Internet by air : Google/Alphabet prefer the balloons and kills its drones 5G – 01net.com

The balloons rather than drones : Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has decided to put an end to its project of internet connectivity through drones and solar, as reported by Business Insider. Competitor of the project Aquila of Facebook, Project Wing was based on a network of drones to solar energy. With the goal is to provide internet access in more remote areas to which the investments in fixed infrastructure is impossible.

Based on the purchase of Titan Aerospace in 2014, the program was part of the division “X” of Google (now Alphabet), a laboratory of innovations working on ambitious projects in the long term, the ” Moonshots “. But in addition to the direct competition – and some challenges – of the project Aquila of Facebook, the Wing is exposed to competition in the internal project Loon… that does the same thing but through stratospheric. A project is already very advanced, which has undergone many improvements and success and that is the subject of a deployment in Indonesia, archipelago fragmented into thousands of islands.

Alphabet has removed the less advanced of the two projects. If this choice is not motivated by losses, money – Alphabet has realized almost $ 20 billion profit by 2016 – its motivations are, however, well financial. The great argentière in the group, Ruth Porat, was received as an order to bring down on Earth the teams of the different divisions of Google, including Google X, which has spent without counting. Bloomberg ran a headline elsewhere on this topic ” Google earns so much money that he has never applied for financial discipline. Until today “.

Wings is far from the first project to bear the costs of the rationalization of the activities of the Alphabet : in addition to the sale of the robots from the takeover of Boston Dynamics, Alphabet has suspended its activities for the deployment of the optical fiber and may also sell its division satellite.

This policy change is important because it proves that Google is indeed now a normal company. The question is whether the Alphabet will keep the breath of creativity that has allowed in a start-up named Google become, in less than 10 years, the staple of our digital lives in a few years.