The parent company of Google, Alphabet, discusses the concept of using a fleet of balloons to broadcast high-speed internet in remote parts of the globe.
The company said that after failing to find a sustainable business model and partners for one of its most prominent moonshot projects, Loon, a nine-year-old project and a two-and-a-half-year-old spin-off company, was winding down.
The demise of Loon, which took center stage after the project helped restore cell services knocked out by a hurricane in Puerto Rico, comes a year after Google Station, its other major connectivity effort to bring the Internet to the next billion users, was terminated by the Android-maker.
That said, today’s move by Alphabet is still surprising. Loon had obtained permission from the government of Kenya just last year to launch balloons to provide commercial communication services, which it achieved successfully months later, giving an impression that things were heading in the right direction.
“Loon, which in 2019 raised $125 million from a SoftBank unit, has long stated its mission as: “Loon is focused on bringing connectivity to communities around the world that are not served and underserved. To provide a solution to further expand internet access to these underserved regions, we are in talks with telecommunications companies and governments worldwide.