Google Launches Google Balloons Internet Beaming

Google Launches Google Balloons Internet Beaming 

GOOGLE launched Internet-beaming antennas into stratosphere aboard giani. jellyfish-shaped balloons with the lofty goal of getting the entire planet online.

Eighteen months in the works, the top-secret project was announced on Sunday in New Zealand, where up to 50 volunteer households are already beginning to receive the Internet briefly on their home computers via translucent helium balloons that sail by on the wind 12 miles above Earth.

While the project is still in the very early testing stages, Google hopes eventually to launch thousands of the thin, polyethylene-film inflatables and bring the Internet to some of the more remote parts of the globe, narrowing the digital divide between the 2.2 billion people who arc online and the 4.8 billion who aren't.

If successful. the technology might allow countries to leapfrog the expense of installing fiber-optic cable.

dramatically increasing Internet usage in places such as Africa and South-East Asia.