Yay, more space junk, and knowing Google they would abandon the whole thing a couple years in when it gets boring and leave them to rot.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
76 points (97.5% liked)
Technology
66687 readers
5953 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
-
They split off from Google.
-
They are not using satellites, they shine a lazer from one fixed tower to another, with range about 20 km.
At sufficiently low orbits, the satellites would simply deorbit themselves because of the atmospheric drag. Several Starlink sats have been lost this way.
Yeah, more thinking the wasted time, resources, and emissions involved in building, launching, managing, and then whenever makes it down.
Take all that and make something useful instead, whatever happened to Google fiber being built out all over? More reliable, faster, doesn't involve sending piles of redundant satellites into space...
I think the existing telecoms tied them up in mountains of legal bullshit.
Supposedly traditional ISP's have tons and tons of lawyers and filed every single step of the way to stop Google from intruding on their local monopolies.
I guess that's better but honestly not by much.
See that guy between Bezos and Musk at the Trump inauguration? That's Sundar Pichai, Alphabet/Google CEO.
It's zero better. Every one and every thing that bends the knee to fascism is fascist, and should be treated the same.
If I were forced to pick between the two I'd take the guy who is only a white supremacist when it's profitable over the guy who is a white supremacist every waking moment.
Call it 1% better, if that.
Still a ratfucker, but ... not as high a priority target as the one activly throwing out nazi salutes.
Zuck looks like he's glitching and needs a hard reset
ok cool, whos gonna buy that? Europe wants to be independent from US big tech, elon got the US gov by the balls and china surely has their own thing.
Its not for people to buy. Companies like Google simply don't need to make profit anymore.
Its to show growth potential to investors. And when they inevitably cut the program, it will also show growth potential to investors since then it will be millions of dollars saved.
Yea no. This company might even sincerely want to do its own constillation yet I doubt that. This is just to give the optics of 'see! Musk isn't a monopoly!' along with 'see! we're not trump's puppets! We're fighting against President Musk!'
Same as their halfhearted attempts at laying fiber.
google laid fiber to make the others panic and impliment fiber
How do you keep birds from landing on it and shitting up the lens and blocking the laser?
It's the law of outdoor infrastructure. If it's outside, and it's high up, it will get shat upon.
You put some bird spikes around the lens. Same thing that is done for windows in cities with pigeons.
Im very much open to replacing my Starlink - but this isn’t it. Land based lasers are just going to be attached to things called cell towers - and if I have one of those nearby… then I’d use cellular.
The tech sounds useful to bridge cell towers in rural areas among each other to skip satellites and laying cables.
Back when I was still in university, dormatories' internet was established using a similar tech to the main campus. It was great, except on snowy days. Then there was just no internet at all.
That sounds like a major drawback. I guess it's still better than nothing tho. Did rain cause issues as well?
I don't think so. Cannot remember that it did. Fog did though.
At least it's not more low orbit space junk
yeah I would do this if it worked over starlink provided it gave as good or better connection.
Google/Alphabet keeping up the tradition of terrible product names I see
a two-minute scan of products for sale on amazon will tell you that society is to the point of mashing keyboards to string letters together to come up with company names. this at least has consonants and vowels arranged in an order that resembles a word.
The picture of a dystopian future where feudal oligarchs are shooting down each others low orbit internet satellites in the furious competition for best coverage popped into my head.
Who are we casting as the satellite retrieval specialist with a penchant for bonsai trees living in an off grid log cabin?
Not familiar with the current crop of actors, but Honestly I'd love william shatner and nicolas cage be in this one. Cage getting to go full tilt as the CEO who's put offensive lasers on his satilites marketing them as an anti kessler syndrome measure but really jsut wanting to fry competitors.
Shatner even has the bonus of having a REALLY nice ranch they could use for location shots of shatner's home as he's talked into helping train the group of loonies that are going up there.
Heh, that's a good future.
The one we're speeding towards is where they all collude, and all the service is shitty and the same (or worse) as its ever been. If its not just monopolized. That's why Night City is a relatively good place to live in CP2077: There's still competition.
Anything to avoid laying fiber.
Zaybatsu. Japan lives in the 00s since the 80s, as they say. Since 1880s.