sschmidt identified three problems, with malevolent governments, criminals and the web's failure to accurately distinguish between truth and misinformation. But none of these, he said, was insurmountable. To promote all of this, Schmidt said science was crucial, and continued to bang the drum for science education. "So long as more kids aspire to win The X Factor than to win the Nobel Prize, there's room to improve," he said. He urged his Science Museum audience to help him to "reboot computer science education as an academic discipline," and while he praised new government initiatives he lamented that just 4,000 students took computer science A-levels. Google is to help fund 100 science teachers over the next three years, hoping to train 20,000 pupils from the most disadvantaged communities and provide them with a small bursary. All of this, Schmidt said, would go towards an endeavour that would make the web "nothing and everything," so pervasive that it becomes invisible. That contrast with the "scarce resource" of his opening ideas is a stark one. But for Google, or at least Eric Schmidt, the web "will create a future of greater freedom and opportunity" for everybody. In that future, coincidentally, searching for information could be mighty lucrative for Google.