Google Loon Balloons: Still Aloft
February 23, 2017
I enjoy thinking about Google’s Loon balloons. Others are fascinated as well. For instance, the renowned journalistic outfit CBS News showed a happy face. Navigate to “Can Google’s Internet Beaming Balloons Beat the Wind?” The answer, I thought, is obvious, “Darn right.” The write up told me:
Engineers involved in the eccentric project, a part of the X Lab owned by Google’s corporate parent Alphabet Inc., say they have come up with algorithms that enable the high-flying balloons to do a better job anticipating shifting wind conditions so they hover above masses of land for several months instead of orbiting the earth.
The idea is that instead of being blown like a US government balloon from the DC area to Pennsylvania, the Loon balloon would circle an area. Smart software does the trick. The technology allows the Google to deploy fewer balloons to provide Internet access (and ads) to those parts of the world where water, not online connectivity, is a big deal.
The write up points out:
The Alphabet subsidiaries operating outside Google, a hodgepodge of far-flung projects, have lost a combined $7.1 billion during the past two years. In an acknowledgement of their lofty goals and risky nature, Alphabet CEO Larry Page calls them “moonshots.”
I noted that moon rhymes with loon.
The relative of Dr. Edward Teller allegedly said that the new approach plays “a game of chess with the wind.”
Anyone remember that old TV commercial, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature”? With some interesting weather manifesting itself here in good old rural Kentucky and near the Oroville Dam, Google believes it will look that Mother Nature in the eye and say, “Checkmate.” Weather is not match for the Googlers.
Oh, one question: What does Google do if those now enabled with Google Loon balloons spend most of their time on Facebook? Can Google knock out the Zuck?
Stephen E Arnold, February 23. 2017
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
