Image sourced from MIT Technology Review
Alphabet is shutting down its balloon-powered mobile Internet service, Loon. The project’s main objective was to bring abundant, affordable Internet access to unconnected communities around the world.
“When we unveiled Loon in June 2013, we meant everything in its name. It was a way-out-there and risky venture,” says Astro Teller, X lead.
“Sadly, despite the team’s groundbreaking technical achievements over the last 9 years doing many things previously thought impossible the road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than hoped. So we’ve made the difficult decision to close down Loon. In the coming months, we’ll begin winding down operations and it will no longer be an Other Bet within Alphabet.”
Alphabet Inc is shutting down Loon after concluding the business, which offers balloons as an alternative to cell towers, is not commercially viable, Google’s parent company said on Thursday. Founded in 2011, Loon aimed to bring connectivity to areas of the world where building cell towers is too expensive or treacherous using balloons the length of tennis courts and solar-powered networking gear. But the wireless carriers which Loon saw as buyers questioned the technical and political viability of the idea. “While we’ve found a number of willing partners along the way, we haven’t found a way to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, sustainable business,” Loon CEO Alastair Westgarth said in a blog post.