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Loon’s final flight

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Re: Loon’s final flight

#101

Post by titanomachy »

fermienrico wrote: post #14

I am currently reading "The Idea Factory" [1], the story of Bell Labs and its innovation streak for many decades. There were so many amazing things Bell Labs worked on - all directly related to solving business problems. At one point, they were given a task of developing the most perfect lubrication oil dispenser with a requirement that it dispenses exactly 15 drops of oil per squeeze of the trigger. They worked on T…

Google already is an ISP... see Fi, Fiber. Loon isn’t so far outside their domain.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#102

Post by OpticalWindows »

I'm sure this type of tech can be rebooted at any time depending on the need. I think a sustainable commercial model would be difficult with the global slowdown. Many of these moonshots might sadly end earlier than anticipated. I don't think COVID is the end of all momentum in startups but it sure feels like it may take a generation to return.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#103

Post by Dig1t »

tim333 wrote: post #93
ogre_codes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the days of Google Moonshots are coming to a close. In general Google hasn't been very good at shooting for the moon. They've lost their leadership and vision and all that's left is a giant advertising behemoth. Did any of their moonshots really hit the mark or even come close?

Depends how you define things but their work with Deepmind ('Our long term aim is to solve intelligence') is interesting. I'm glad we get breakthroughs in protein folding rather than just ads.

They bought Deepmind though, they didn’t dream it up as a moonshot. Plus you can argue that keeping the talent at Deepmind accessible to Googlers contributes to the development of Google’s internal models, which does mostly contribute to their bottom line.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#104

Post by enos_feedler »

wp381640 wrote: post #84
hooande wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this could be considered a noble effort, I wish Alphabet would have tried harder. Google has enormous resources and talent. It seems like they dedicated relatively little to aggressively making Loon happen. When the US took a moon shot, we actually made it to the dann moon. It was very expensive and risky and lives were lost. But we committed ourselves and accomplished the goal no matter what it took. I hope th…

Since Ruth Porat came in they've really trimmed any expenditure that doesn't add straight to the bottom line It's really hard to be a public company and to take big risks like this. The Apollo Program never would have worked as a startup or public company. I personally had hoped they told analysts that taking large bets for often no financial outcome is just who Alphabet are - but they folded to the Wall St pressure

They do often tell analysts this. I have heard Ruth say countless times that they invest for the long term. This usually buys lots of time but ultimately it does need to show financial outcome. It would be strange to not expect this.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#105

Post by nickff »

wp381640 wrote: post #84
hooande wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this could be considered a noble effort, I wish Alphabet would have tried harder. Google has enormous resources and talent. It seems like they dedicated relatively little to aggressively making Loon happen. When the US took a moon shot, we actually made it to the dann moon. It was very expensive and risky and lives were lost. But we committed ourselves and accomplished the goal no matter what it took. I hope th…

Since Ruth Porat came in they've really trimmed any expenditure that doesn't add straight to the bottom line It's really hard to be a public company and to take big risks like this. The Apollo Program never would have worked as a startup or public company. I personally had hoped they told analysts that taking large bets for often no financial outcome is just who Alphabet are - but they folded to the Wall St pressure

I am a staunch supporter of the space program, but... the Apollo program also got cut before it had achieved its objectives, and probably never would have made it to the moon at all if Kennedy had lived.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#106

Post by activatedgeek »

mjfl wrote: post #69
activatedgeek wrote: post #24

This is quite a surprise. Only recently, Loon collaborated with seasoned reinforcement learning researchers to build more efficient navigation controllers for the balloons, titled "Autonomous navigation of stratospheric balloons using reinforcement learning" [1]. Although, it would appear that much of the gains come from a simulator that they've been developing for a while. [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586…

You need a business though. And that doesn't move the needle.

Of course. My point was that it appeared like they were actively working on developing new technologies. Usually, a project that is expected to shut down would mostly lose momentum months before. Although, it is possible that this work was done months ago and only came out now due to the slower Nature review cycles.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#107

Post by gonehome »

scotcha1 wrote: post #59
gonehome wrote: post #3

I’m going to say I called this one at least 8 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23419270 Loon is not competitive in a world with Starlink (even without Starlink it seems). The business didn’t make strategic sense. I still really liked their original goal of loon for all and the first video they made for it: https://youtu.be/m96tYpEk1Ao It’s a little sad they had to downsize and give up. I guess Licklid…

Wouldn't this be considered 'strategic' to Google b/c it had the potential to provide additional eyeballs & ad revenue to users outside of their normal markets (US/EU)?

The general idea of a global telecom is a good one.

The strategic failure was not recognizing that starlink’s approach to the problem made way more sense.

They didn’t see that as the existential threat it was.

Instead they downsized their implementation to running the network over poor countries and hand waved a bit about being able to provide connectivity in congested areas.

Loon has no viable future in a world with starlink.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#108

Post by walrus01 »

stickfigure wrote: post #57
swirepe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We put a man on the moon though? I thought a moonshot was hard but doable.

The internet says: "The Apollo program's total cost was about $25.4 billion, about $152 billion in today's dollars." That's about Google's entire revenue for 2020. I don't think even Google could put a man on the moon at those rates. Literal moonshots are expensive.

At the peak of Apollo program spending in 1966, Dreier says, NASA accounted for roughly 4.4% of the federal budget — 6.6% of discretionary spending — more than the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/apollo-11-moon-landing-how-much...

as a percentage of the yearly federal budget, it's not that extreme.

I believe the DoD budget (entirely non-NASA) is presently running around 700 billion a year.

some very quick searching tells me the total federal budget is something like 3500 billion a year. 4.4% of that would be 154bn a year.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#109

Post by gkoberger »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #96
ehsankia wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have at least a dozen services that have over a billion users. Others not mentioned in your list: Youtube, Photos, Drive, Maps, Gmail, Docs. And probably slightly more trivial ones like translate, calendar, flights, news, finance, and other stuff that are kinda part of search. Their hardware/home line isn't doing that bad either.

Are any of those innovations? It seems to me they are all boring, obvious, copied, or purchased products that complement their ad selling business.

I mean, maybe after 15 years they seem status quo. But almost all of these were revolutionary at the time... do you remember videos before Youtube, collaboration before Docs, email before Gmail or maps before Maps?

Yes, Google makes money off ads. But how does that discount them being innovations (which, btw, is a qualification you came up with... nobody above you even said they were).

Re: Loon’s final flight

#110

Post by enos_feedler »

enos_feedler wrote: post #104
wp381640 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Ruth Porat came in they've really trimmed any expenditure that doesn't add straight to the bottom line It's really hard to be a public company and to take big risks like this. The Apollo Program never would have worked as a startup or public company. I personally had hoped they told analysts that taking large bets for often no financial outcome is just who Alphabet are - but they folded to the Wall St pressure

They do often tell analysts this. I have heard Ruth say countless times that they invest for the long term. This usually buys lots of time but ultimately it does need to show financial outcome. It would be strange to not expect this.

I googled “ruth invest for long term” and sure enough here is a video:

https://youtu.be/UYoSyLqv9rM

She does say this quite a bit!

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