Google’s parent company Alphabet has decided to shut down Loon Project It produced giant balloons designed for network connections in remote areas. The balloons were the size of a tennis court and independently directed themselves.
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Loon was a long-term experimental gamble for tech giant X’s business unit, but failed to cover sustainable costs, Loon Chief Executive Alsteir Westgart said in a post published Thursday. “We haven’t found a way to cut costs enough to build a long-term, sustainable business,” Westgart said. Today I’m sad because Loon will collapse. “
The company was founded nine years ago, but has struggled to make a profit by providing the Internet to people in remote locations using high-altitude balloons.
Photo: Reuters
The company was dissolved a year after Alphabet closed another experimental business called Makani, which supplied wind power from giant kites. These were soft From a series of surprising projects
Who helped shape Google’s image as one of Silicon Valley’s most ambitious companies. Tech experts said one of Loon’s problems is that many people in remote areas can’t afford 4G generation phones that require the use of balloons, or they weren’t interested in Internet access in the first place.
However, Loon was not a complete failure. It signed a major agreement with a Kenyan communications provider called Telkom to supply 4G internet to remote areas of the country, and in 2017 helped bring an internet connection to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria destroyed the island’s communications infrastructure. .
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