Google Project Loon: The Plus And Minus Sides

The Promise and Peril of Universal Internet

Google’s audacious plan to provide “balloon-powered Internet for everyone” is gathering momentum. But can the tech giant be trusted?

Dominic Tierney | December 10, 2015

Two centuries later, in 2013, the tech giant Google launched its own balloons laden with knowledge. The idea is to build a fleet of thousands of high-altitude balloons to deliver Internet service in remote areas of the Earth. It’s a crazy undertaking, hence the name “Project Loon” is appropriate. The founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have long shared [the poet Percy Bysshe] Shelley’s fascination with balloons, although the tech maestros’ ambitions rise much higher. “What if there was a way to light up the entire globe?” asks Google in a promotional video for the project. “And finally make all of the world’s information accessible to all of the world’s people?”

Source: https://www.google.com/loon/how/

<more at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/12/google-loon-global-internet/419934/; related links: https://www.google.com/loon/ ("Loon for All". Balloon-Powered Internet for Everyone) and https://www.google.com/loon/how/ (How Loon Flies)>