Google‘s parent company Alphabet announced last Thursday (21) that it was ending its 9-year plan to provide low-cost, high-speed wireless internet service to residents in remote areas using high-altitude balloons, citing high costs and a lack of sustainability in its business model.
Google launched the Loon program in 2011. The principle of Loon is to use polyethylene balloons equipped with communication devices and send them into the stratosphere at 60,000 to 75,000 feet, where the devices will transmit network signals back to Earth. Loon was first tested in New Zealand in 2013 and has expanded to Indonesia and other locations, with at least 1,750 balloons launched to date.
Alastair Westgarth, who led the Loon project, acknowledged that the project was over, saying that the cost of providing Internet access was too high due to the remoteness of some areas, and that the company had been unable to find ways to reduce costs and sustain long-term business despite its partners.
“Loon” in the first nine months of last year, a loss of more than 3.3 billion U.S. dollars (about 25.7 billion Hong Kong dollars), and the same period the previous year, 2.8 billion U.S. dollars (about 21.8 billion Hong Kong dollars) higher. The outside world believes that the space exploration technology company (SpaceX) and online retailer Amazon (Amazon) to develop the same nature of the project, or lead to Alphabet to make this decision.
The balloon is filled with polyethylene gas.
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