Alphabet, the parent company of Google has announced that the project Loon is being shut down. This comes even after the company regarded it as a successful project.
Key Points
- Project Loon is a project that is aimed at providing internet connectivity to remote areas through Helium Balloons in the stratosphere.
- Project Loon was born out of Google X which the moonshot factory of Alphabet for experimental projects and has also developed various projects like delivery drones, driverless cars.
- The reason behind closing project Loon is that the model was not able to bring the costs down to continue the operation.
- Because of this reason, the company has decided to close the project.
- Project Loon was launched in the year 2011 as a part of Google X and later became a separate company in 2018.
- The main aim of the project was to connect to rural parts of the world that do not have proper infrastructure for the internet.
- Loon had begun commercial deployment and deployed 35 solar-powered balloons in Kenya in July 2020. But, now the company will be closed.
Helium Balloon stayed for around 1 year in air
In December 2020, a new record was set by a helium balloon under the project Loon. The balloon stayed for 312 days in the air. It approximately covered a distance of 2.1 lakh kilometers.
