Facebook reportedly in talks to buy high-altitude drone makers Titan Aerospace initiative, providing internet access to developing markets Tuesday 4 March 2014 09:01 GMT Facebook is reportedly in talks to buy Titan Aerospace, makers of solar-powered, high-altitude drones that can stay aloft for up to five years at a time.This project, launched by Mark Zuckerberg last August in partnership with companies including Nokia and Qualcomm, aims to cut the cost of internet access across the world and connect “the next five billion people” to the web.Reports from TechCrunch suggest that Facebook is interested in buying the drone manufacturer for $60 million and would begin by building 11,000 Solara 60 aircraft to provide internet access in Africa.Titan Aerospace, a private company with research and development facilities in New Mexico, unveiled its Solara 50 and Solara 60 unmanned aerial vehicles last year, marketing them as extremely cheap alternatives to satellites.The craft can be launched at night powered by an internal battery and once airborne use solar panels embedded into their 160-foot long wingspan to power them.

The aircraft have a mission range of over 4 million kilometres and operate at an altitude of 65,000 feet.This places them well above commercial airliners flying at around 30,000 feet, as well as regulated air-space in the US (the FAA’s jurisdiction goes up to 60,000 feet) while the high altitude also means that they are out of reach of turbulence, sitting in a calm atmospheric area known as the tropopause.Speaking to Fortune magazine last year, Titan Aerospace chief electrical engineer Dustin Sanders said that the company wanted to create a “single-million-dollar-per-aircraft platform” as opposed to the billions involved in launching a satellite.“The operation cost is almost nothing,” said Sanders “You're paying some dude to watch the payload and make sure the aircraft doesn't do anything stupid."If Facebook does follow through on this acquisition it would put them into direct competition with Google’s own ‘Project Loon’, a similar initiative that aims to provide internet via a network of high-altitude weather balloons.

Both Facebook and Google’s projects have been criticized in the past for disguising commercial goals as altruism. Microsoft founder Bill Gates was among those who spoke out, noting last year in an interview with Businessweek that “when a kid gets diarrhea, no, there’s no website that relieves that.”Facebook’s interest in providing even slow internet to new parts of the world would also complement its recent acquisition of WhatsApp, a simple mobile messaging service that uses relatively small amounts of data to replace SMS and MMS text messaging.ar drone 2 teknikmagasinetWhile a ‘drone project’ might sound like a significant development for Zuckerberg’s social network, it’s worth remembering that the price being mooted for Titan Aerospace ($60 million) is a fraction of what the company paid for WhatsApp ($19 billion).ar drone 1 indoor hull

L.A. NowFollow the latest updates on the L.A. primary election Google buys satellite company to improve maps, expand Internet access Technology giant Google is buying satellite imaging company Skybox Imaging for $500 million, the company announced Tuesday.The deal would immediately provide Google with the means to improve the quality and immediacy of its satellite imagery used for the company's digital maps, and could serve as a launching pad for the company to improve and increase Internet access around the world.drone buying guide Google will initially begin using Skybox's satellites already in orbit to supplement material used for the company's digital maps. parrot ar drone 2 autonomiaThe company currently licenses material from more than 1,000 other sources for its maps.ar drone mainboard purchase

Nearly two months ago, Google purchased drone maker Titan Aerospace for an undisclosed sum. The company has made nearly 250 acquisitions in the last decade, and has invested billions of dollars in experimental research involving driverless cars, Google Glass and robotics. Skybox was founded five years ago and previously raised around $91 million in venture capital, focusing on cheaper satellites and better imaging. The deal still requires regulatory approval from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as the Federal Communications Commission.ar drone 2 wholesale © 2017, Los Angeles Times Satellite Technology National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationFBI says Moroccan on expired visa plotted drone bombingsFacebook making drones, satellites and lasers to deliver InternetNew satellite images raise hope of retrieving Malaysian jet debrisU.S. Navy sends underwater drone to help in Malaysia plane searchMalaysia Airlines Flight 370: Why aren't drones helping the search?

Fresno Bee newspaper testing drones for covering news, taking picturesThe race for the airborne internet is on. According to multiple reports, Facebook is in talks to buy a drone maker whose solar-powered aircraft could operate as high-altitude wireless hot spots, circling in the stratosphere for years without refueling. That may seem far-fetched, but it’s not entirely surprising in the context of today’s online rivalries. Witness Google, Facebook’s chief nemesis, which is already running its own high-speed internet service down here on the earth — the ever-expanding Google Fiber — not to mention the balloons it’s building to bring internet access to more remote locations from high in the sky. Instead of the intensive, intrusive labor of digging trenches and laying pipes, just send more drones up in the air to bring more homes online. initiative, another effort to bring the net to those parts of the globe that are still offline. Zuckerberg describes this as a philanthropic effort — and it may well be.

But it’s certainly in Facebook’s interest as a business to expand the reach of the internet, just as it is for Google. Google and Facebook are primarily in the business of running web services — and delivering ads on those services. But if these two public companies are to keep expanding, as their shareholders crave, that growth may ultimately depend on the spread of the internet itself. The more people that have access to the internet, the more potential Facebook and Google users. In some respects, this gives the two companies more incentive to grow the net themselves rather than waiting for the old-school ISPs of the world — and they have to money to grow it. At the very least, drones as a way to deliver internet access makes more sense than drones as a way to deliver toothpaste. Last year, Google began testing Project Loon balloons over New Zealand. The project is an offshoot of the secretive Google X skunkworks, which takes seemingly crazy ideas (self-driving cars, Google Glass) and tries to make them real.

Much like Facebook, as it prepares to bring the internet to the hinterlands, Google gives this effort an altruistic veneer. But it’s worth pointing out that this is the company’s second internet service initiative. The first is Google Fiber, the search giant’s ultra-high-speed gambit to become an internet service provider by laying its own cables in the ground. A few U.S. cities already have the promised 1-gigabit-per-second service, and Google recently announced it’s exploring plans to bring Fiber to many more. The company says it wants to see what kind of civic good can come to cities wired up with even faster internet speeds. But establishing such an infrastructure also pushes telecom and cable companies to offer their own high-speed services, which helps Google deliver its own services faster. Ultimately, Fiber may even give Google insurance against the hassles it could face from incumbent ISPs newly empowered to set up internet roadblocks as net neutrality protections disappear.

For now, net neutrality isn’t necessarily as big an issue for Facebook. After all, status updates don’t take up nearly as much bandwidth as YouTube videos. But a company as ambitious as Facebook is always thinking ahead, and drones could give the social network a way to go one better than Google by focusing on putting the internet in the air instead of in the ground. The idea of an airborne internet has been discussed for a long time, but it will likely take a company with the resources of a Facebook or a Google to bring the concept into the real world. From a logistics standpoint, the sky seems like much more efficient, scalable way to build connectivity. Instead of the intensive, intrusive labor of digging trenches and laying pipes, just send more drones up in the air to bring more homes online. If the drones can really stay aloft the way Titan says they can, there’s way more space available in the sky than there is down below. As they become the world’s largest companies, all the internet giants will likely want to control as much of the infrastructure between themselves and their users as possible.