Important Innovations

  Loon Subsidiary Being Shut Down                                                  Source: Loon Not Commercially Viable Google's parent company Alphabet has decided to shut down its internet balloon services company after concluding that the business of using high altitude, large balloons to deliver the internet is not commercially viable.  In a way, the decision is a surprising one because the technology works.  Alphabet founded Loon in 2011.  And it has successfully delivered internet services to disaster areas and to Kenya.  But the company says it could not find a way to get the costs low enough to "build a sustainable, long term business". Great Intentions The goal and purpose of Loon was to bring connectivity by high flying balloons the size of tennis courts to global, underserved areas that are too remote or difficult to connect with broadband.  That proved to be too expensive. Loon certainly made every effort to make it work. It conducted years of  testing with ba

  Loon Stratospheric Balloon Internet                                                Source:  Alphabet's Loon Loon Already Operational for Kenya Loon is one of Alphabet/Google's most fascinating projects.  Loon delivers  high speed, broadband internet from high altitude balloons in the stratosphere. Loon is operational and beaming internet services into Kenya.  This is a very different approach to low cost, broadband internet systems like Elon Musk's Starlink which is satellite based..    Internet From the Stratosphere Not Space  Loon's internet delivery service is coming in to customers from wireless internet balloons, developed by Alphabet, Google's parent company.  And it is in direct competition with SpaceX's Starlink, the ambitious, growing mega-constellations of low-Earth orbit satellites, being launched by CEO Elon Musk to provide the world with inexpensive, high speed internet. Musk has launched nearly 800 small satellites, now in low Earth orbit, and ha