Google parent Alphabet Inc. shut down Loon, an audacious project to beam internet service from high-altitude balloons, after the unit failed to develop a viable business model.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we\u2019ve found a number of willing partners along the way, we haven\u2019t found a way to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, sustainable business,\u201d Loon Chief Executive Officer Alastair Westgarth wrote Thursday in a\u00a0blog post<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cDeveloping radical new technology is inherently risky, but that doesn\u2019t make breaking this news any easier. Today, I\u2019m sad to share that Loon will be winding down.\u201d<\/p>\n First unveiled to the public in 2013, Loon debuted as an effort to blanket the globe with internet connections using giant balloons drifting on currents high in the stratosphere.<\/p>\n It was one of the most arresting ideas from Google\u2019s \u201cmoonshot factory,\u201d the plan from co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to upend entire industries and reinvent their search and advertising company.<\/p>\n Loon spent years flying its helium balloons around the planet and spending Google\u2019s money. In 2018, it spun out of Google\u2019s research lab into a separate Alphabet business, part of a strategy to make far-fetched units fend for themselves.<\/p>\n Loon pared\u00a0back its initial ambitions<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0— relying on fewer balloons and covering only select areas of the globe — and\u00a0recruited<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0several veterans from the satellite and wireless industry.<\/p>\n It also partnered with several telecom companies, which had initially worried competition from the project.<\/p>\n In 2019, a division of SoftBank Corp. invested\u00a0$125 million<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0in Loon. Their stated plan was to use skycraft, rather than balloons, to provide connectivity in emerging markets and more remote areas where physical networks are scarce.<\/p>\n Google parent Alphabet Inc. shut down Loon, an audacious project to beam internet service from high-altitude balloons, after the unit failed to develop a viable business model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":347277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[32030,167,26878],"class_list":["post-383960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecoms","tag-alphabet","tag-google","tag-project-loon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383960"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now read: South African criminals are now burning down cellphone towers instead of just stealing from them<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"