Google Loon explained: The biggest tech shutdown of 2021

Google shut down one of its craziest, yet entirely feasible projects in 2021: Google Loon. It involved giant self-navigating helium balloons floating across the sky, carrying Wi-Fi routers inside styrofoam beer coolers! And no matter how absurd it sounds, the project was not dropped because it was impossible, but because there were navigation issues. This was by far the biggest and strangest tech shutdown news last year, so let’s go deeper into it.  

How and why did Project Loon start?  
In 2011, Google X (later named X Development) began working unofficially on a project with a series of trial runs in California. The aim was to bring 3G internet to some of the world's most underserved and geographically remote communities. In 2013, Google named and launched Project Loon officially. Since the project involved balloons and sounded a little mad, even to its founders, they called it ‘loon’, another word for mad.  

How did Google’s Project Loon work?  
Gigantic helium balloons, massive versions of the humble gas balloon kids buy from vendors on the road would float out from the Google station, carrying mobile Wi-Fi routers, bringing internet access to inaccessible regions lacking in even semi-rural infrastructure. It could also serve areas that were suffering internet downtime after a natural disaster, a scenario with which most of us are familiar. While the test runs had proved it was possible, there were also a lot of challenges and complexities involved. 

What were the problems that forced Google to stop Project Loon?  
These are the problems that Google cited for stopping the ambitious project:  

• The balloons were controlled by humans, but still subject to very high winds, that cannot be controlled at that altitude  
• Trying to keep the balloons in one place and distributing internet all around it from there proved expensive and complicated. So the balloons were allowed to drift, like floating internet towers. Their path was controlled using wind and solar power. While moving them up and down was possible, moving them across the sky proved too tough 
• While the idea was a scientific marvel, it failed to translate into long-term, sustainable business model. 

Though Google has officially stopped the project, their team is still researching on aspects of the project.