Satellites or Balloons?
January 19, 2015
I enjoy conversations about how innovative Google is. Prior to 2006, I was on the Google is the leader bandwagon. Now it may be time to shift from the GOOG to the Musk.
I read “Elon Musk touts launch of ‘SpaceX Seattle’.” Tucked in the encomium to Mr. Musk was this passage:
As guests drank beer and wine and sipped Champagne from glasses etched with the SpaceX logo, Musk outlined an audacious plan to build a constellation of some 4,000 geosynchronous satellites, a network in space that could deliver high-speed Internet access anywhere on Earth. Those satellites are to be designed by software and aerospace engineers in SpaceX’s new engineering office in Redmond.
Now satellite communications is not new. Anyone remember Equatorial Communications? History lesson aside, Google wants to deliver the Internet via balloons which rhymes with loons.
According to eBalloon.org, the first hot air balloon was launched in 1783. Satellites came along when I was in grade school.
It seems that Google is not thinking on the Musk scale. Wasn’t X Labs supposed to do moon shots. Mr. Musk now does transportation and digital thingies.
In terms of search, I question whether Google’s innovations in search as described by “How Google Tries To Figure Out Our Hidden Needs” improves relevance or tweaks the PT Barnum formula for revenue.
Stephen E Arnold, January 19, 2015
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