Alphabet to end ‘Loon’ Internet Balloon Project

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.