Loons are cute toys that got 100x the deserved media attention vs their actual impact. Actual remote internet connectivity is mostly being addressed through the grungy, mind-numbingly routine job of increasing the coverage of terrestrial networks. The folks doing that unrewarding work should get recognition for actually making a difference in people's lives over the long run.
Loon’s final flight
81–90 of 264 posts
Re: Loon’s final flight
#82Hey, 9 years is a pretty good run for any product, especially a ambitious one with no clear revenue model. And the shuttering is paired with a $10M donation to continue the support of the mission. I know Google gets hate for shutting things down, but they have hundreds of products – I can't think of any other tech company with such a wide range of products. They make bets, and with bets comes a certain amount of fail…
Does google have anything successful outside of: search, adsense, chrome, chromebooks, and android? Those are all large accomplishments to be sure, but it seems like they should have more products out there that people actually buy.
Travel, waze, voice, snapseed, meets/hangouts, chromecast is pretty popular too. And all the other stuff people mentioned.
Re: Loon’s final flight
#83It's surreal to think that a decade ago even corps like Google could get away with using ableist language for their projects.
Re: Loon’s final flight
#84People 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…
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
Re: Loon’s final flight
#85Well if you want to attempt something big without having to work with company's like Google then Elon Musk made an interesting offer today. Musk is offering $100 million to the team providing the best carbon capture technology. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-musk-carbon-capture/e...
Judged by the person who thinks putting cars in tunnels is the solution to urban transit? No thanks. Your average third grader is a more qualified engineer than Elon Musk.
He does better rockets than most third graders.
Re: Loon’s final flight
#86Earlier 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?
_The_ moonshot, Waymo. People are sleeping on that you can hop in a perfectly safe robotaxi today, the ride along videos are stunning.
I don’t understand people saying full self driving is decades away. We have it always albeit in a very restricted geo fence.
Re: Loon’s final flight
#87Earlier 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.
> The internet says: "The Apollo program's total cost was about $25.4 billion, about $152 billion in today's dollars."
And SpaceX will soon have the capability to do it with zillion times less. Seems like if you really want to make it possible, you can.
Re: Loon’s final flight
#88The successor, Project Taara, seems quite impressive (and more sustainable): https://x.company/projects/taara/
Re: Loon’s final flight
#89Talking about X more generally, their Gimbal book is interesting: https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/Gimb... I think their self-driving cars project is probably what X could be at its peak, incredibly challenging projects, high profit potential, well financed. Projects like loon seem more like a project that a university would get grant funding to finance.
Think about the many hard problems to be solved. They had cost-effective high-endurance stratospheric balloons - decades of military projects never really got there. They had very detailed stratospheric wind models - decades of atmospheric science research never really got there. They had a flying LTE network. Each of these solutions was almost certainly too expensive and “niche” for any conventional funding agency to consider, but necessary for Loon to work.
Re: Loon’s final flight
#90Starlink made this obsolete before it launched
While SpaceX is in the news, there’s also the Amazon LEO initiative: Project Kuiper. They’ve received FCC approval and have access to Blue Origin rockets to launch.