Project Loon
Project Loon was an Alphabet effort (2011-2021) to deliver internet from stratospheric helium balloons that steered by changing altitude to catch different wind layers. It worked technically — one balloon flew 312 days — but was shut down because it could not become commercially viable.
Project Loon (operated by Loon LLC, an Alphabet subsidiary, 2011-2021) aimed to bring internet to remote and rural areas using high-altitude balloons. The superpressure balloons, filled with helium and built by Raven Aerostar, flew at 18-25 km in the stratosphere. Lacking propulsion, they performed station-keeping by adjusting their altitude to ride a wind layer blowing in the desired direction — the same layered-wind principle other stratospheric balloon programs use. The service began by delivering around 1 Mbit/s and later moved to LTE. The first user connection went to a farmer in New Zealand in June 2013; a 2016 test achieved a 155 Mbit/s free-space laser link over 100 km between two balloons. Major deployments included a 30-balloon launch in New Zealand (2013), emergency LTE over Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria (2017), and a commercial agreement in Kenya (2019). One balloon (HBAL703) flew 312 days, and the fleet passed one million stratospheric flight hours in 2019. Alphabet announced Loon's shutdown in January 2021. The stated reason was that, despite the technical achievements, commercial viability proved far longer and riskier than hoped — internet availability in target regions had already climbed and the remaining unconnected people largely could not afford 4G devices. Its optical-link technology lived on in Project Taara, which provides high-speed wireless internet across parts of Africa, including a link across the Congo River between Brazzaville and Kinshasa.