Google’s Project Loon fills internet gaps with solar-powered balloons
Mobile data might seem near-ubiquitous, but the world still has major dead zones and huge expanses with poor coverage. Anyone that has fervently and consistently checked the availability of Verizon’s FiOS in their neighborhood knows this all too well, but that still places you on the well-connected side of the spectrum — there are parts of the world where Time Warner and Comcast (let alone FiOS or Google Fiber) would be a huge advance. Over the weekend, Google launched Project Loon, an initiative to help fill in those internet gaps through the use of networked balloons. The goal is to provide broadband-like internet for the two-thirds of the world that doesn’t have access to a reliable internet connection. To do this, Google is using a network of actual high-altitude balloons — this isn’t some kind of metaphor — that fly in the sky above the Earth. The launch of the project consisted of launching 30 balloons, each of which are capable of providing internet access with speeds comp