Alphabet's Loon Balloon Internet
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