Project Loon • Hacker News Board

Re: Project Loon

#11

Post by LoganCale » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 3:47 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #10

Project 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.

Re: Project Loon

#12

Post by simonsarris » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 3:47 AM UTC

"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.

Re: Project Loon

#13

Post by lyime » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 3:47 AM UTC

Mind Blown again.

Re: Project Loon

#14

Post by asperous » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 3:47 AM UTC

albertsun wrote: post #6

That's odd, I'm looking at my calendar and it doesn't say April 1st.

That's the first thing I thought as well!!

Re: Project Loon

#15

Post by mad44 » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 3:47 AM UTC

Eric 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://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/drupal/

Re: Project Loon

#16

Post by sethvincent » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 3:48 AM UTC

I'm more excited about this than Google Glass.

Re: Project Loon

#17

Post by asperous » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 3:48 AM UTC

jared314 wrote: post #7

Previous discussion: 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

Luckily it's not a rumor any more, Look at the article's url!

Re: Project Loon

#18

Post by emiliobumachar » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 3:48 AM UTC

ptc wrote: post #8

Can 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.

Re: Project Loon

#19

Post by ChrisNorstrom » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 3:49 AM UTC

It'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.

Re: Project Loon

#20

Post by jiangth » Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 3:49 AM UTC

This is fucking nuts. I feel weird. So this is what real innovation feels like.