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Ask HN: Did Google/Alphabet ever try to build a Starlink?

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Re: Ask HN: Did Google/Alphabet ever try to build a Starlink?

#21

Post by snowwrestler »

elmerfud wrote: post #17
jiveturkey wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

disagree. it’s only recently that google dropped X and moonshots. loon and the wing thing come to mind. sure, now, google isn’t very futurist (look how they botched AI execution), but in the time that starlink was developed, google was very much still futurist. > speed was unheard of. lol. only in the usa. > At the time most ISPs wanted to have bandwidth caps and rate limits because they were afraid of people abusing…

Considering that I've worked at ISPs since the early '90s when they were dial-ups and watched them grow up into something more, Yes I would say that I've analyzed. You offer no evidence of any futurist thing that Google has done. At least nothing to the scale of what Elon Musk has done. Everything Google is done has been a calculated safe risk taking a small step forward in technology that was safe. It was absolutely…

Project Loon was futuristic. It did not achieve the scale of Starlink because it failed, not because it wasn’t futuristic.

Google also invested early into self-driving cars and remains well ahead of Musk in that area.

Re: Ask HN: Did Google/Alphabet ever try to build a Starlink?

#23

Post by more_corn »

elmerfud wrote: post #6

Starlink is a futurist project which is really what Elon Musk wants to be. For something like Google they wouldn't do this typically because as a company and their leadership they aren't futurists. Google has typically invested in existing viable technologies and forced them into a lower price point to make them more available. Google fiber was introduced 14 years ago when that kind of speed was unheard of. At the ti…

Have you heard of google X? I think they call it the moonshot factory.

Re: Ask HN: Did Google/Alphabet ever try to build a Starlink?

#24

Post by kevindamm »

dmitrygr wrote: post #22

Yes. The project was “global bit” or “gBit” and it was also looking at a satellite constellation. It got cancelled in 2014ish. This was unrelated to Loon Source: got approval to transfer to work on it the very day it was cancelled.

Before that (2008-2010, I think) Google was also involved with o3b satellites, and later linked them to Loon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O3b

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_852573C4...

Google eventually sold its stake in O3b around 2016.

Re: Ask HN: Did Google/Alphabet ever try to build a Starlink?

#25

Post by govideo »

dmitrygr wrote: post #22

Yes. The project was “global bit” or “gBit” and it was also looking at a satellite constellation. It got cancelled in 2014ish. This was unrelated to Loon Source: got approval to transfer to work on it the very day it was cancelled.

Interesting! Sorry it was cancelled, and hopefully you ended up well in any case.

Would have been such a galactic halo for the Google brand. Not sure how the financial spreadsheets looked, but those don't do well in accurately quantifying brand value.

Re: Ask HN: Did Google/Alphabet ever try to build a Starlink?

#26

Post by elmerfud »

snowwrestler wrote: post #21
elmerfud wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that I've worked at ISPs since the early '90s when they were dial-ups and watched them grow up into something more, Yes I would say that I've analyzed. You offer no evidence of any futurist thing that Google has done. At least nothing to the scale of what Elon Musk has done. Everything Google is done has been a calculated safe risk taking a small step forward in technology that was safe. It was absolutely…

Project Loon was futuristic. It did not achieve the scale of Starlink because it failed, not because it wasn’t futuristic. Google also invested early into self-driving cars and remains well ahead of Musk in that area.

According to you balloons with radio transmitters are futuristic technology. It didn't achieve scale because the benefits that it offered were too small, and it was too impractical. There was literally nothing futuristic about it at all.

You have to understand that starlink itself is only quasi-futuristic and it's the idea of SpaceX that is futuristic. Starlink is just a spin-off. Bringing faster satellite internet around the world is certainly a benefit and a step up from iridium and other satellite providers but SpaceX wasn't founded to make starlink happen. Starlink happened because SpaceX was a thing. SpaceX is a thing because Elon Musk's future vision is for the human species to become multi-planetary.

Show me anything that Google has done approaching that scale of future vision. Till we understand I don't know if Musk will actually achieve these visions but that is what is driving the offerings that he has.

Re: Ask HN: Did Google/Alphabet ever try to build a Starlink?

#27

Post by asadotzler »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #18

Yes, they essentially did. Project Loon used balloons rather than satellites, but is otherwise surprisingly similar to Starlink, technically. And as far as I've heard, a lot of Project Loon personnel ended up at SpaceX. Also, the synergy may be a good part of the reason why Google was a large early investor in SpaceX. https://x.company/projects/loon/

Loon balloons were more like floating cell towers. Starlink is a broadband first platform that will also do some cellular sort of eventually (just beginning to roll out now).

Re: Ask HN: Did Google/Alphabet ever try to build a Starlink?

#28

Post by asadotzler »

paxys wrote: post #9

The bottleneck was always getting satellites up in space. SpaceX has an effective monopoly on launches at this point, so it isn't a surprise that they were the first ones to establish themselves in the satellite internet market.

It has nothing to do with the monopoly. They built rockets that cost about 20 million to launch and everyone else's rockets cost about 60 million to launch. This is internal costs for the launch providers. On pricing, what customers pay, the difference is hardly so stark because SpaceX doesn't leave money on the table without good reason given their superior reliability and human capability.

That cost win was because of reuse and reuse gave them a fleet. The launch market was inelastic and they had all this launch capability and not enough customers so they became their own customer with their excess capacity and now Starlink is successful enough that commercial launch will soon take a back seat to Starlink internal launches.

Re: Ask HN: Did Google/Alphabet ever try to build a Starlink?

#29

Post by returnInfinity »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #18

Yes, they essentially did. Project Loon used balloons rather than satellites, but is otherwise surprisingly similar to Starlink, technically. And as far as I've heard, a lot of Project Loon personnel ended up at SpaceX. Also, the synergy may be a good part of the reason why Google was a large early investor in SpaceX. https://x.company/projects/loon/

Or was it because Larry and Elon were good friends?

Re: Ask HN: Did Google/Alphabet ever try to build a Starlink?

#30

Post by fragmede »

fixprix wrote: post #15
jakartaInd wrote: post #5

No. They could not even get fiber rolled out to the US. They started well but it requires immense power in local and federal level that takes decades (yes, decades) to accommodate. Starlink would have then their focus out of search and AI which they clearly understand better and dominate. Also, there is nothing innovative from Musk itself as far as starlink goes. More than half of research and implementation is funde…

> More than half of research and implementation is funded by USG and Tax Payer funded rebates and concessions. Absolutely not. SpaceX/Starlink didn't receive any money from the government. They tried to get a 800 million dollar subsidy, but it was revoked. Even then Starlink has cost a lot more than that to design, deploy and operate.

SpaceX has received something like $20 billion from NASA and the DoD, to launch things into space and resupply the ISS and shit starting like 2008. It's fair to say Starlink has not received any funding from the government since that $800 million was rescinded though, but the line between SpaceX and Starlink's money is a bit fuzzy.
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