Loon’s final flight • Hacker News Board

Re: Loon’s final flight

#261

Post by rasz » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

supermatt wrote: post #240

rasz wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If, however, this news came with a grant of all the patents into the public domain They dont own any patents, they stole the tech from a startup, got sued, lost (patents) and finally had to settle. https://www.wired.com/story/the-lawsuit-that-could-pop-alpha... https://www.law.com/therecorder/2019/07/29/google-settles-ip...

They have about 100 listed here: https://loon.com/legal/patents/

Those are ancillary. This is what happened to the important ones https://9to5google.com/2017/07/10/project-loon-patents/

Re: Loon’s final flight

#262

Post by knorker » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 8:16 PM UTC

jimhi wrote: post #249

knorker wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what the poster meant. It wasn't counting rockets, but the fact that the cost was spread out over multiple years. Yes, if it were possible to go from zero to moon in one year then that would be all of Google revenue. But spread over 10 years that's just 10% per year.

The parent comment's point is that the money spent on the space program was likely very highly weighted to the first years building that first rocket. So dividing by 10 because it was roughly a decade is probably underestimating the budget needed to get to the moon.

Yes, but even pessimistically Google could send one rocket to the moon in 10 years with only 10% revenue.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#263

Post by Tepix » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 9:53 AM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #213

shpx wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a 12 inch medium pizza, without the box. An antenna of that size can't be carried by normal people going about their daily lives. More people are willing to buy a phone and a phone plan (Facebook was even willing to subsidize the plan in India with Internet.org) than buying a phone, a phone plan, an antenna and a StarLink plan. That's even more true for people who aren't internet users yet.

> That's a 12 inch medium pizza I don’t know what kind of barbaric society you hail from, but here in civilization 12” is a small pizza. ;-)

The dishy is almost 24 inches, he is wrong.

That's quite a bit bigger than even a large pizza.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#264

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 3:00 PM UTC

ogre_codes wrote: post #25

Mistri wrote: post #4

People often make fun of Google/Alphabet for their graveyard of failed initiatives/products. While some of it might be warranted, projects like this—that strive to solve a large, global issue through somewhat charitable actions—are generous and have only increased my respect for the Google/Alphabet/X team. I hope they don't get flamed for this, and hopefully some of their research and donation funds can live on and s…

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?

[deleted]