Bill Gates has an issue with Google’s new Project Loon, which is designed to provide internet hotspots to poor areas in third-world countries, PCMag.com reports. While the Microsoft Chairman and philanthropist acknowledged Google’s claim that Project Loon and its network of balloon-bound hotspots could be valuable aids to communication in the wake of a natural disaster–a tsunami or earthquake, perhaps–in general, he thinks the initiative is a flawed do-gooder outreach that won’t actually solve any of the major problems these depressed areas are facing.

“When you’re dying of malaria, I suppose you’ll look up and see that balloon, and I’m not sure how it’ll help you,” Gates told Bloomberg in a recent interview. “When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there’s no website that relieves that.”

Google’s Project Loon was announced in June and launched a pilot program in Canterbury, New Zealand, shortly after. Now, the project has expanded to internet-challenged areas throughout the world, providing balloon hotspots in the air that, theoretically, will allow nearby residents to connect to the web without demanding expensive cable networks or similar complex infrastructures.

“Google started out saying they were going to do a broad set of things. They hired Larry Brilliant, and they got fantastic publicity. And then they shut it all down. Now they’re just doing their core thing. Fine. But the actors who just do their core thing are not going to uplift the poor,” Gates added.

It would be unlike Gates to completely spurn the importance of the internet or digital connectivity in general. After all, the Microsoft Chairman built an empire out of his computer systems. However, since changing the world with Microsoft, Gates has been working tirelessly to save it in other ways. In 1994, Gates founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with his wife, a grant-making foundation designed with the goal of eradicating malaria and other diseases that plague third-world countries around the globe. Gates believes that beating these oppressive plagues is the first step to making a difference in developing nations, something that Google and Project Loon do not seem to acknowledge.

“Certainly I’m a huge believer in the digital revolution, and connecting up primary-health-care centers, connecting up schools, those are good things,” Gates said. “But no, those are not [important], for the really low-income countries, unless you directly say we’re going to do something about malaria.”

In contrast to Project Loon, the “What We Do” section on the Gates Foundation website provides an exhaustive list of efforts, from disease prevention for malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis to global developments in agriculture, water sanitation, library services, nutrition, and vaccine delivery. The Gates Foundation doesn’t only extend a helping hand to third-world countries, either: the organization offers aids for “college-ready education” and “postsecondary services” for students in the United States.