Alphabet pulls the plug on internet balloon project Loon

Google’s parent company Alphabet is ending Project Loon, the company that offers 4G internet via balloons. The costs for the project have turned out to be too high to be profitable. Employees are placed with other Alphabet companies.

Project Loon stops because the company and parent company Alphabet see no way to make Project Loon commercially profitable. This can be read in a blog post by Astro Teller, who is responsible for Project Loon at Alphabet. “The road to commercial feasibility is proving more difficult and risky than we had hoped. That is why we have made the difficult decision to stop Loon,” he writes.

Project Loon was started in 2013, as part of Alphabet. In 2018 it became a full-fledged company within Alphabet. It developed balloons strong enough to survive in the stratosphere at an altitude of 20 kilometers, with solar panels to power them and an LTE antenna. The balloons provide internet via 4G in places where hardly any other internet can be delivered, such as in the hinterland of New Zealand and during natural disasters in Puerto Rico and Peru.

Loon . launch pad

A ground station makes a 4G connection with an overhanging balloon that hangs at a height of 20 kilometers. It then passes the signal on to the next balloon, and then again to the next. In this way, a large area can be provided with internet from one ground station via a network of floating transmission towers. Not only does that require balloons that are strong enough to survive in the stratosphere, but those balloons must then also be navigated in the stratosphere. Loon developed its own navigation system for this. It also developed a special launch pad for Loon.

Last summer, Loon launched the first commercial trial in rural Kenya together with local provider Telkom Kenya. That project was delayed due to the corona pandemic and because the Kenyan government only gave permission for the project in March. Astro Teller promises in the blog post that the project in Kenya will be closed carefully and safely. A small team of employees stays on to bring this to a successful conclusion. Most of the other employees will be transferred to other companies of Alphabet, start-up platform X and Google.

Loon and X also pledge to invest $10 million in non-profits and businesses that promote internet connectivity, entrepreneurship and education in Kenya. Some of the technology is being reused by another X company, Project Taara, Teller writes in his blog. That project should provide fast internet to poor communities in Kenya.