Hillary Clinton Helps Silicon Valley On Her Way Out the Door

Taking the podium in the U.S. Department of State’s Ben Franklin Room one last time before stepping down on Feb. 1, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thanked a lot of people, offered reminiscences, and announced a flurry of last-minute programs. “We’re all, like, one millisecond away from just collapsing here, because of the emotion and the feelings that are coursing through all of us,” she said

One of those new programs, the Alliance for an Affordable Internet, barely got a mention in Clinton’s speech. But it merits attention. The public-private partnership among the State Department, the World Wide Web Foundation, and tech companies including Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Intel (INTC), and Cisco Systems (CSCO), aims to give more people in developing countries access to the Web. [...]