“All politics is local,” said House Speaker Tipp O’Neill, meaning that every politician has to consider the effect that his or her positions will have on voters. What makes perfect sense on a national stage might be a disaster back in the district, where the actual voters live. And so it is, too, with big companies, where local impact is sometimes more important than national or international. Sometimes, in fact, companies can be completely re-routed solely to please or affect a single executive. I believe we are seeing precisely that right now at Google concerning Google X.
Google X is that division of the search giant responsible for self-driving cars, Google Glass, and the prospect of hundreds or thousands of balloons floating through the stratosphere bringing Internet service to grateful Polynesians. It’s those balloons, in fact, that led me to this topic.
At Google they call Google X projects moon shots, the idea being that they are multi-year efforts leading toward disruptive innovations and new markets for Google to dominate. Or not…
Moon shots I get, but balloons? Balloons I don’t get. Anyone who proposes to bring Internet service to the Third World by setting hundreds of balloons adrift is simply crazy. It’s not impossible, just stupid. The goal is laudable but there are several better ways to achieve it than leaving network coverage up to the prevailing winds. Little satellites are far better than balloons, for example, and probably cheaper, too.
Why would Google X spend what are likely tens of millions on something as crazy as balloons? I think it is because the real output of Google X isn’t progress, it’s keeping Google co-founder Sergey Brin out of CEO Larry Page’s hair.
“Balloons? Heck of an idea, Sergey. Go for it!”
Google is a typical high tech success story in that the very young founders brought in professional managers to help them grow the company and learn how to be leaders and — most importantly — take Google public, securing their personal fortunes. For Google that leadership came from Eric Schmidt just as at Yahoo it came from Tim Koogle and at Microsoft it came from Jon Shirley. Michael Dell did the same thing to help smooth the way for Dell’s IPO. And like all these others he then quickly pushed aside the older managers once his company’s fortunes were preserved.
That’s what Larry Page did with Eric Schmidt, who continues to nominally work for Google and earns a boatload of money, but in fact mainly serves as a G-V-flying global statesman for a company that may not actually need one.
“Global statesman? Heck of an idea, Eric. Go for it!”
With Schmidt out of the way Page was still stymied in his quest for total executive power by Brin, who has just as much stock and just as many votes. How to keep Sergey distracted from the day-to-day?
Google X!
Invent the future, change the world, spend $2 billion per year. Heck, something may even come of it. But if nothing does that’s okay, too, because $2 billion is a low price to pay for executive stability in Mountain View.
Ironically this might actually make it more — not less — likely that something useful will eventually come out of Google X. That’s simply because Sergey can continue spending for as long as he wants, making truly long-term projects viable in a world where all other R&D has to pay off in a year or less.
So I love Google X as do all the other reporters who constantly need something wacky to write about. But let’s not pretend Google X is what it’s not.
Heck of an idea! Go for it!
somebody once said “Let the experts tell that it can’t be done, then go do it”…
Wouldn’t it be ironic if Google’s greatest contributions were made by this ‘distraction’?
Come on, Bob — you can launch a balloon with a team of three people and a Toyota Hilux. I’m guessing this is a decent cost savings over launching a satellite.
The concept of ballon-based telecommunications is not new. In fact, it’s SO not new, I can’t remember the first time I heard about it…but it was probably in a SF story by Clarke, Heinlein or Asimov. All of whom never forgot the “science” in science fiction.
You know what else sounds crazy? Bringing wireless telephones to the world by building tens of thousands of towers; each providing coverage in small geographic areas. Probably just cheaper to launch a few small satellites….oh wait.
The moon is already up there, so we can just put one tower there.
I actually like that kind of thought. I get that you’re kidding but earthlings need to find a way to put the moon to use.
As a kid I thought they should put all the nuclear energy plants on the moon where radiation leaks aren’t a problem and using a series of short wave relay stations short wave the energy back to earth. Turn the surface into a giant solar cell and do the same with that. There is no environment up there to worry about destroying. Energy production becomes the Moon’s “killer ap” and other “aps” follow, like low gravity manufacturing and as the ultimate space port for inter planetary travel. No doubt that some day (hopefully) the moon will be to space exploration what the Azores and Canary Islands were to geographic exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries. Eventually all space craft could be manufactured on the moon as it wouldn’t need to be so robust to leave the moon’s gravitational pull.
There is some sense in this suggestion. With sites like Netflix (and all the other streaming sites), as long as you’re getting an uninterrupted HD stream who cares if there is a multi-second delay in response times.
And if your servers were there (along with all the pirated content) whose legal jurisdiction would apply? By the time that got sorted out everyone would have moved on to the next latest thing.
Sure, but any given location on earth can only “see” it for 12 hours a day. Not so great for service.
Oh, if only we had a second moon, diametrically opposite the first one. I know, let’s make one. And how will we launch it? Balloons!
Latency.
Actually, solar dirigibles that can maintain their position via electric drive fans could make sense, and latencies would be rather lower than satellite..
I personally applaud google X’s work as the successor to the great labs of yore, Bell labs in the 50s, ARPA and NASA in the 60s and 70s, PARC in the 70s and 80s, DEC in the 80s and 90s,
and ultimately massively useful stuff came out of those investments that now shape our world.
In the case of PARC it only took one technology out of all that random research (laser printing) to pay for it all. Sure, in most cases there was no immediate benefit to the bottom line, but in all cases those labs drew top-flight people together who created wonderful things from just being in contact with each other.
I think the balloon idea is working better and better every day, and there are all sorts of side benefits from it – you might think low-orbiting satellites are a better answer (I do too), but doing it this way lets them solve things incrementally – solving hardware problems, power requirements, routing difficulties, local cdn storage, etc, in ways that will ultimately make better, lighter, faster satellites feasible. Last I’d looked, they’d got “uptime” to over 100 days on the balloons. I know multiple space-bound companies that all test their hardware at 100k feet using balloon technologies, planetary resources among them, you have heat, radiation, targetting, vacuum, and other issues to resolve that you can’t do cheaply without.
Personally I think self driving vehicles are going to make google a fortune, that the brick-like IO bus of the ara project is brilliant and possibly the shape of hardware to come, and google glass is just around the corner.
I wish more companies with deep pockets spent a little more on their own moonshots. SpaceX dreams big – HP is doing it – why not oracle, comcast, and others? Why not do this sort of crazy stuff if you can – why not dare to dream, and dream big? Why must companies focus only on the next quarter, and the mundane?
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dave taht (not working for google x, sadly)
Look outside of tech and you’ll see many companies taking long-term R&D bets. Car companies have been doing that on hydrogen cells for over 15 years. Pretty much every pharmaceutical shop is working on research that they won’t even know if it works, let alone pay out, for at least 10 years.
Google X may indeed be a political move, but it isn’t anywhere unique.
DEC in the 80’s ok, but in the ninty’s it had lost its way both in technology and in management (part of Olson’s ‘culture’ I guess.
Actually it never exactly had “its way” in management; as soon as it got competition in mid range from IBM it didn’t have a chance. Of course IBM went down the tubes too, but later and not from “infinity to zero” in 5 years.
Then with massive stupidity it tried mainframe: $1.5B later the demo to the founder (Ken Olson) poured smoke—I tried to tell them but… Their market projections were mind-numbingly stupid too—not the numbers cuz I can’t speak to that, but the fact that 3 different groups (tech, marketing and I forget) had HUGELY different sales projections. They couldn’t all be right.
The balloons don’t need to be wandering around aimlessly. They don’t have to wander at all. They can be tethered to the ground and pulled down during hurricanes. They don’t need to be that high. Cell towers aren’t that tall. They try making them taller by putting them on hilltops. This doesn’t work on a plain where there are no hills. Building towers or building hills to put towers on for that matter would cost more than a balloon and a cable. Plus they are easy to move around if you put them in a bad spot. Launch a satellite? Lately the Russians or the Chinese are the ones who launch satellites and they don’t like the US’s credit rating.
But the plan IS to left them drift. I could see tethered balloons, too. Say the lifespan of such a balloon is 6-12 months and you launch a couple hundred of them: where will they be in six months? It’s a great experiment, but I don’t see this as a rational technique for assuring Internet service to anyone.
Have you ever been at the base of a teathered aerostat that flies at 5000m? It is a not-inconsiderable installation.
Also, uptime: you get lots of it for aerostats in places like Saudi Arabia. At locations where there might be thunderstorms (or indeed significantly variable weather) not so much.
(Source: I worked on the acceptance testing for the US Customs Service’s TARS in the mid-80’s, spent a lot of time on-site waiting for the weather to be good enough to fly)
Those tethers would be a big problem for aviation.
Not really – they don’t need to be very high and they could also lower themselves if they detected an airplane headed their way. Worst case they could broadcast an emergency alert if their lowering motors failed. Sensors, radios, and software are all cheap.
What about tethering them to cell towers? We already have them mapped for the pilots and it would lessen the rope by a couple of hundred feet!
And don’t forget the advertising you can do on the side.
They effectively kill Google Labs but support Google X – just to keep Sergey out of Larry’s hair? What is this a bad sitcom on CBS?
Re: “there are several better ways to achieve it than leaving network coverage up to the prevailing winds. Little satellites are far better than balloons, for example, and probably cheaper” What happened to taking a position and defending it? Oh wait…it occurs to me that the quoted statement isn’t the position, but the defense of another position…that there is a power play among Google executives, and even among all executives of big firms. Perhaps the defense of both positions is left as an exercise for the reader.
I saw an analogous situation at Motorola, where business managers ran the company and techno-fetishists ran various labs and research and design facilities around the world.
When an idea or concept or technology managed to jump over the cultural divide between the techno-fetishists to the business managers, Motorola made good money more than half the time. See battery eliminators, walkie-talkies, germanium-based transistors, Dimetra, cellular phones, base stations, telematics, GaAs, 8-bit computing, cable modems, Astro, 6800 and 68000 microprocessors, Six Sigma, RFID, ball grid array, system on a chip, etc.
When an idea or concept or technology DID NOT quite make the jump, Motorola either botched the deployment of a salable product, or else failed to bring anything to market and saw other companies profit (hugely) from Motorola invention. See Iridium, flat panel, set-top boxes, digital video recorders, touchscreens, high-definition television (HDTV), PDAs, iRadio, electronic biometrics, etc.
The question for Google is, who will be the person who can bridge the gap between Google X and Google?
Google now has projects using high altitude platforms and low and middle earth orbit satellites:
http://cis471.blogspot.com/search/label/google%20satellite
Can they connect the unconnected?
Well, as you pointed out before, once you do cross the chasm and have hugely profitable tech business, the trick is somehow spending the money. Invest it ? Well nothing is growing like you are growing so the best place is to invest it in yourself. Microsoft burnt money in a lot of projects too remember? Remember when Bill Gates bought up the digital rights to all the famous works of art in the world? Perhaps it’s still doing it to some extent. Apple did too at one time, until Steve Jobs returned and gave it a laser sharp focus. Creative initiative became his responsibility, and the company didn’t need a moon shot department.
I wonder if this applies to countries? Where is the moon shot department of the USA ? It’s not NASA anymore. It’s not DARPA either. Who is working on the really wacky stuff these days? Is anyone? Can the country even afford it?
What A Waste !!!
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Google and its founders have so much money and so many resources. One is trying to consolidate his POWER by encouraging the other to PLAY. Google could be partnering with medical research and using its vast computing resources to cure disease. Google could be using its vast resources to find ways to produce power more safely and inexpensively. If Google moto is really “Don’t be evil” there is so much more it can be doing. There are so many things that Google could be doing to help society.
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Maybe Google is working on other good stuff. Maybe not. Who really knows.
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Google! If you want a fun project, here’s one… Let’s start with the assumption there should be no personal automobiles in a large city, like Manhattan. How could we make that work? If we could make it work imagine the implications! If more than half of the oil used and carbon emitted is in vehicles on major city streets, eliminating them could have a huge economic and environmental impact.
@John….
Just to revisit the things you think Google *should* be doing: Energy Generation [1], Healthcare [2], Automotive [3]. These are just the publicly-announced projects. There are lots of others. Unfortunately, I can’t delve into any of them… because I like my job here at Google[x], and I don’t think they’d take too kindly to being outed. 😉
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/google-x-acquires-makani-power-and-its-airborne-wind-turbines/
[2] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/introducing-our-smart-contact-lens.html
[3] https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/28/5756852/googles-self-driving-car-isnt-a-car-its-the-future
What is your take on Bob’s contention: “Page was still stymied in his quest for total executive power by Brin, who has just as much stock and just as many votes. How to keep Sergey distracted from the day-to-day? Google X!”
Balloons have several huge advantages over small satellites. The radiation and thermal environment is much more favorable for the balloon which probably provides between one and three orders of magnitude in cost savings for the radio electronics. The balloon flies much lower which has a lower RF path loss, less latency, and is not moving rapidly which means they don’t have to worry about Doppler effects and handing off users from one ‘cell’ to ‘cell’ every few minutes. The launch cost for a balloon is approximately zero compared to millions and they don’t have to be scheduled a year in advance.
So in summary the vehicle / payload is cheaper, the launch is cheaper, the logistics are easier, and RF performance is better.
Good points but how can drifting balloons provide reliable service? That’s why Google is now talking about launching 180 satellites, too. But even more importantly there’s another Silicon Valley company well along toward launching 650(!) satellites. They considered your points and decided to make a big bet in the other direction.
and of course I have heard that balloons occasionally leak–lifetime?
“Good points but how can drifting balloons provide reliable service?”
Obviously that is is what Google’s research dollars are trying to solve. Other companies are betting that they will not be successful so are sticking to the proven (and expensive) satellite approach. If Google succeeds it could easily cause a huge paradigm shift.
I’m sorry there are solvable problems and there are problems that can’t be solved. Some problem that can’t be solved are too complicated or too expensive to be solved. Others defy the laws of science and/or common sense. Trying to figure out how to make drifting balloons provide reliable Internet service fits squarely in the last category. This is pure folly. If Google is really trying to figure out how to do this, then the saying ‘a fool and his money are soon parted’ seems applicable. Personally I can’t imagine Google is this out of touch with basic common sense.
So, GPS receivers are dirt cheap, and the high altitude winds are fairly predicable. So you would just need enough guided power to keep the balloons in relative position.
Just connect ziplines to a few of those tethered balloons and the indigenous skyscrapers and your urban traffic dilemma is solved, spidey style. Bit windy and risky, but then Homo sapiens is not an endangered species.
Kev’n,
I beg to differ. I think that Homo Sapiens is a *very* endangered species. The tribe as a whole has the nature and enlightenment of a cave man, but with the dangerous tools of a super race.
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File this under “Ignore at your own risk.”
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(Sorry for the OT comment.)
And Charles, don’t forget there are way too many of us for our own good.
As Al Yankovic once wrote, “Dare to be Stupid!”
Yes indeed. Well, I’ve been stupid most of my life so no reason to change at this late date.
This is less of a technical problem and more one of people and logistics. Here’s just one way this could work:
The balloons have a limited lifespan and range. This is because the batteries needed to support mainly the cell communications will eventually deplete, so they need re-charging and the ballon has to land anyway. The range and flying area of any balloon can be reasonably predicted. Besides, they can be “called” down, on demand, when and as needed, say in case of really bad weather or winds. Besides, it is not the disposable helium balloons that need to be picked up but the cellular equipment and rechargeable batteries.
So, the balloons can float within a given radius of X square miles or km’s. When they start to drift out of the range of other balloons, they are called down. Their exact position is recorded via GPS, so picking them up is not a problem, except for the likelihood of being picked up by thieves. This can be mitigated as well, with a network of users in the area of each balloon. These users can direct a ballon to hoover high, before it can be picked up safely.
Furthermore, 2-3 balloons only could cover the same territory as many hundreds or thousands of cell towers.
PS. to my previous comment – a brief search shows that balloon based cell communication has already been done:
https://www.geek.com/mobile/softbank-deploy-balloon-cell-phone-towers-1488819/
Funny that the “design, build and fly a plane in a month guy” is criticizing Google moonshots.
I would buy a self-driving car tomorrow if they were available having recently snoozed off at low speed during my commute…
No need for a fully self driving car for that. Modern cars already monitor the wake state of the driver. They also brake automatically if an excident can’t be prevented otherwise.
Re: “excident” I sure hope it works better than the spell check built in to some devices. 🙂
If there is one problem that we need to solve it’s FTL (faster than light) travel. What if we judged every moonshot initiative in terms of whether it gets us closer to FTL or not?
Android was considered as such and Larry Page felt guilty for wasting time and money on it when it was considered a hobby. Should one of the many moonshots succeed, the billions sunk will be child’s play. Google paid Android developers US$ 5 Billion last year, and they have just started.
The balloon idea is a bad concept. It uses a resource that is non-renewable and that is in short supply. Helium is reaching a critical point. Many places including hospitals are now recycling it as much as they can due rising costs and limited supply. If they switch to Hydrogen they have a better shot at long term viability, but there are risks to using it (nowhere near as bad as the public perceives, however).
But the big question that should be asked is, “What good is internet if it cannot help me feed my family?” Many places without internet have poor sanitation, lack of good drinking water and stable access to food. In the grand scheme of things, the balloons seem rather odd. Note: this is coming from a space cadet trying to get the cost of consumer spaceflight down for everyone so as they say, Hi Pot, meet Kettle.”
Ah yes, but with the internet they could just order the necessities of life from Amazon, and get them in two days with Prime, like the rest of the civilized world. 🙂 (This time I remembered the smiley, unlike my earlier comment about the cell tower on the moon.)
Hi Ronc,
Two days shipment from Amazon to the civilized world, I do not think so !
I ordered this fabulous Cringely book from amason on the 15th June and amazon tell me it will soon be delivered, but not yet. Nothing like two days delivery and I like to think I live in a civilized country, Australia, though I can not speak for all of our leaders.
This book cost me $AUS10.92 on amazon and then $AUS 18.25 to be slow delivered. A total of $AUS 29.17 ! Me thinks amason is making a killing on delivery prices.
I do wonder how much the writer gets, not much I think.
Reminds me of 70’s book “Small is Beautiful” where he talks about bricks being made locally for a dollar, but a large company a long way away was able to mass produce similar bricks for 10 cents, but then those locals had to pay 90 cents for delivery. As we know, the local guy typically goes out of business.
Seems to me a better idea for google X ( or someone ) is to local print all the books, deliver faster and cheaper … and hopefully pay the writer a better rate.
Anyway, thank you so much for going to the trouble anyway, to write this book …. that will soon ( hopefully ) sit next to my other icons of computing, such as the ugly fish book.
@James: What good is access to knowledge/education if it can not help me feed my family?
Ernest, you need the kind of knowledge/education that empowers you to take action and provides useful ways to make/save money.
Cringely mentions Jon Shirley having performed a role like Eric Schmidt did in the beginning, but I can find almost no information about that time. His Wikipedia entry is pisspoor.
Is there any larger information resources on him and what he did?