A Loon Survivor: Facebook Lands Its Satellites
June 9, 2015
I know the quest to create a walled garden stimulates would-be AOLs thinking. I read “Facebook Has Scrapped Its Secret Plan to Build a $500 Million Satellite to Provide Cheap Internet in the Developing World.” It does appear to the addled goose that a person with some math sense calculated that operating Facebook satellites would be expensive. Facebook seems to be focusing its efforts on what the article called “ridiculously large drones.”
For me, maybe Google and its Loon balloons are a better deal. There is the problem of control, of course. Balloons drift, a fact which is evident at Kentucky Derby time when errant balloons come down in places not designed to accommodate large bags charged with hot air from open flames. I would be happier if some of this effort went into better information access, relevance, an useful information delivered to users looking for data.
Yahoo and AOL never had an opportunity to do the boom boom thing. What happens if a Facebook drone collides with a Loon balloon? Could a Jeff Bezos rocket take out both a drone and a Loon balloon? Who needs international dust ups. Corporations have to defend their turf, right?
Stephen E Arnold, June 9, 2015
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