It's a really cool idea.
But given Google's history of late, I wonder how long it will last?
Project Loon
21–30 of 299 posts
Re: Project Loon
#22"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.
Minor nitpick: AT&T has done a shit-ton of research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs
edit: apparently a different beast than today's AT&T
Re: Project Loon
#23Project Loon to bring NSA Spying to Everyone :)
While 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.
A network in the sky.
This is Skynet.
This is literally Skynet.
Re: Project Loon
#24Can 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?
If it's very cheap, it could pay itself just with the legions of potential costumers (or eyeball pairs, to be cynical) it brings google.
Do 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.
Re: Project Loon
#25Awesome. 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.
Re: Project Loon
#26Well 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.
Re: Project Loon
#27This 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…
Laying fiber to non-dense populations is usually prohibitively expensive.
Re: Project Loon
#28This 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…
Sounds 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."
Re: Project Loon
#29It'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.
I'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.
Re: Project Loon
#30It 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.