The Washington Post reports Google has a truly sky-high idea for connecting billions of people to the Internet — 12 miles in the air to be exact — through giant helium balloons circling the globe that are equipped to beam WiFi signals below.
Google will announce Saturday it has 30 balloons floating over New Zealand to provide free Internet access to disaster-stricken, rural or poor areas. The Washington Post explains that eventually, as the balloons move across the stratosphere, consumers in participating countries along the 40th parallel in the Southern Hemisphere could tap into the service.
Project Loon will use giant helium balloons in the stratosphere to beam WiFi signals down to the ground, says The Washington Post.
Called Project Loon, the experimental program was hatched by engineers at the company’s top-secret Google X laboratory in California’s Silicon Valley that invented driverless cars and eyeglasses equipped with voice-activated computers. The Washington Post notes, despite the fact that Some of those technologies won’t immediately — or ever — make money for the firm, Google said it nonetheless pursues these “moon shot” ideas with the aim of solving big problems and creating breakthrough technologies that ultimately will bring more users to its services.