Skip to main content

Alphabet grounds Titan solar-powered drones, shifts to Project Loon instead

Titan Aerospace Solara 50
Alphabet’s X division always has a number of forward-looking and sometimes fanciful research initiatives underway. These are the company’s most pie-in-the-sky projects that may or may not ever see the light of day, with Google Glass and Google Brain representing two projects that have made their way into the real world.

One of X’s most hopeful initiatives involves providing universal internet access via sky-based wireless routers. One of them, Project Loon, uses high-altitude balloons to loft the routers in the air, and that project is still on track. Another, dubbed Titan and using fixed-wing solar-powered drones, isn’t so lucky, as 9to5Google reports.

Related Videos

Apparently, Alphabet has decided to scrap the Titan project, after Google had purchased Titan Aerospace in 2014. Titan made high-altitude, solar-powered drones that can stay in the air for extended periods of time and could likely serve a variety of purposes for Alphabet. The idea at the time seemed to be to combine the Titan drones with Project Loon balloons to provide internet access to underserved areas of the globe, but it appears that idea has been abandoned.

According to an X spokesperson, “The team from Titan was brought into X in early 2015. We ended our exploration of high-altitude UAVs for internet access shortly after. By comparison, at this stage the economics and technical feasibility of Project Loon present a much more promising way to connect rural and remote parts of the world. Many people from the Titan team are now using their expertise as part of other high-flying projects at X, including Loon and Project Wing.”

More than 50 Titan employees will be looking for new employment at other Alphabet companies, and team members had already been making their way to other groups including, naturally, Project Loon. Therefore, it’s likely that although Alphabet has shifted gears a bit in their quest for providing universal internet access, they’re not even close yet to giving up on it.

Editors' Recommendations

Google’s Project Loon runs test of balloon-based internet service over Peru
google project loon successful test peru

Google has shared details of successful tests of its Project Loon internet balloon system that took place in South America over the summer. The team was able to keep one of its Loon balloons in Peruvian airspace for fourteen weeks.

Project Loon is a research initiative that aims to deliver internet access to people in rural and remote areas. A high speed connection is transmitted from the ground to a balloon, which then acts as the hub of a network capable of reaching more distant regions.

Read more
Lawsuit alleges Google stole idea for Project Loon from Arizona company
alphabet-project-loon

Space Data Corporation has put a pin in Google's balloons. The Arizona company is suing Google; its parent company, Alphabet; and experimental labs X over Project Loon, a moonshot experiment to provide internet access via solar-powered balloons.

X, formerly known as Google X before the Alphabet Inc. reshuffling, attempts to make such moonshot projects a reality. Current and previous projects include Glass, which became Google Glass; Google Watch, which turned into Android Wear; self-driving cars; and Project Wing.

Read more
Solve for X showcases all the crazy projects from Google’s secretive X Labs
google self driving car detroit

Google likes to shoot for the moon with its special X Labs projects, and now the company wants everyone to know what it's working on with a dedicated website for X Labs. The moonshots listed on the site include the self-driving car, Internet balloons, and delivery drones.

The site, named Solve for X, details the four current public projects, along with updates on ‘graduated projects’ like Google Glass, Project Insight, and Project Tango.

Read more