4 ms·
Alphabet shutting Loon, which used balloon alternative to cell towers
- actuator 6y agoPrevious discussion(13 hours back, 200+ comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25868713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25868713
- etothepii 6y agoWell, it was loonacy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cphoover 6y agoSounds like the signaling technology has been adopted by a new project Taara which is similar but on the ground, and not floating from weather balloons.
- rvz 6y agoLiterally a hot air project.
- jmsflknr 6y agoDupe, from 18 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25866785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25866785
- jamestimmins 6y agoMost of the conversations around Loon seem to end up with the question "is X actually a good use of Google's money?" So just a reminder that Google Brain started out as an X project, and by all accounts, it has created enormous financial value for Google.
- tehjoker 6y agoCan you elaborate? I thought Brain was a science division?
- htrp 6y agoFrom what I've been told (current or xooglers please chime in), Brain was a reward to one of their top engineers from the early days of Google to keep him around and let him solve interesting problems, it just happened to become a hub of neural network based ML research.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jdc 6y agoDoes anyone know if they published any relevant papers during the project?
- deepnotderp 6y agoThey published one pretty recently on using reinforcement learning to control balloons
- neom 6y agoIt was interesting to me that in the X blog post about Loon, they elevated Wing to the same level as Waymo: https://blog.x.company/loons-final-flight-e9d699123a96 https://blog.x.company/loons-final-flight-e9d699123a96
- SirFatty 6y agoCan't say that I'm shocked...
- ProAm 6y agoIt was always surreal to see these flying/floating over my city. Couldn't help but feel like you were being further surveilled by Google's all seeing eye.
- whateveracct 6y agoLooks like the FP Castle will need a new internet plan https://fpcastle.com/ https://fpcastle.com/
- reaperducer 6y agoI know Alphabet put a lot of money into Loon, but it feels like it got a bunch of positive PR for not delivering. And it's not going to get nearly the same PR for canceling. "Google delivers internet to poor parts of the world" is the headline in a thousand newspapers. Almost none will run "Google fails to deliver internet that it promised millions of poor people." But we've been to this rodeo before. Google promised free WiFi to poor neighborhoods in Chicago a decade ago, then backed out when it found out that was hard.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sahin 6y ago“The problem solved quickly then we thought “ Which means Elon Musk SpaceX killed our business :)
- yesplorer 6y agoWhat has Elon Musk got to do with that statement?
- RIMR 6y agoStarlink is going to make low-cost internet connectivity ubiquitous. Though I would agree that we don't need to say "Elon Musk SpaceX" every time we bring up SpaceX. In fact, I'd rather we just leave him out of the conversation since he's mostly embarrassing.
- yesplorer 6y ago"starlink is going to... " That is enough to tell you that Loon didn't close shop because of starlink. It is stated in the article that mobile phones became ubiquitous that telecom companies can justify the cost of setting up base stations because they can now connect thousands of people per location. That has nothing to do with starlink.
- cozzyd 6y agoLong-lasting instrumented moderate altitude balloons are interesting to me for science reasons, so this is unfortunate since it'd be nice if a turnkey commerical solution existed.
- fataliss 6y agoSo I guess they realized that Starlink was gonna be a whole lot simpler to maintain. While probably not as cheap to start off, it might become it.