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Project Loon
- folnop 13y agoWell then, wireless internet escalated quickly. In all seriousness tho', this was unexpected. They said that it will be working with an antenna of sorts that you attach to your house? Fast forward 10 years and it will be an integrated wifi replacement in every machine - giving internet to you even in places where there's no electricity. That's the future I'd give my liver to see.
- vy8vWJlco 13y agoIt would be great if it didn't take a company project to overcome the fear of being harassed at 2:30 AM because someone misused my open WiFi.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoWhy would you be afraid of that? Is it a frequent occurrence where you live?
- vy8vWJlco 13y agohttp://news.cnet.com/Wi-Fi-arrest-highlights-security-dangers/2100-1039_3-5112000.html http://news.cnet.com/Wi-Fi-arrest-highlights-security-danger...
- caffeineninja 13y agoThis is an awesome idea. However, in my mind, there is a potential issue that the article doesn't seem to mention. How do they keep the balloons up for a long period of time, fighting all of the different variables of weather, gas leakage, temperature variances, material degradation due to being outdoors? Fiber and copper stays in the ground undisturbed for decades, because it's cheap & low maintenance, barring from breaks. While this seems cheap and easy to deploy, keeping it running is another thing entirely
- grinich 13y agoLaying fiber to non-dense populations is usually prohibitively expensive.
- callahad 13y agoSounds like they're just going to be replacing them all a few times a year: each balloon is expected to "stay aloft for 100+ days at a time." cite: http://www.google.com/loon/faq/ http://www.google.com/loon/faq/
- homosaur 13y agoI'm assuming there's some sort of monitoring onboard system and when they need new parts, they'd just land at one of these predetermined stations and be refitted. There weren't a lot of details in that video but it seemed to me like they implied they were inexpensive and easy to swap parts from.
- gbog 13y agoMore likely they will not even bother to fix broken balloons and just launch new ones.
- adamnemecek 13y ago"Project Loon balloons float in the stratosphere, twice as high as airplanes and the weather."
- jamesaguilar 13y agoBut they're tethered, right? Or no? if they're untethered, that's just crazy awesome. If they're tethered, I'm still slightly worried about the cables. OH! They're just going to make enough that there is always one overhead! That's so damn cool. I can barely believe it. Wireless technology is some of the most amazing stuff.
- nostromo 13y agoNot tethered -- watch http://www.google.com/loon/how/ http://www.google.com/loon/how/
- waterlesscloud 13y agoThere's a lot that I don't like about Google, but I do like that they're fucking insane.
- smaili 13y agoWell said :)
- pestaa 13y agoThis perspective made me laugh and earned my honest upvote; especially because it sheds a different light on Google Glass (about which I have pretty negative feelings).
- kimlelly 13y agoIs it really a good idea to use Google even on the lowest layer, meaning the network itself, for the transportation of your data? In light of the surveillance state that the US has become and the collaboration of government agencies with the tech giants, I say: Support the small guys!
- coherentpony 13y agoI'll be honest, I did double-check the date...
- albertsun 13y agoThat's odd, I'm looking at my calendar and it doesn't say April 1st.
- asperous 13y agoThat's the first thing I thought as well!!
- currysausage 13y agohttp://www.google.com/tisp/ http://www.google.com/tisp/ :)
- leoc 13y agohttp://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/04/google-gets-message-launches-gmail.html http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/04/google-gets-message-... :D
- piyush_soni 13y agoMy first thought as well :) ... I believed it only because we're nowhere near April :P
- jared314 13y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5775324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5775324 The amazing thing is this has been a rumor[0] tossed around for years (2008). [0] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080220/123009308.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080220/123009308.shtml
- asperous 13y agoLuckily it's not a rumor any more, Look at the article's url!
- jared314 13y agoI'm not sure what you mean. The previous conversations, and history of stories, offer insite into the technical, cultural, and legal issues that everyone might find valuable. News without context is just hype.
- ptc 13y agoCan someone explain why this is more cost effective than other alternatives? The need for specialized antenna's on the ground seems to be a negative. Also, does Google just subsidize the entire thing? How is this paid for long term? How is it so much cheaper than the alternatives that not only can they roll it out to 5-6 billion people, but also allow people living on cents a day to purchase the service?
- emiliobumachar 13y agoIf it's very cheap, it could pay itself just with the legions of potential costumers (or eyeball pairs, to be cynical) it brings google.
- ptc 13y agoDo you have some back of the envelope calculations of cost of this versus satellite or extending copper wire? I'm fairly ignorant on the subject, but would love to hear more.
- emiliobumachar 13y agoNo, I'm also fairly ignorant on the subject.
- fowkswe 13y agoHave you tried to fathom rolling out the fiber program in Kansas City? The machinery, the man power, the political will? This is a no brainer.
- agsamek 13y agoThis is great question. In urban area it is extremly cheap to buy area for towers. What area can a tower cover with LTE? What is the theoretical limit with different technology?
- ekianjo 13y agoProject Loon to bring NSA Spying to Everyone :)
- LoganCale 13y agoWhile the geek in me acknowledges this is an awesome project and I'm really glad to see them giving it a try, the sarcastic cynic in me had the first thought that this was a great way to bring the the remaining 2/3 of the world under NSA surveillance.
- krapp 13y agoA network in the sky. This is Skynet. This is literally Skynet.
- ameen 13y agoUnfortunately, if more people start using the Internet the NSA database will inevitably grow. I wonder how long it'll take the whole human population is covered by the NSA.
- TeMPOraL 13y agoWasn't "NSA's free access to Google data" debunked, like, 3 days ago? Why people still keep talking like they give away all the data? That's the problem with mass media. Not only a lie spreads faster than the truth, it's also the only thing remembered after the dust settles.
- ekianjo 13y agoHas not be debunked in any way. As far as I understand it's far from clear what the NSA can actually do. Declaration of officials who are under oath to protect secrets is worth nothing.
- simonsarris 13y ago"I love those who yearn for the impossible." -Goethe I wish other large companies showed such ambition. Telecoms like AT&T can't even be bothered to roll out the network upgrades they promised in the early 2000's.
- pizza 13y agoMinor nitpick: AT&T has done a shit-ton of research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs edit: apparently a different beast than today's AT&T
- hnriot 13y agoAnd little things like Unix
- mehrzad 13y agoand C
- jamesaguilar 13y agoHow long does a 100k+ employee company get credit for something a small handful of their employees did almost half a century ago? Not that C wasn't an achievement but . . .
- mehrzad 13y agoI take my point back as the AT&T of today is not the same as it was back then, but the fact that the company funded this research is what makes it admirable.
- flomo 13y agoThe old monopoly AT&T wasn't just a company but presented itself as an American institution. They heavily publicized their Bell Labs inventions to help keep the anti-trust regulators off their back. Unix/C certainly benefited from this.
- lyime 13y agoMind Blown again.
- mad44 13y agoEric Brewer, who joined Google a year or so back, has been working on Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions. He had similar ideas. I wonder if he has been involved with this project. http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/ http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/ http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/drupal/ http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/drupal/
- SatyajitSarangi 13y agoI believe he is. I've followed his research work for quite a while and Ninja Project seems very similar to Project Loon.
- mino 13y agoEric is an altruistic guy and a great scientist. I'm sure he's building great stuff at his Google sabbatical!
- sethvincent 13y agoI'm more excited about this than Google Glass.
- LoganCale 13y agoIn some regards, so am I, though this comment made me think that in some regards, Loon is a necessary component of Glass's success. There are huge areas of even just the U.S. which don't have cell/wireless internet coverage and Glass would be fairly useless, or significantly less useful, there currently.
- hnriot 13y agoYes, but do you really think those rural areas are going to want to walk around lie cyber dorks? The corp I work for has already banned glass on premises.
- LoganCale 13y agoWhether people in rural areas will or not, someone not from a rural area who does use Glass may want to travel outside of cell coverage areas and keep using it. Furthermore, far in the future it's fair to presume such devices would be miniaturized and likely become more acceptable.
- ChrisNorstrom 13y agoIt's fascinating to see how well Google has branched out. It started as just a search engine competing with Lycos, AltaVista, & Yahoo and yet they didn't just stop, they kept going. They built all these new services & products around their core product (search) and it's paid off tremendously. It's definitely something to model future companies off of. When you win the race, don't stop, keep running.
- ameen 13y agoI'd say it still hasn't branched out. It is very much an "internet" company. So anything related to the internet (and data nowadays) is somehow going to benefit their bottom-line.
- jiangth 13y agoThis is fucking nuts. I feel weird. So this is what real innovation feels like.
- greghinch 13y agoIt's a really cool idea. But given Google's history of late, I wonder how long it will last?
- drawkbox 13y agoAwesome. There are probably alot of things you can do with metrics on usage, availability, even mapping/weather and some fun camera views and more beyond just a line in the ground. So many more informational uses with it being airborne.
- snprbob86 13y agoHow fast will the connections be?
- citricsquid 13y agoEach balloon can provide connectivity to a ground area about 40 km in diameter at speeds comparable to 3G. For balloon-to-balloon and balloon-to-ground communications, the balloons use antennas equipped withspecialized radio frequency technology. Project Loon currently uses ISM bands (specifically 2.4 and 5.8 GHz bands) that are available for anyone to use. From http://www.google.com/loon/how/ http://www.google.com/loon/how/
- nostromo 13y agoI've always wanted a near-live satellite image for Google maps. If this takes off that'll be possible. I could find a parking spot from the sky. :)
- EFruit 13y agoYou act like that's a good thing. I don't want some Google balloon watching me every step of my day. Even less so if what it's seeing is published near-instantly
- mynameisvlad 13y agoI hate this line of thinking. Nobody is watching you. Nobody is monitoring you. Even with PRISM, it's a massive amount of data, and unless you are on some watch list, nobody gives two shits about you specifically.
- rgovind 13y agoSkybox is working on it
- untog 13y agoSo the government seeing your data is bad, but a private company filming your every move is good...
- sounds 13y agoLook at it this way: if I wanted the government to put a CCTV camera in front of my house and snap photos once a year, it would mean I thought the best way to publish pictures of my house was to take tax dollars, enforce it through legislation, submit it to the whims of politicians, suffer the fruits of their corruption as they sell me out, and on and on. Me? If I want to publish pictures of my house, I would likely use some sort of internet service to do so... therefore: The laws around private companies photographing private property are both (1) very restrictive and (2) well known and well tested in court. Compare that to warrantless spying only reviewed by a secret court – and even then the government fails to (1) keep it secret, (2) abide by their own court's rulings, or (3) successfully apply the intel to the stated cause of terrorist threats. Basically, there aren't really very many things the government does well at all. When Google wants to send a car down my avenue or fly a balloon over my house, they'll be regulated by laws that literally follow the Streisand effect... in other words, if I don't want you to see my backyard, I might have to put up a roof. It'll be uncomfortable, yes. And maybe Google isn't the best company to publish live video of an entire continent to the internet. But if someone else doesn't beat them to it, I imagine Google is going there. What's your contingency plan?
- joonix 13y agoThey are testing it in New Zealand hinterland. I wonder what implications this is going to hvae for NBN in Australia. They are spending tons of money to launch two satellites to provide access to remote towns. Google is showing they can do it for cheaper, possibly, and with Fiber they are showing gigabit FTH can be done cheaply...
- hhandoko 13y agoI'm actually more concerned about what happens to the NBN if there's a change in government (looking more likely as each day passes).
- gboudrias 13y agoHow long before they abandon the idea? Google is well known for creating projects for shits and giggles and abandoning them when it turns out giggles don't make money.
- psbp 13y agoHave the abandoned any of the moonshots?
- droidist2 13y agoI've often thought something like this would be good for providing internet access to the people of North Korea.
- rilut 13y agoUntil they shot it down ;)
- wjruoxue 13y agoIf this could bring the INTERNET to places like China (where there is only INTRANET)!
- blinkingled 13y ago> Loon balloons are superpressure, which enable them to stay aloft for 100+ days at a time. This is far longer than typical weather balloons, which last for a matter of hours. Loon balloons are also unique in that they are steerable and entirely solar powered. It's like they are putting up cheap, disposable, steerable satellites up in the stratosphere! Genius. Would be pretty interesting to understand the monitoring and control system for the balloons - not sure if they can bring back the failing balloons to a maintenance site to refurbish and relaunch them or they just dump the debris along with the failed balloon. I suppose at least the electronics aboard must be reusable for a time longer than the 100+ days the balloon stays afloat.
- achalkley 13y agoAll your data are belong to us. PRISM 2.0.
- ajhit406 13y agoI really enjoyed the subtle design / aspects of the loon landing page. Starting with the darker background of the thermosphere and progressing into the twilight of the troposphere was a really nice touch. I also just noticed the small altimeter on the left of the page. Also the whole phonetic wordplay with "loon" and "lunar" was cute. Coming from New Hampshire, I naturally immediately thought of the aquatic bird: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon But the "lunar" aspect wasn't lost on me. Kudos, this type of subtle design is refreshing in the wake of the iOS7 release.
- pettazz 13y agoI immediately thought of "loon" as part of "balloon" and also "loon" as in insane or ridiculous. It's a perfect name for something so ridiculous with the potential to be ridiculously awesome.
- dvfb 13y agoSo the balloons just float on the air channels 20km up and presumably circulate around world? I can imagine problems coming up with some countries objecting to these being over their airspace.
- bvi 13y agoSo the question, then, is how high do you need to go before you're no longer in a country's airspace?
- tellarin 13y agoAs far as I know there is no international agreement on this. Altitude can vary from 30Km to 160Km. Most countries seem to claim somewhere between 70Km and 100Km as their airspace. If someone has more details on this, it's very welcome.
- wsh 13y agoThis master's thesis from 2005 ("The Vertical Limit of State Sovereignty") has a fairly comprehensive account of the history and present state of international law in this area: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA436627 http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA436627
- tellarin 13y agoI'm familiar with that. And the guy proposes 22Km as the limit. Besides, a lot has changed in the use of airspace and space in the last 8 years. Yet, I don't know of any authoritative source for the actual current claims of most countries.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mrschwabe 13y agoWill these balloons also be feeding data to the NSA via PRISM?
- krapp 13y agoNo need. Why climb in through the window when you have the keys to the back door?
- marcamillion 13y agoWow....this is mind-blowing. The potential impact of a globally connected internet is crazy. No longer can a country fully filter/control all internet traffic. This could be a major boon to democracy. I wonder if Google did this, partially to piss China off. This seems like an awesome way to get around the 'Great Firewall'.
- cheeseprocedure 13y agoI wonder how long it'll be before reports surface of authoritarian countries deploying anti-Loon lasers. In all seriousness, I'm curious how difficult it would be to jam this network.
- wmf 13y agoIt's low power in known bands, but coving a very large area. Maybe somebody could launch their own jamming balloons. In the short term Google says they'll abide local laws so I suspect no jamming will be needed.
- krasin 13y ago>I wonder if Google did this, partially to piss China off. Clearly, not. China has enough air power (including drones) to shut down any amount of the balloons.
- tantalor 13y agoI don't think conventional drones can fly that high.
- rgovind 13y agoThis is an awesome idea but I am skeptical if stupid govts like in India will let this move forward. I am sure someone there will raise some security concerns. Probably same for most of Africa.
- surrealize 13y agoRemember late last year, when there were rumors about Google being in talks to acquire Dish network? I couldn't imagine that Google would actually use Dish's spectrum to build a traditional cellular network. Building all those towers is a huge investment and I didn't think that played to Google's strengths. But, assuming that Loon needs licensed spectrum, maybe Loon (or something like it) was the plan?
- mtdewcmu 13y agoThis sounded like a great idea to me at first. But, Each balloon provides coverage to a 40km diameter area. That's a lot of balloons to cover rural Africa. It would help a great deal if the balloons could be made to stay in precise locations, like geostationary satellites. I thought maybe they had solved that problem (which would be amazing). But, I guess not. They said in the video that the balloons would follow the wind all the way around the Earth. Meaning, at any given time, the overwhelming majority of balloons are over the ocean. The difficulty, then, is not merely putting enough balloons up to cover the ground in 40km increments, but covering the ocean as well, in a solid band around the entire Earth. It's not hard to imagine that a stupendous number of balloons would be required to provide any meaningful level of coverage. I think this is more Google hubris than technical innovation.
- selvakn 13y agoThe balloons are not going to move in one direction though. The video also mentioned you can steer the balloons, which means, there is way to keep them above the ground and not the ocean.
- sicxu 13y agoJust cover the continent will require a lot of balloons. The world has 148,429,000 sq km. If you cover 1600 sq km per balloon, that is 92768 balloons. Just cover Africa will require around 20k balloons. It will only work out, if Google can increase the coverage area per balloon.
- gaadd33 13y ago20K ballons doesn't seem like that many unless each one costs a ton of money. From an industrial production point of view it barely seems like a drop in the bucket given how many cars/phones/planes we produce.
- mtdewcmu 13y agoEach balloon would cover a circle, so it'd be more like 1,250 sq km. I think it would be optimistic to expect each balloon to cover exactly that area. They'd need to overlap just to eliminate gaps, and I'm sure there's a random element to their motion, so that would require them to overlap more.
- fowkswe 13y agoYeeeeeahhhh buddy
- tomasien 13y agoIt's so encouraging to see a Hacker News comment section that is almost overwhelming informative and positive. I get varying amounts of flak for constantly posting about the quality and nature of HN comments, but as an unabashed optimist it means a lot to me to me.
- university 13y agoOh shut up.
- msoad 13y agoYeah, I'm looking for a discussion about technology and maybe somebody have an idea how latency would be. But all I see is typical comments you find in any social network.
- shire 13y agoMind boggling!
- asafira 13y agoGoogle has mentioned that they had this sort of internet infrastructure in mind, right? Awesome to see it move forward!
- venantius 13y agoI find stuff like this awe-inspiring, particularly w/r/t how it could be used to protect internet access for not only those who are underprivileged but also for those being denied internet access by autocratic governments. Think back to Egypt, Libya, Syria - how different could those have gone if the authorities had been unable to shut down communication networks?
- zhemao 13y agoWhen you've taken over the internet, what's your next move? Make the internet bigger of course. I for one welcome our new Google overlords.
- pinaceae 13y agoWasn't Page about to focus? Shutting down small, useful and used tools because Google should only do a few thngs, but all of them well? So will this litter the countryside, and even worse, the oceans with electronic equipment incl. highly toxic batteries? will they maintain and retrieve every single one of those balloons? who pays for that?
- Dylan16807 13y agoI find it odd that you assume they're going to take these highly advanced routers and litter with them.
- revx 13y agoI share the same concerns - what about the batteries and other products that aren't as expensive as the routers?
- yohui 13y ago(from http://www.google.com/loon/faq/#pilot http://www.google.com/loon/faq/#pilot) Q: WHAT STEPS IS PROJECT LOON TAKING TO BE ENVIRONMENTALLY RESPONSIBLE? A: We are taking several steps to ensure Project Loon does not negatively impact the environment: - We’re working to guide all balloons to collection points upon descent, so we can reuse, recycle, or dispose of the parts responsibly - When balloons do not make it to one of these collection points, we will be offering a reward for reporting the location of the balloon so we can collect it - We can track where the balloons land and we have a team of people who focus on recovering the balloons - We'll have a boat for recovering balloons that go into the sea close to New Zealand - We've started looking into using biodegradable films for our balloon envelopes - Our balloons’ electronics are entirely solar powered.
- mtdewcmu 13y ago"Our balloons’ electronics are entirely solar powered." I wonder if that means there won't be batteries. But no batteries would mean no service at night. Also, no navigation at night. Pulling them out of the deep ocean would likely be infeasible. They might be able to make them float, though, and get them when they wash up on a beach somewhere. Edit: there are some answers here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330 They do have batteries.
- mrtron 13y agoWe are living in the future.
- cpeterso 13y agoAny news about other "moonshot" projects that Google[x] is working on besides self-driving cars and Loon?
- bitsoda 13y agoI think Google Glass started out as a Google[x] project as well. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in their division.
- turing 13y agoSeconded. I think it would be just as interesting to see the projects that they've killed. They've said before that one of the goals of Google[x] is to fail fast. I imagine they've already accumulated quite the graveyard of crazy proposals.
- adrianbg 13y agoHas no one noticed that this is a super-governmental network? Like, including the US government and its NSA?
- neonkiwi 13y agoCan anyone involved in this project shed some light on how altitude is controlled?
- noloqy 13y agoNext up, Loon servers? I can't wait having my torrents served from the stratosphere. I believe TPB was already considering having drone-based servers - balloons just seem so much cheaper.
- curiousfiddler 13y agoPersonal opinion: sometimes Google is just simply awesome. I really hope every word they've written in there, reflects some of what their top management feels at a high level.
- kubindurion 13y agoWhat kind of technology are they using to send the signal from the balloons to the ground? Though there were succesfull attempts to establish succesful WIFI links from the ground to stratoshpere(even 25 miles as I recall) this was achieved using precise DIRECT antennas (impossible when balloons are in constant movement) ???
- kubindurion 13y agoOk: Project Loon currently uses ISM bands (specifically 2.4 and 5.8 GHz bands) that are available for anyone to use. Still doesn't explain how they achieve good quality link
- synctext 13y agoTrying to do an "Energy Budget" with my low-power research background. Please help with the balloon angle. .1 - 1W Balloon height adjustments .1 - .5W Flight tracking, control and management .5 - 2W RF power and conversions (balloon-to-ground) .5 - 2W RF power and conversions (balloon-to-baloon) 1 - 2W Packet routing, processing and baseband processing Essential missing insight: how to they lower/rise the balloons and deflate/inflate them? With 100days service time you cannot simply vent gas. So a pump and compressor is needed?
- 7952 13y agoIf you just have a radio repeater you could ditch the packet routing.
- mtdewcmu 13y agoDid it say somewhere that they last 100 days? That number sounds familiar, but I couldn't find it just now when I went back to the site. I wonder how far the balloons would travel during those 100 days. As you can tell from the video, they're going to spend most of their lives drifting over the ocean. Edit: there are more details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330 Apparently they circle the Earth every 14 days.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- vadiml 13y agoAwesome idea!!! This will eventually provide alternative to the current telecom carriers.... In the long run they could provide the service free for Google Wallet users... They'll make profit on Wallet transaction...
- Confusion 13y agoI'm curious as to the commercial viability of this. Will Google offer access for free or will you require a subscription? As a throwaway account mentioned, Space Data Corp. already offers this kind of service, but to large industrial companies, that can afford to pay a lot more than people in currently disconnected regions.
- gulfie 13y agoAfter the communications platform goes up, then the other payloads can hitch a ride. Imaging getting real time video from the stratosphere to everywhere all the time. The weather data alone would be awesome. The traffic data would be great. The IR imagery catching forest fires or amazon jungle burning would be great. An almost real time collection for finding illegal logging or toxic waste dumping. When there are clouds of these ballons going overhead, who will notice an extra one or two that happen to have militarized payloads.
- vadiml 13y agoI wonder, how project team member call themselves .... :)
- harshadura 13y agothis is awesome!
- gulfie 13y agoAfter the communications platform goes up, then the other payloads can hitch a ride. Imaging getting real time video from the stratosphere to everywhere all the time. The weather data alone would be awesome. The traffic data would be great. The IR imagery catching forest fires or amazon jungle burning would be great. An almost real time collection for finding illegal logging or toxic waste dumping. When there are clouds of these ballons going overhead, who will notice an extra one or two that happen to have militarized payloads.
- superasn 13y agoUnless of course it is a trade secret, how wonderful would be if the engineers at Google would release more detailed diagrams of the balloons, circuits, and how it is supposed to work (the pump, antenna and everything, not the simplistic version). Maybe they are having some challenges which can be crowd sourced for ideas too. They have obviously done a lot of research and this idea can certainly spawn other awesome ideas or help other indie projects. Project like these can be a really nice experiment on teaching and getting ideas from bored internet hackers.
- Geee 13y agoI wouldn't vouch for it until the complete tech stack is open-source, and the devices are manufactured and deployed by someone else than Google. I expect them to be shot down eventually if that doesn't happen.
- spuz 13y agoWhat? why? Most networking and routing hardware is proprietary, what's different about balloons?
- Geee 13y agoWell, Google owned global balloon network is just too scary. I guess it doesn't have to be open-source if there's means to reverse engineer these things, and be sure that there's no way for Google to gather information or intercept the traffic.
- Cardeck1 13y agoI like innovation but Google is getting too powerful and I don't want to see an Umbrella Corporation in the next 20 years.
- _progger_ 13y ago"But two-thirds of the world’s population does not yet have Internet access." Those two-thirds can't see Google Ads then :).
- hkon 13y agoI can't help but thinking, bring internet to everyone, so we can spy on everyone.
- oellegaard 13y agoAlthough I think this initiative is nothing less than totally awesome, I wouldn't want Google as my ISP.
- johansch 13y agoThis could also be used to achieve low-latency network access in passenger aircraft over the oceans.
- soheil 13y agoIn the first video, yeah having a freakin kid tell you why the world needs to be connected and explaining concepts that he/she is having problem even pronouncing does make me wanna support this lunatic loon project so google can whore out the rest of the planet with their ads. Can't stop imagining how useful this will be to the #nsa
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kriro 13y ago"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Very well in line with their mission statement. I love it because it's so much "ah screw it we'll just try this crazy sounding idea" [I wrote a paper during my university time that was a thought experiment on the availability of cheap internet for everyone...time to dig it up :D]
- Nimi 13y agoA worthy project, to be sure, but the networking guy in me hears "space" and immediately starts worrying about the latency. Does anyone know if there's technical data available on the standard network metrics of this solution (latency, packet loss, jitter...)?
- 6d0debc071 13y agoI'm not sure they've thought through the effects of creating that many more consumers and producers to compete with - especially when service industries, services that can be delivered at range, are becoming so dominant. This seems like the sort of thing that's going to force down the price of labour again. I don't see the percentage for developed countries - seems maladaptive.
- mark_l_watson 13y agoSounds cool, but there is one issue: latency. I remember using the Internet in the mid-1980s, specifically using servers in Norway and other locations from my office in San Diego. Because of a few satellite hops, the latency was about 2 seconds. It made remote use of Emacs interesting :-)
- gabemart 13y agoMy back-of-the-envelope first-approximation math suggests you'd need "only" about half a million of these things to cover the entire surface area of the Earth. To me, that seemed a surprisingly low number.
- nateguchi 13y agoThis reminds me of the "swivel eyed loons" of last weeks episode of The Now Show
- ancarda 13y agoPerhaps I'm pessimistic but my immediate thought is how much Google is involved, i.e are they providing the backbones the balloons connect to? The last thing I'd want is Google knowing every URL I visit.
- marknutter 13y ago"Never mind about the NSA, here's this wacky project for the public good!"
- marcioaguiar 13y agoPlenty of pictures on their G+ page: https://plus.google.com/+ProjectLoon https://plus.google.com/+ProjectLoon
- thehme 13y agoI love how google has so much money they can spend money on pet projects like these. No wonder they attract people with so many "impossible ideas" that sometimes turn out to be pet projects worth spending come money on.
- arahaya 13y agoWhat is "loon" about this? We've been flying stuff outer space for over 50 years.
- tamersalama 13y agoWith all the PRISM & NSA news coming out, I can't discard that this might be yet another tool to go after remote 'Jihadists' and people of interest. Whether Google is doing it wittingly or not is yet to be determined.
- guiomie 13y agoI wonder how cheaper it is to conventional landlines ?
- shruubi 13y agoOn first reading this, I had to check the date to make sure it wasn't April Fools because I thought it sounded a little silly... The more I read it though, the cooler it sounds...
- mtgx 13y agoCould servers be put on these, too? Like that drone idea the PirateBay had?
- cpeterso 13y agoAny details about bandwidth and latency? Where are the gateway stations out of the balloon network? In the local region?
- rlamptey 13y agoAmazing idea, but then the rest of the world (non-americans) are still worried about the implications of this for PRISM. Getting the rest of the world online is cool, but then the NSA gets to have access to their data,that's not cool and I was beginning to like Google!
- grappler 13y agoIn light of the whole surveillance issue, how to approach the matter of foreign balloons drifting in and out of the airspace of many different countries? Can they steer around countries that want no part of it? It doesn't take too much imagination to envision balloons doing things like taking high-res photos and videos, collecting all manner of signals from communications equipment, radars and other military equipment, or even carrying onboard weapons. Basically the same things drones do. How can they assure skeptical people and governments that these balloons aren't carrying something extra in addition to their statued misson?
- jordiae 13y agoThis is what makes Google different from the other enterprises.
- Swannie 13y agoI wonder if Google are working with the Serval guys in Australia on this. They are turning Android devices into wireless meshes and have been sending up balloons with device + high gain aerials for quite a while... With the same project motives in mind: disaster recovery (with ground and pole based setup, including voice calls and txt messages with higher QoS over the network), and extending coverage to less populated parts of the world. Australia is a huge place. Wireless is the only sane option for large large parts of the country, and towers, with power - you have to get it there somehow , are expensive. Yes solar is often an option (though it makes the base station in the middle of nowhere a very attractive target for thieves) and I'll be very interested to see how Google will solve that one (assume balloons will be semi covered in panels plus quite large batteries, and possibly small amounts of wind generation?).
- Swannie 13y agoDoh. Reading the FAQ. Many q's answered.
- mkl 13y agoI went to the Project Loon event in Christchurch today. Here are details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330
- sytelus 13y agoThere are quite a few technical challenges here (weight of cables, stability at 20 mi, erosion by much intense radiation etc). Details on one of the previous efforts which was considered revolutionary but never became main stream can be seen here: http://www.spacedata.net/news040108.htm http://www.spacedata.net/news040108.htm.
- erikj 13y agoIt somehow reminds me of the fictional Aquinas Protocol: http://deusex.wikia.com/wiki/Aquinas http://deusex.wikia.com/wiki/Aquinas It gave people free bandwidth in exchange for being a part of a global survelliance system. I hope Project Loon doesn't have such a dubious second nature.
- SunboX 13y agoI can see bunches of ballons floating above the planet. If you ask me, google should support http://brck.com/ http://brck.com/
- Swannie 13y agoWondering how the routing is working. If my neighbour and I are 30km apart, and covered by the same balloon, does our traffic get turned around on the balloon, rather than hoping to the base station and then back again? I have to assume yes. If we are 30km apart and we are actually connected to two neighbouring balloons, will they route traffic between them, and again, not via the base station? Again, have to assume yes. So do I get a single IP address, or do I keep changing when the balloons are overhead? I assume I get a single IP address, but my home router is actually going to have to do some intelligent next hop routing. Mesh networking is a challenging area when the base stations are fixed, with weather effects and moving end users an issue. Even more challenging when your "base stations" are moving, weather effects are significantly greater, and you're super limited to the amount of onboard processing you can do. Assume it has to be something like BATMAN. http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/open-mesh/wiki/BATMANConcept http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/open-mesh/wiki/BATMANConce...
- wklauss 13y agoIs really that impractical to use stationary WiMax access points instead? Last time I checked range was around 30 miles, couple of stations will blanket a good area without the hassle these balloons bring (you need to pick them and relaunch every couple of weeks, etc...).
- MitziMoto 13y agoSome benefits over stationary towers is that you can easily move the balloons based on different things like natural disasters, political unrest or even to just improve bandwidth under heavy load.
- Iterated 13y agoI suppose Google will be hiring a lot of meteorologists! This would be a very fun project to work on.
- robbiep 13y agoI wonder if they have any plans to move away from helium as a buoyancy gas.. I can't help but feel we need to save every atom of that stuff for MRI machines
- kunil 13y agoYes, everyone in Africa is waiting for internet to use with their smart phones. Evading the censorship is a better idea but I am pretty sure China wouldn't allow such a thing to fly over their country. Or at least make it suffer with network attacks or DDOS or something.
- Trogdor0617 13y agoI recall a month or two ago some rumors about Google preparing to launch airships & blimps to achieve this same purpose. Now I wonder if that was a misinformation campaign intended to keep competitors and Wall Street guessing.