Google is taking its business into the air. The tech giant has announced its plans to test a network of stratosphere-wandering balloons made to provide internet access to the human population who still can't log on to the web.
Google is releasing 30 hi-tech balloons in a trial of technology designed to bring the internet to places where people are not yet connected.
The solar-powered balloons transmit signals to each other in the sky, signals which eventually find their way to a user's "internet antenna" on the Earth below. The balloons simply drift with the winds--algorithms help the balloons rise or fall into the wind pattern that will take them where they need to go.
"We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides internet access to the earth below. It's very early days, but we've built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today's 3G networks or faster," said a post on the official company blog.
How can this kind of technology potentially change life? A study in 2011 found that whenever a nation doubles its broadband speed, economic output increases by 0.3 percent. The impact on a developing country can be massive, if a high percentage of its citizens were quickly able to go from no-internet access to full-internet access without having to build physical infrastructures for internet connectivity on the ground.
More access to the internet in the developing world has the potential to open new online markets for many businesses, powering up technological innovation, educating more people, and help empower women and the poor.
For Google, the benefits are obviously invaluable The more people on Earth access the internet, the more people who can make use of Google's online products - and be exposed to its vast advertising network.
One of the most obvious barriers is that using high-altitude balloons riding the winds of the upper atmosphere is the fact that they'll always be on the move. Not surprisingly, Google says it plans to solve the problem of having balloons where they're needed when they're needed using "some complex algorithms and lots of computing power."
Project Loon starts in June 2013 with an experimental pilot in New Zealand. A small group of Project Loon pioneers will test the technology in Christchurch and Canterbury.
In addition to providing access to the two out of every three people on earth Google says don't have access to affordable broadband, another goal of the Google behind Project Loon is to help with maintaining communications following natural disasters.
The remote-controlled balloons would navigate stratospheric winds 20 kilometers above the surface of the earth, far above the altitude where most airplanes travel.