After eight years of experimentation, the helium balloons from Google's Project Loon are going to be stored in the garage.
"
The road to commercial profitability has turned out to be longer and riskier than we expected,
" Eric "
Astro
" Teller, head of X, Google's research and development division
, explains in a blog post.
the long term.
It finances expensive bets on the future that could pay off big in the future.
But it is also led to put an end to research which will not be profitable.
Unveiled in 2013, Projet Loom's mission was to connect remote areas or areas victims of natural disasters to the Internet.
For that, Google wanted to make fly in the stratosphere huge balloons inflated with helium, the size of a tennis court.
These balloons, powered by solar energy, had an autonomy of five months.
A commercial offer in Kenya
Project Loom balloons were deployed after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, and after an earthquake in Peru in 2019. These were tests in real conditions in areas that had temporarily lost their mobile and fixed Internet connections.
It was not until summer 2019 before Loon offered its first commercial offer.
In conjunction with Telkom Kenya, the company launched 35 balloons into the air to cover an area of 50,000m² in 4G.
The choice of country has been contested: 39 of the 48 million Kenyans already have an Internet connection.
Read also: A Google Internet access balloon fails in a remote area in the DRC
This commercial offer will end with the closure of Loon.
"
A small group of employees will take care of the management of the end of our operations, and ensure that it is done in a safe and efficient manner,
" says Astro Teller.
The other employees of Loon should be reclassified within the Google group.