6 ms·

Winding down of Alphabet’s Loon causes job cuts

108 points by ndesaulniers 5y ago

ndesaulniers 5y ago
> the displaced Loon workers are being given the opportunity to land jobs with units of Mountain View-based Alphabet, which is Google’s owner. > “We expect many of these employees to find roles within Alphabet,” the Loon spokesperson said. “In fact, many have already found roles and transferred to different Alphabet teams.” > “If Loon employees do not find alternative roles at Alphabet, they will be eligible to receive severance pay following their end dates,” the Loon spokesperson said.
- vmception 5y ago
  rips blunt “Alpha”, bet That’s probably how it happened, or a day after a psychoactive cacao ceremony
  - Razengan 5y ago
    They just wanted to be listed above Apple, like Acorn before them.
    - gautamcgoel 5y ago
      This is why I'm naming my startup Aardvark.
      - vmception 5y ago
        Aard Like the magic sign in The Witcher
        ndesaulniers 5y ago
        Hmm...Gwent?
      - cpach 5y ago
        Hm, I think mine will be called Aalstroem Industries
      - krkoch 5y ago
        Sorts as almost last in Norwegian and Danish locale. (aa=å)
        Razengan 5y ago
        That’s counterintuitive
- andrewmcwatters 5y ago
  I always hate this sort of phrasing, because it sounds to me like they're employees who are being laid off who get an "opportunity" to submit their resumes again as applicants. Might as well send your application to SpaceX and see if you can reach a higher altitude.
  - unishark 5y ago
    Yeah IBM or anyone else could say the same thing. "Many of our layed-off employees will be able to find jobs at Google so it's cool."
  - kmonsen 5y ago
    That is not how it worked when I was in Google, regular developers were given as much chance possible to find another team. I am sure it sucks and was not nice, but they did really try their best to find other positions for people.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - lclarkmichalek 5y ago
    Pretty easy to find another role internally though. Few hiring managers want to take a risk on a random external candidate over an internal transfer that knows how things work
  - erhk 5y ago
    The process is equivalent to the internal team transfer process which is incredibly fluid and accommodating. Sometimes people are encouraged to switch teams every 2 years for however long their tenure is in the name of knowledge breadth and transfer. New eyes on an old project are valuable.
  - jowday 5y ago
    If it's anything like my experience switching between Alphabet-owned companies, it's a lot like switching teams at Google. A couple of chats with a manager and you transfer to that team. Managers almost always take internal transfers over external hires, since they have a good idea of your performance, plenty of references, and knowledge that you'll require much less ramp up time. It's not at all like submitting your resume again as an external applicant.
- Tempest1981 5y ago
  Also great HR-speak: > “The separation of employment of the affected employees with the company in connection with winding down the company is expected to be permanent”
- brandmeyer 5y ago
  Its pretty straightforward as a software engineer to find another gig within the company. But aerospace engineers are going to have a harder time of it. Alphabet has been winding down aerospace projects pretty consistently over the last several years.
sgt101 5y ago
Loon damaged the business case for FTTP installation because it gave CFO's a counter example which they used to argue that a widespread (rural) network could be outcompeted by a disruptive technology. Google fibre screwed things up by telling every CFO in telecoms that the price for doing an urban installation was padded; it was padded - padded with the money that stopped the fibres coming out of the pavement and getting ripped up. Apart from that minor detail Google fibre was great; apart from not actually having a business case Loon was great. I know that people love the idea of telcos being smashed up and turned over, but when your broadband skips a beat this week remember that Google is part of the reason. Of course the bigger reason is that Telco CFO's spend their lives looking for cash at whatever cost to the underlying business and the social purpose of telecoms, and that telco boards are spineless blobs of jelly who are terrified of the investors and the CFO.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  It's going to be interesting to see what happens with Starlink.
  - erhk 5y ago
    0 plans to upgrade hardware in a modular fashion. Environmentalism?
  - URSpider94 5y ago
    My guess is that Starlink is what made Loon throw in the towel. Who needs an emergency network made of balloons when there will be a 24/7 network spanning the globe made of satellites?
- antiterra 5y ago
  The shallow trenching of Google Fiber was meant to counteract telcos strong arming them out of pole attachment. If the regulatory problem was solved then the difficulties of shallow burial are no longer be a significant impediment.
  - sgt101 5y ago
baybal2 5y ago
Laying fibre today is cheaper than most people think. Both fibre itself, and equipment prices fell through the floor around a decade ago, when fibre manufacturing reached China, and India. It's usually the network hardware which makes a bigger impact on the pricetag today. I knew myself a trio which started a small fibre ISP with few thousand dollars, and 2nd hand network equipment.
- paxys 5y ago
  The biggest cost of such an effort is navigating local bureaucracy. You will hit a different permitting and approval process every few miles. Every neighborhood council has an opinion on how you should dig the hole. Every town wants to do an environmental study, economic impact study, town halls and endless deliberation. There are always vested interests in play. You can use only a specific kind of union labor. And then a month into deployment some idiot fixing a pipe will cut your cable. Despite a massive investment Google itself couldn't pull it off with Fiber, and I doubt startups have much of a chance.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    Well, it wasn't in the US
- NelsonMinar 5y ago
  Fiber is only reasonably inexpensive in dense urban areas. The cost of laying new fiber in sparsely populated rural areas is prohibitive.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    Well, no more than laying any other cable. For long straight runs it will beat copper on cost god knows how many times.
  - axiolite 5y ago
    > Fiber is only reasonably inexpensive in dense urban areas. In dense urban areas it is expensive to retrofit a network. You have to maintain the existing while you run the new, won't have a lot of space, any digging or new poles is expensive as there is a lot of infrastructure in your way, salaries are much higher, etc. Europe is a good example of this. DSL remained in most areas because dense urban areas are expensive to convert. In less dense (sub-urban) areas, fiber has much lower ongoing maintenance costs versus copper, labor costs are lower, it's less prohibitive/cumbersome when you need or prefer to dig, and pole attachment is cheaper/easier. In very rural areas, customers are so sparse that it's a money loser whatever you do. Installation of the copper phone lines was paid for by government programs, and the USF fees continue to subsidize their continued operation. While fiber has lower operating/maintenance costs than copper, the payoff period for the conversion is many decades, so decidedly uneconomical. When FIOS first came out, it was unsurprisingly the sub-urban areas which were the first to be converted. They are the sweet-spot for most profitable FIOS conversion. Urban areas remain expensive to convert, but internet service has become more profitable over the years, and losing your customers to a competitor which did the investment is bad all-around, so conversion happens regardless of expense. Most telling fact is Verizon opting to get out of wired service entirely. It's a lower margin business than most, requiring high up-front investment with long/slow payback... at least in areas where there is any competition.
Clewza313 5y ago
Why is this news? Google announced Loon was being turned down in January. https://medium.com/loon-for-all/loon-draft-c3fcebc11f3f https://medium.com/loon-for-all/loon-draft-c3fcebc11f3f
- stefan_ 5y ago
  Yeah, I did a double take. Who was still sticking around 5 months after they announced to the world they were closing it down?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Sometimes offers with soft landings are made to employees to keep playing music as the ship sinks.
rasz 5y ago
Impressive, almost 600 words and not a peep about the lawsuit they lost, and invalidation of patents. Oh Im sorry, I mean settled ;-) how insensitive of me. Of course they didnt steal anything, there is no conviction. https://www.wired.com/story/the-lawsuit-that-could-pop-alphabets-project-loon-balloons/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-lawsuit-that-could-pop-alpha... https://9to5google.com/2017/07/10/project-loon-patents/ https://9to5google.com/2017/07/10/project-loon-patents/ https://www.law.com/therecorder/2019/07/29/google-settles-ip-case-over-high-altitude-balloons/?slreturn=20210022125647 https://www.law.com/therecorder/2019/07/29/google-settles-ip...
- notimetorelax 5y ago
  It’s a civil case hence no conviction. The settlement might have compensated for the value of the patent, so what else do you expect?
- imglorp 5y ago
  > Loon’s patent for changing a balloon’s direction by adjusting its altitude—a core feature of both systems—is now legally back in Space Data’s hands. I'm sure there's a more complicated argument but that method has been in use by balloonists since the 1800's; it's pretty much the only way to steer an unpowered airship. Slapping "computer" on top of an obvious method is just riding the broken patent system. Obviously lawyers feel differently.
  - JasonFruit 5y ago
    You could hardly have more prior art if you tried to patent tacking a sailboat.
    - taneq 5y ago
      Yeah I'm pretty sure the Montgolfier brothers figured that one out.
  - icegreentea2 5y ago
    It's a little hard to tell because these new sites (well, law.com is down, so I can't tell) don't link to actual court rulings or patents. But based on this article of the original complaint (https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/15/11945318/google-project-loon-space-data-patent-lawsuit-trade-secret https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/15/11945318/google-project-l...), I am guessing that the patent in question (on the Space Data side) is https://patents.google.com/patent/US6628941?oq=6%2c628%2c941 https://patents.google.com/patent/US6628941?oq=6%2c628%2c941 The patent is not "just for" the use of this method, the patent is for a system that makes use of this method for the purpose of creating a lighter than air communications network of nodes that operating in predetermined altitude ranges with no lateral positioning control. (specifically, look at claim 40 on page 28, and claim 1 on page 26). (Not defending the patent... just throwing more context). I mean, it also looks like this patent is expired now...
for_i_in_range 5y ago
Based on some of the comments, I presume there were invaluable lessons, and there are brilliant things to come from this venture (not in the form of Loon, LLC). There were also some painful lessons and not so pleasant things from this project. Regardless, this effort and “moonshots” as they call them are better than not testing at all. “The only right answer is test.”
- rantwasp 5y ago
  yes, of course. valuable lessons were learned and humanity’s knowledge has been greatly augmented. /s it still amazes me how much press google gets for basically vaporware. one could make the point that all google does, except ads, is a moonshot.
adultSwim 5y ago
Strangely passive voice on the article's headline
cush 5y ago
"Job Cuts"? It's just a reorg.
sunstone 5y ago
Project Loon closed down just as project StarLink was proving its viability. Not a coincidence in my mind.

108 points by ndesaulniers 5y ago

> the displaced Loon workers are being given the opportunity to land jobs with units of Mountain View-based Alphabet, which is Google’s owner. > “We expect many of these employees to find roles within Alphabet,” the Loon spokesperson said. “In fact, many have already found roles and transferred to different Alphabet teams.” > “If Loon employees do not find alternative roles at Alphabet, they will be eligible to receive severance pay following their end dates,” the Loon spokesperson said.

vmception 5y ago
rips blunt “Alpha”, bet That’s probably how it happened, or a day after a psychoactive cacao ceremony
- Razengan 5y ago
  They just wanted to be listed above Apple, like Acorn before them.
  - gautamcgoel 5y ago
    This is why I'm naming my startup Aardvark.
    - vmception 5y ago
      Aard Like the magic sign in The Witcher
      - ndesaulniers 5y ago
        Hmm...Gwent?
    - cpach 5y ago
      Hm, I think mine will be called Aalstroem Industries
    - krkoch 5y ago
      Sorts as almost last in Norwegian and Danish locale. (aa=å)
      - Razengan 5y ago
        That’s counterintuitive
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
I always hate this sort of phrasing, because it sounds to me like they're employees who are being laid off who get an "opportunity" to submit their resumes again as applicants. Might as well send your application to SpaceX and see if you can reach a higher altitude.
- unishark 5y ago
  Yeah IBM or anyone else could say the same thing. "Many of our layed-off employees will be able to find jobs at Google so it's cool."
- kmonsen 5y ago
  That is not how it worked when I was in Google, regular developers were given as much chance possible to find another team. I am sure it sucks and was not nice, but they did really try their best to find other positions for people.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- lclarkmichalek 5y ago
  Pretty easy to find another role internally though. Few hiring managers want to take a risk on a random external candidate over an internal transfer that knows how things work
- erhk 5y ago
  The process is equivalent to the internal team transfer process which is incredibly fluid and accommodating. Sometimes people are encouraged to switch teams every 2 years for however long their tenure is in the name of knowledge breadth and transfer. New eyes on an old project are valuable.
- jowday 5y ago
  If it's anything like my experience switching between Alphabet-owned companies, it's a lot like switching teams at Google. A couple of chats with a manager and you transfer to that team. Managers almost always take internal transfers over external hires, since they have a good idea of your performance, plenty of references, and knowledge that you'll require much less ramp up time. It's not at all like submitting your resume again as an external applicant.
Tempest1981 5y ago
Also great HR-speak: > “The separation of employment of the affected employees with the company in connection with winding down the company is expected to be permanent”
brandmeyer 5y ago
Its pretty straightforward as a software engineer to find another gig within the company. But aerospace engineers are going to have a harder time of it. Alphabet has been winding down aerospace projects pretty consistently over the last several years.

sgt101 5y ago

Loon damaged the business case for FTTP installation because it gave CFO's a counter example which they used to argue that a widespread (rural) network could be outcompeted by a disruptive technology. Google fibre screwed things up by telling every CFO in telecoms that the price for doing an urban installation was padded; it was padded - padded with the money that stopped the fibres coming out of the pavement and getting ripped up. Apart from that minor detail Google fibre was great; apart from not actually having a business case Loon was great. I know that people love the idea of telcos being smashed up and turned over, but when your broadband skips a beat this week remember that Google is part of the reason. Of course the bigger reason is that Telco CFO's spend their lives looking for cash at whatever cost to the underlying business and the social purpose of telecoms, and that telco boards are spineless blobs of jelly who are terrified of the investors and the CFO.

dehrmann 5y ago
It's going to be interesting to see what happens with Starlink.
- erhk 5y ago
  0 plans to upgrade hardware in a modular fashion. Environmentalism?
- URSpider94 5y ago
  My guess is that Starlink is what made Loon throw in the towel. Who needs an emergency network made of balloons when there will be a 24/7 network spanning the globe made of satellites?
antiterra 5y ago
The shallow trenching of Google Fiber was meant to counteract telcos strong arming them out of pole attachment. If the regulatory problem was solved then the difficulties of shallow burial are no longer be a significant impediment.
- sgt101 5y ago

baybal2 5y ago

Laying fibre today is cheaper than most people think. Both fibre itself, and equipment prices fell through the floor around a decade ago, when fibre manufacturing reached China, and India. It's usually the network hardware which makes a bigger impact on the pricetag today. I knew myself a trio which started a small fibre ISP with few thousand dollars, and 2nd hand network equipment.

paxys 5y ago
The biggest cost of such an effort is navigating local bureaucracy. You will hit a different permitting and approval process every few miles. Every neighborhood council has an opinion on how you should dig the hole. Every town wants to do an environmental study, economic impact study, town halls and endless deliberation. There are always vested interests in play. You can use only a specific kind of union labor. And then a month into deployment some idiot fixing a pipe will cut your cable. Despite a massive investment Google itself couldn't pull it off with Fiber, and I doubt startups have much of a chance.
- baybal2 5y ago
  Well, it wasn't in the US
NelsonMinar 5y ago
Fiber is only reasonably inexpensive in dense urban areas. The cost of laying new fiber in sparsely populated rural areas is prohibitive.
- baybal2 5y ago
  Well, no more than laying any other cable. For long straight runs it will beat copper on cost god knows how many times.
- axiolite 5y ago
  > Fiber is only reasonably inexpensive in dense urban areas. In dense urban areas it is expensive to retrofit a network. You have to maintain the existing while you run the new, won't have a lot of space, any digging or new poles is expensive as there is a lot of infrastructure in your way, salaries are much higher, etc. Europe is a good example of this. DSL remained in most areas because dense urban areas are expensive to convert. In less dense (sub-urban) areas, fiber has much lower ongoing maintenance costs versus copper, labor costs are lower, it's less prohibitive/cumbersome when you need or prefer to dig, and pole attachment is cheaper/easier. In very rural areas, customers are so sparse that it's a money loser whatever you do. Installation of the copper phone lines was paid for by government programs, and the USF fees continue to subsidize their continued operation. While fiber has lower operating/maintenance costs than copper, the payoff period for the conversion is many decades, so decidedly uneconomical. When FIOS first came out, it was unsurprisingly the sub-urban areas which were the first to be converted. They are the sweet-spot for most profitable FIOS conversion. Urban areas remain expensive to convert, but internet service has become more profitable over the years, and losing your customers to a competitor which did the investment is bad all-around, so conversion happens regardless of expense. Most telling fact is Verizon opting to get out of wired service entirely. It's a lower margin business than most, requiring high up-front investment with long/slow payback... at least in areas where there is any competition.

Clewza313 5y ago

Why is this news? Google announced Loon was being turned down in January. https://medium.com/loon-for-all/loon-draft-c3fcebc11f3f https://medium.com/loon-for-all/loon-draft-c3fcebc11f3f

stefan_ 5y ago
Yeah, I did a double take. Who was still sticking around 5 months after they announced to the world they were closing it down?
- dylan604 5y ago
  Sometimes offers with soft landings are made to employees to keep playing music as the ship sinks.

rasz 5y ago

Impressive, almost 600 words and not a peep about the lawsuit they lost, and invalidation of patents. Oh Im sorry, I mean settled ;-) how insensitive of me. Of course they didnt steal anything, there is no conviction. https://www.wired.com/story/the-lawsuit-that-could-pop-alphabets-project-loon-balloons/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-lawsuit-that-could-pop-alpha... https://9to5google.com/2017/07/10/project-loon-patents/ https://9to5google.com/2017/07/10/project-loon-patents/ https://www.law.com/therecorder/2019/07/29/google-settles-ip-case-over-high-altitude-balloons/?slreturn=20210022125647 https://www.law.com/therecorder/2019/07/29/google-settles-ip...

notimetorelax 5y ago
It’s a civil case hence no conviction. The settlement might have compensated for the value of the patent, so what else do you expect?
imglorp 5y ago
> Loon’s patent for changing a balloon’s direction by adjusting its altitude—a core feature of both systems—is now legally back in Space Data’s hands. I'm sure there's a more complicated argument but that method has been in use by balloonists since the 1800's; it's pretty much the only way to steer an unpowered airship. Slapping "computer" on top of an obvious method is just riding the broken patent system. Obviously lawyers feel differently.
- JasonFruit 5y ago
  You could hardly have more prior art if you tried to patent tacking a sailboat.
  - taneq 5y ago
    Yeah I'm pretty sure the Montgolfier brothers figured that one out.
- icegreentea2 5y ago
  It's a little hard to tell because these new sites (well, law.com is down, so I can't tell) don't link to actual court rulings or patents. But based on this article of the original complaint (https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/15/11945318/google-project-loon-space-data-patent-lawsuit-trade-secret https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/15/11945318/google-project-l...), I am guessing that the patent in question (on the Space Data side) is https://patents.google.com/patent/US6628941?oq=6%2c628%2c941 https://patents.google.com/patent/US6628941?oq=6%2c628%2c941 The patent is not "just for" the use of this method, the patent is for a system that makes use of this method for the purpose of creating a lighter than air communications network of nodes that operating in predetermined altitude ranges with no lateral positioning control. (specifically, look at claim 40 on page 28, and claim 1 on page 26). (Not defending the patent... just throwing more context). I mean, it also looks like this patent is expired now...

for_i_in_range 5y ago

Based on some of the comments, I presume there were invaluable lessons, and there are brilliant things to come from this venture (not in the form of Loon, LLC). There were also some painful lessons and not so pleasant things from this project. Regardless, this effort and “moonshots” as they call them are better than not testing at all. “The only right answer is test.”

rantwasp 5y ago
yes, of course. valuable lessons were learned and humanity’s knowledge has been greatly augmented. /s it still amazes me how much press google gets for basically vaporware. one could make the point that all google does, except ads, is a moonshot.

adultSwim 5y ago

Strangely passive voice on the article's headline

cush 5y ago

"Job Cuts"? It's just a reorg.

sunstone 5y ago

Project Loon closed down just as project StarLink was proving its viability. Not a coincidence in my mind.