Google’s broadband balloon laser comms tech floated out as independent company

Google’s attempt to provide remote area connectivity with balloons has been floated out as an independent company, a rare success for the company’s attempt to develop breakthrough technologies.

The attempt to beam broadband from balloons was called “Loon” and started life in the group once known as “Google X”. After Alphabet became Google’s parent entity it kept the lab alive, renamed it “X” – no relation to Elon Musk’s ventures of the same name – and described it as a “Moonshot factory” that worked “to help solve some the world’s hardest problems.”

Loon tried to solve the problem of connecting remote parts of the world to the internet by flying enormous ballons that floated at 65,000 feet and carried LTE radios to provide data services on the ground. The balloons connected to each other with an optical network that used lasers to carry data through the air using spectrum that lies between infrared and visible light.

Alphabet grounded Loon in 2021 after commercialization efforts sank.

The Moonshot factory, however, kept the laser tech alive and developed it into a product called “Taara Lightbridge” that could transmit data at speeds of up to 20 gigabits per second over distances of up to 20 kilometers. The product was pitched as an alternative to laying optic fiber in remote and rugged areas, or as a simpler and cheaper way to extend connectivity across water.

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Telecommunications carriers liked the tech, which has been deployed by the likes of Airtel and Liberty Networks.

Taara also shrank the Lightbridge into a silicon photonic chip that creates the potential for future development of very small wireless optical networking devices. On Monday, X announced Taara had “graduated” from the Moonshot factory to become an independent company, after winning funding from an outfit named Series X Capital.

The Moonshot Factory’s most visible graduate is self-driving taxi biz Waymo. Other graduates – like the AIDA coding assistant - have been absorbed in to Google. Some are operating quietly without achieving enormous success or scale, such as the drone delivery operation Wing which hasn’t really taken off. ®