Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has said goodbye to another long-term experimental bet – this time, it’s Loon, the giant balloons that the company hopes to transmit to the Internet in rural areas of the world.
“Although we have found a number of willing partners along the way, we have not found a way to get costs low enough to build a long-term sustainable business,” Loon CEO Alastair Westgarth said in a post on Thursday. on the blog on Thursday. “Developing a radical new technology is inherently risky, but that doesn’t make it easier to reveal this news. Today, I’m sad to share that Loon is over.”
The cancellation comes after the company closed another experimental business called Makani, which supplies wind power from giant kites in 2020. Both projects came out of Alphabet’s “X” business unit, which hatches long-term experimental projects and was accounted for in Alphabet’s “Other Bets”, separate from Google, which offers almost all of Alphabet’s revenue and all of its profits.
In its third-quarter earnings report, Alphabet said Other Betting generated revenue of $ 178 million compared to $ 155 million a year ago. Meanwhile, companies reported an operating loss of $ 1.10 billion, up from $ 941 million a year ago. In return, Google earned $ 12.6 billion in operating revenue and $ 46 billion in revenue.
Loon has been hit by financial problems recently, according to a November report by The Information. The report noted that the main goal of the Loon Directors for 2020 was to secure a second round of foreign investment.
“The arc of innovation is long and unpredictable,” Westgarth continued in his farewell post. “While this is not the result I envisioned for Loon when I joined four years ago, I continue to be extremely proud of the achievements of the entire Loon team and I hope that our efforts will continue to live in ways we have not yet. we can imagine them. . “
In a separate blog post, Astro Teller, X’s CEO and chairman of Loon’s board of directors, said Loon will pledge $ 10 million to “support nonprofits and connectivity, the Internet, entrepreneurship and education companies.” in Kenya ”.
“Unfortunately, despite the team’s groundbreaking technical achievements over the past 9 years, the road to commercial viability has proven to be much longer and riskier than expected,” Teller added.
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