Project Loon ⇥ gigaom.com

Kevin Fitchard, GigaOm:

The ballon-powered network know as Loon may be one of Google’s famed moon shots, but the biggest issues facing the project are grounded right here on Earth. This won’t just be a major technological feat for Google. It will be a huge political undertaking.

I applaud Google for trying to do something like this (and giving it an apt name), but it seems more like a stunt than a commitment. In addition to the issues raised by Fitchard, there are at least two more: balloons are inherently temporary, and (as an extension of that) there’s no terrestrial infrastructure controlled locally. Do people in Namibia want their internet access controlled by an American company?