Taara adapted Loon’s laser technology for use in terrestrial network equipment. The company’s flagship product, the Taara Lightbridge, is a wireless communications system about the size of a traffic ...

which imagined distributing data by shooting lasers around a network of 20-mile-high balloons. Believe it or not, that proved unfeasible in the end, and Loon was wound down in 2021 — just three years ...

Now, Alphabet is a massive corporation — ranking in size behind Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft — that encompasses everything from internet-beaming hot air balloons to self-driving cars to ...

Test trials began in New Zealand in 2013; however, in 2021, Alphabet announced that the project was no longer sustainable. Using helium balloons traveling in wind currents several miles above ...