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Loon’s final flight

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Re: Loon’s final flight

#51

Post by kippinitreal »

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…

The difference is that Bell scientists were always focused on core business problems and not just chasing fantasies. OK sure, Shannon was doing whatever with mice and unicycles...but he earned it! All of Bells big accomplishments were tightly coupled to business needs: Information theory => everything, transistors => bad vacuums, fiber optics => latency.

Similarly Google has had huge contributions on "research" focused on their core problems: MapReduce, BigTable, Borg, BERT, etc.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#52

Post by catchmeifyoucan »

Loon always caught my eye, and I thought the reason it would catch on is due to cost. Isn’t launching a satellite much more expensive than a balloon?

For example, providing Loon antennas to a telecom provider, and decreasing the infrastructure cost of setting up networks.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#53

Post by selimthegrim »

sdenton4 wrote: post #17
deanCommie wrote: post #8

>...the road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than hoped. So we’ve made the difficult decision to close down Loon. I don't really understand - wasn't the whole premise of Google X and their "Other Bets" that "Google has deep pockets. Let's use this to explore radically big ideas, that are ahead of their time, and let the world catch up to them?" Bringing "abundant, affordable Internet access…

Well, look what happened in India: Jio sank $N billion dollars on building out 4G everywhere, and a billion or so people got much better internet access. The answer is clear: we can get there by laying more of the kind of infrastructure we already have in the developed world, and it's just a matter of getting the will to put it in place.

Surprised they're not demanding the government refund them for their idle equipment in Jammu-Kashmir

Re: Loon’s final flight

#54

Post by perryizgr8 »

sdenton4 wrote: post #17
deanCommie wrote: post #8

>...the road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than hoped. So we’ve made the difficult decision to close down Loon. I don't really understand - wasn't the whole premise of Google X and their "Other Bets" that "Google has deep pockets. Let's use this to explore radically big ideas, that are ahead of their time, and let the world catch up to them?" Bringing "abundant, affordable Internet access…

Well, look what happened in India: Jio sank $N billion dollars on building out 4G everywhere, and a billion or so people got much better internet access. The answer is clear: we can get there by laying more of the kind of infrastructure we already have in the developed world, and it's just a matter of getting the will to put it in place.

I was curious how much Jio spent on creating their network and the answer seems to be approximately ₹1T or $14B.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#55

Post by tobinfricke »

creeble wrote: post #40
deanCommie wrote: post #8

>...the road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than hoped. So we’ve made the difficult decision to close down Loon. I don't really understand - wasn't the whole premise of Google X and their "Other Bets" that "Google has deep pockets. Let's use this to explore radically big ideas, that are ahead of their time, and let the world catch up to them?" Bringing "abundant, affordable Internet access…

I believe gravity is what happened, in the particular case of Loon. I never understood it. It is expensive to keep things fighting gravity. The only way to avoid that is to either a) not put them up above the earth, or b) put them high enough that gravity isn't much of a force, like low earth orbit. It doesn't take a genius to understand that, but it took Elon Musk to prove it. Meanwhile... Google launched balloons.…

Gravity in low earth orbit is pretty much the same as it is at the surface.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#56

Post by treelovinhippie »

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…

So they extracted the PR value just long enough for people to think of them as "charitable", and then they bailed.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#57

Post by stickfigure »

swirepe wrote: post #45
Aperocky wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what moonshots are though, there is a high statistical possibility that 0/100 makes it.

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.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#58

Post by pjot »

This summer I had the luck of actually seeing a Loon balloon floating way up in the sky. Viewing it with a telescope was surreal, especially at night, you could see it blink!

Re: Loon’s final flight

#59

Post by scotcha1 »

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)?

Re: Loon’s final flight

#60

Post by [deleted] »

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]
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