Page 22 - Astro Teller News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Why Google's Loon internet balloon project crash-landed Quartz 1/22/2021 © Provided by Quartz In the world of Big Tech there has long been a important obsession about getting the internet to the “next billion” people. The idea was that while a few billion people in mostly advanced and wealthy economies were already taking the internet’s availability for granted the bigger challenge was about how to get the internet to next billion who didn’t have it. Over the second half of the last decade the internet has indeed reached more of that next billion particularly in the busy, fast-gro...

Alphabet's "Other Bet" punt turns out not to be a winner System designed to provide broadband to the "last billion" unserved consumers on earth Alphabet, Google's parent company, has let the last of the gas out of the once-huge hype-bag that kept the "Loon" project in the air. Loon was an initiative that was supposed to provide wireless mobile telecoms and broadband Internet coverage via arrays of helium balloons sited in the stratosphere. But, even in an industry infamous for its hyperventilating hyperbole, a truly immense amount of hot air and other gases swirled around Loon from the moment...

SAN RAMON, Calif. (AP) — Google's parent company is letting the air out of an internet-beaming balloon company that was providing online access from the stratosphere. The plan to shut down Loon was announced late Thursday, ending what started out nine years ago as one of Google's secret projects in its so-called “moonshot factory," a division now called X. Google, Loon and X all are owned by Alphabet Inc., which draws upon Google's digital advertising empire finance risky ideas like internet-beaming balloons and another high-profile flop, internet-connected glasses. As reflected by its na...

After nine years as the high-flyer of the Google X lab, Alphabet has brought the Loon project down to earth. Loon's journey "is coming to an end," its chief executive Alastair Westgarthwrote this morning. "We haven't found a way to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, sustainable business," he said. The "road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than hoped," explained X's head Astro Teller. Loon aimed at providing Internet access to rural and remote areas, creating wireless networks with up to 1 Mbit/second speeds using high-altitude balloons at altitudes betwe...

Farewell, flying future Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a world that's way more pedestrian than we ever expected. NOTE FOR 2020 READERS: This is the 14th in an award-winning series of open letters to the next century, now just one generation away. Babies born in more than 40 countries this year are expected to live to 2100 and beyond. These letters examine what the world could look like then — and how we can make the best scenario happen.  Dear 22nd Century, Hopefully there is some kind of statute of limitations on inappropriate thoughts that flitted through the heads of those o...