New Delhi: Google has started releasing 30 hi-tech balloons in a trial of technology that is designed to bring the Internet to places where people are not yet connected. The balloons are first launched from New Zealand's South Island under the project dubbed Project Loon.
Each balloon is 15 meters tall and 12 meters wide when fully inflated. The giant balloons float at an altitude of 20 kilometers and are the first experimental pilot of the project which Google hopes will eventually lead to "a ring of balloons that fly around the globe on the stratospheric winds and provide internet access to the earth below."
The project was conceptualized on the basis that though the Internet is considered to be a truly global technology, two-thirds of the world's population still does not have access to it.
