Loon Balloon: Ups and Downs
June 1, 2015
I think the idea of a search vendor creating balloons to extend Internet access is a swell idea. I would prefer a bit more effort on relevance, precision, and recall, but balloons are good. Two items snagged my semi buoyant attention while catching up on my reading yesterday.
The first concerns an alleged Loon dégonfle as reported in “Google’s Solar-Powered Internet Drone Crashes During Test Flight.” The write up states:
Google has confirmed that a prototype solar-powered drone intended to one day provide Internet access from way up in the sky crashed earlier this month during a test flight in New Mexico. The unmanned Solara 50 built by Titan Aerospace, the company Google bought last year, crashed on May 1 shortly after takeoff at a test field east of Albuquerque. The incident was first reported by Bloomberg and confirmed Friday by Google.
Google i/o was history when I first noticed the story.
The second Loon item I noted was “Google Details New Project Loon Tech to Keep Its Internet Balloons Afloat.” The article highlights two improvements in the Loon balloons:
First, balloons will be autolaunched. Coming down, at this time, may be automatic.
Second, Google engineers “have devised a way to pass high-frequency Internet signals from balloon to balloon in midair, which allows individual balloons to roam 400 kilometers to 800 kilometers away from a ground station.”
Yep, balloons, as I recall from my callow youth, drift.
I highlighted this passage, which does not suggest relevance will be improved with the launch of balloons:
By the end of the year, Cassidy [a Google wizard] hopes to be able to provide a few days of continuous service in its tests. So far during trials in Australia, Chile, New Zealand, Brazil, and other countries, Google has succeeded only in providing intermittent access before the wind carries a balloon off. If it can overcome the remaining challenges, Cassidy is hoping to roll out the service more widely by the end of 2016 and is looking at underserved Internet markets such as Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia as the best places to start.
No mention of improved search results, however.
Stephen E Arnold, June 1, 2015
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