Loon, the Google spinout that hoped to make broadband more accessible using solar-powered balloons, has been shut down by parent company Alphabet, according to Business Insider report, Friday. Meanwhile, Google X director Astro Teller explained that, Loon had suffered a "longer and riskier" path to viability than planned.
"We're so proud of the hundreds of Loonies and Xers who've worked on various elements of this enormous challenge since 2011," Teller reported. "Taking moonshots is always a risky proposition and for every Waymo, Verily or Wing X produces, there will be many more potentially world changing ideas that don't work out.
Moreover, the project Loon started as one of Alphabet's moonshot projects at its experimental pision ''Google X'' which it became , home to other outside-the-box ideas like Google Glass, self-driving car startup Waymo and drone delivery firm Wing. Loon span out from in 2018 and was categorized as one of Alphabet's Other Bets.
On other hand, the company produced balloons capable of flying high up in the stratosphere while enabling internet access down on Earth. The mobile, floating stations were praised for being more flexible than typical cell stations, as they're constantly moving, and for having much wider coverage areas, as much as a hundred times that of a cell tower.
Also, the company’s balloons have already provided internet connectivity in the wake of disasters, like in Puerto Rico in 2017 after Hurricane Maria or in Peru after an earthquake in 2019, but never as part of a large-scale commercial deployment.
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