Deflating Rumors Of Google Offering Broadband-By-Balloon

from the head-in-the-clouds dept

Wed, Feb 20th 2008 1:31pm — Mike Masnick

Say what you want about the Wall Street Journal, but they're generally pretty reliable on fact checking and not reporting baseless rumors. That's why it's strange to see a report in the Journal about Google's supposed interest in buying up a balloon-based wireless data company. For many years, we've seen all different reports about attempts to offer wireless data services using various types of floating devices. Sometimes it's via blimps, sometimes it's via other systems using bizarre names like "HAPs" (for "high altitude platforms"), or "stratellite" or "aerostats". Then there's my favorite such plan: broadband delivered via retired Soviet spy planes. All of these plans had slight differences in terms of how they worked -- but one similarity: they were basically all full of hot air.

While they tend to generate plenty of attention, they tend not to be particularly practical. The stratellite folks have been particularly egregious in issuing press releases that gullible reporters fall for every six months or so. The WSJ story about these balloons seems even more ridiculous in terms of practicality: the balloons only stay afloat for 24-hours, before they burst and the transmitter floats to the ground, where it needs to be recovered and then relaunched. Seriously. Yet, the WSJ says that Google may be interested in buying this company, offering nothing to back that up other than "people familiar with the matter." This reads like a story placed by the company itself trying to drum up interest. I don't doubt that folks from Google may have met with the company, but it seems like a stretch to think that they're seriously interested in sending up balloons with data transmitters every 24-hours. Then again, who would have thought they'd send around people in cars taking photos of everything. It just seems that Google's interest should have a bit more evidence behind it before taking it seriously.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

14 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

That Guy, 20 Feb 2008 @ 1:53pm

niche uses
Well mainstream uses seem pretty limited, but I could see a niche. Something like that could be used for outdoor festivals, emergency use ( say perhaps setting up a network after an earthquake ) or perhaps even for military usage.

Really, whats a few 10's of millions of dollars to google anyways.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
4-80-sicks, 20 Feb 2008 @ 1:55pm

Thing is, the results of sending people around in cars to take pictures of stuff are awesome! The results that I as a user see from balloon broadband? No different, or worse, than the alternative.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
WarOtter (profile), 20 Feb 2008 @ 1:59pm

A modest proposal
I think it's time to begin construction of the SkyNet Orbital platform. I, for one, welcome our robot overlords.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Philip g (profile), 20 Feb 2008 @ 2:36pm

How about with Wind Turbines?
Maybe they don't mean balloons but something like this:
http://www.symscape.com/blog/flying-wind-turbines-blog-action-day

I can very much see Google looking into that. Heck, even I thought about that. ^_^

However, there are some practicality hurdles and it's very weather centric.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Philip (profile), 20 Feb 2008 @ 2:43pm
  
  Re: How about with Wind Turbines?
  Ha, maybe I should have just linked to the homepage: http://www.magenn.com/
  
  (ps: Sorry for the dble post! The ajax reply to comment box confused me when the submit button didn't show up)
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Philip g (profile), 20 Feb 2008 @ 2:41pm

How about with Wind Turbines?
Maybe they don't mean balloons but something like this:
http://www.symscape.com/blog/flying-wind-turbines-blog-action-day

I can very much see Google looking into that. Heck, even I thought about that. ^_^

However, there are some practicality hurdles and it's very weather centric.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bob, 20 Feb 2008 @ 2:56pm

Interesting
The story reads almost like "too weird to be wrong". Surely the reporter, Amol Sharma, saw the ridiculousness of a dairy farmer being paid $50 per launch from her barn, or the fact that hobbyists with gps receivers hunted down the fallen tram sitters for $100.

What I am saying is this must all be true or that reporter is really, really, really (one more) really gullible. It had to seems ridiculous, so the reporter triple checked everything. Right?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bob, 20 Feb 2008 @ 2:57pm

nice spell checker I have there
tram sitters should of course be transmitters
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
David Hammond (profile), 20 Feb 2008 @ 3:45pm

Think outside the box
I don't know much about this company, but maybe there's some infrastructure it has that Google is interested in experimenting with for other uses. Maybe Google wants to try putting cameras on balloons and getting more frequent updates to the satellite photo imagery in certain areas. Google has made many purchases in which it abandoned the company's original product but made other use of its infrastructure.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jenn, 20 Feb 2008 @ 3:48pm

Maybe this is just the precursor to another excellent April Fools Day charade (remember last year's Google TiSP, free broadband via your toilet).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Feb 2008 @ 4:07pm

Hmmm
And what are they going to do if people get their hands on said data transmitters? Unless they are planning on putting these on some form of wire to keep them in a pretty small area there is gonna be some problems. If people get a hold of them then I am sure they will have to pry these devices from the persons hands or what happens if they land in a lake or something like that and are destroyed. I would love to see one of these fall in the middle of the highway and cause some form of accident.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Feb 2008 @ 4:13pm

Or perhaps the company owns some potentially valuable patents?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Java, 20 Feb 2008 @ 4:41pm

The company doing this
www.spacedata.net
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Matthew Flaschen, 21 Feb 2008 @ 6:41am

May be feasible
If it really only costs $200 per launch ($50 for balloon, $50 to pay farmer, $100 to recover), plus some fraction of $1,500 for occasional lost or damaged transceivers, it could be feasible. That's certainly more than they can earn per day in the area of 40 cell phone towers. It certainly sounds ridiculous, but lots of things do these days.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]