Loon and Wing, two of Google X's moonshot projects, "graduated" to become full companies under the Alphabet banner, reports TNW.
Loon was an ambitious Google X project to establish a network of balloons in the stratosphere to relay internet connectivity to people in remote regions. Meanwhile, Wing saw the use of advanced drones for delivering goods to people on the ground.
Now the two projects have become two new independent companies within Google's parent firm, Alphabet. Both companies have new leadership. Loon will be headed by its new CEO Alastair Westgarth and James Ryan Burgess is Wing's new CEO.
Since the Loon project commenced in 2013, their balloons have flown over 30 million km in test flights - with one of the balloons surviving for a record-breaking 198 days in the stratosphere.
Once a network of balloons is set up in a particular place, high speed internet is transmitted to the nearest balloon by Loon's on-ground telecommunications partner.
The network gets relayed across the balloons through Free Space Optical Communications (FSOC), and then down to users on the ground.
Project Loon saw the transmission of data between balloons over 100 km apart in the stratosphere, and back down to LTE phones, at speeds of up to 10Mbps.
The project has also helped deliver Internet connectivity to people in Puerto Rico, after hurricane Harvey, and also to other remote regions of the world.
Wing, meanwhile, has contributed to delivering food and other products to people in the suburbs of Canberra, Australia, delivering defibrillators by air, and even deliveringlunch to hungry Virginia Tech students.
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