Project Loon -- Success story

WiFi everywhere (sometime in the future)

[tangor]

With a name like Project Loon, you would expect Google's scheme to be a bit bonkers. But the Chocolate Factory's madcap plan to bring internet connectivity to remote areas using balloons to have paid off after one of the devices circumnavigated the globe in just 22 days.

Project Loon is the name for Mountain View's drive to use balloons to provide Wi-Fi coverage in the furthest flung corners of nowhere.

In a post on their Google+ page, the Project Loon team wrote: "One of our balloons has had quite a journey over the past few weeks. It did a lap around the world in 22 days, and has just clocked the project’s 500,000th kilometre as it begins its second lap.

[theregister.co.uk...]

Elsewhere (other reports) France is looking at stationary solar powered dirigibles to do much the same thing, but from the edge of the stratosphere. Which tech will win out?

[creeking]

the one that uses less energy will win.

Loon could work if people are willing to accept less than 99% availability. the people with no internet access might be happy to have it 8 hours a day.

it will take international cooperation because a commercial balloon with electronics (spying!) will be moving over many countries