Imagine you are a project leader at Google and are tasked to figure out how to provide internet access to some of the world's most remote and secluded communities. There is close to no infrastructure, and you have tight budget constraints. What would you do?

Now, we might not be as creative as you, but launching giant self-navigating helium balloons in the sky carrying Wi-Fi routers inside styrofoam beer coolers would probably not be your first guess, if at all. But, as funny as the idea sounds, it had the support of Google founders.

Project Loon: Internet From a Balloon

Loon-team-launching-balloon
Image Credit: X

Back in 2011, Alphabet subsidiary Google X (now X Development) began working on an unofficial project with a series of trial runs in California. The project was supposed to be the solution to bringing 3G internet to some of the world's most underserved and isolated communities.

Related: What Is 6G and How Does It Compare With 5G?

In 2013, Google officially unveiled this project and named it Project Loon. "We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below," said Project Loon's Project Leader, Mike Cassidy.

Loon-ballon-floating
Image Credit: X

"As a result, we hope balloons could become an option for connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters. The idea may sound a bit crazy—and that's part of the reason we're calling it Project Loon—but there's solid science behind it."

Simply put, the mission here was to use balloons to carry mobile Wi-Fi routers floating in the stratosphere to bring internet access to inaccessible regions with little to no existing infrastructure. No doubt, it was an ambitious project—one that had just as many challenges and complexities as it had potential.

The Problem With Project Loon

Loon-wifi-router
Image Credit: X

Cassidy and his team were trying to deliver 3G internet access to fixed areas on the ground via a high-altitude platform. But doing that invites a lot of trouble. For one, a platform like that is subject to the powerful winds of its altitude. Second, trying to keep it in one place is highly complex and expensive.

Related: 5G? 5G+? How to Tell Which Version of 5G Your Phone Is Connected To

Given this problem, Cassidy and his team came up with a quirky solution. Instead of trying to stay in one place, they ideated releasing the balloons to float freely in the air while controlling their path through the sky using wind and solar power. They could move the balloons up or down to catch the winds they want them to travel in.

Loon-in-stratosphere
Image Credit: X

This way, the balloons could fly at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes and beam down internet access to the communities below. You can think of it as having several cell towers floating around in the sky in your city and just connecting to the nearest one as they come and go like clouds.

But as effective as that solution was, it had its flaws. "That solution then led us to a new problem: how to manage a fleet of balloons sailing around the world so that each balloon is in the area you want it right when you need it. We're solving this with some complex algorithms and lots of computing power," Cassidy added.

So, What Went Wrong?

Loon-balloons-deflated
Image Credit: X

It's one thing to have a great idea with immense potential and a whole other thing to turn it into a long-term and sustainable business model. Unfortunately for Loon LLC, its business model was not simply viable. Despite the support of several partners and investors, the company had to be defunct in January 2021.

"Sadly, despite the team's groundbreaking technical achievements over the last nine years […] the road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than hoped," wrote X Development director Astro Teller in a Medium article.

"We talk a lot about connecting the next billion users, but the reality is Loon has been chasing the hardest problem of all in connectivity — the last billion users," commented Loon chief executive Alastair Westgarth. "The communities in areas too difficult or remote to reach, or the areas where delivering service with existing technologies is just too expensive for everyday people."

Loon Was Worth the Moonshot

Loon-balloon-testing
Image Credit: X

All of Google's crazy "moonshot" ideas are a part of X Development. Project Loon started as one such crazy idea and later became a separate Alphabet subsidiary in 2018, "graduating" from being an X Development project.

And despite its failures and numerous crash-landed balloons, Loon managed to achieve some noteworthy milestones and paint the path forward to similar future ventures. For instance, in February 2016, Google reported achieving a stable connection for many hours between two distant balloons stretching over 62 miles (100 km), peaking at 155Mbps.

Loon-balloon-launcher
Image Credit: X

In 2019, one year after becoming an Alphabet subsidiary, Loon partnered with Japanese multinational conglomerate SoftBank and received funding to advance operations. The same year, it achieved a milestone of one million hours of stratospheric flight between its balloon fleet.

In October 2020, a Loon balloon sustained a record-duration flight of 312 days. In 2021, amidst the company's liquidation, Astro Teller announced that Loon is pledging a fund of $10 million to support Kenyan nonprofits and businesses working on connectivity, internet, entrepreneurship, and education.

Project Loon Failed, But Valuable Lessons Were Learned

Loon-team
Image Credit: X

There is a lot to be learned from failed projects such as Loon. For one, the often overlooked difference between potential and actualization. While the idea of Loon was welcomed with open arms by investors, partners, and internal engineers, its execution was less than ideal for a long-term and sustainable business.

Secondly, regardless of its failure, technologies and developments made by Loon will continue to be used by X Development for other moonshot projects, including Project Taara. All the valuable data that Loon managed to collect throughout its operation will be used to advance other projects.

Related: The Biggest Reveals From Google I/O Keynote 2021

As Teller reported, a small group of the Loon team will make sure that Loon's operations are winded up smoothly and safely, including Loon's pilot service in Kenya. The rest, including the engineers, research analysts, and other employees who worked on Loon, were given alternative roles at Google, X Development, and Alphabet.