Google beats Facebook to buy Titan Aerospace drone maker Last month, rumour surfaced that Facebook was planning to buy drone manufacturer Titan Aerospace in a bid to provide free Wi-Fi to the world. That has now officially been confirmed, because Google has just announced it recently bought Titan Aerospace. Titan Aerospace and Google will be working on Project Loon, producing high-altitude balloons that will provide internet access via Wi-Fi to areas with little or no connectivity. “It’s still early days, but atmospheric satellites could help bring internet access to millions of people, and help solve other problems, including disaster relief and environmental damage like deforestation. It’s why we’re so excited to welcome Titan Aerospace to the Google family,” Google said in a statement. On the other hand, Facebook hasn’t completely lost out. Last month, Mark Zuckerberg announced the company had bought another drone-making company called Ascenta, to carry out its own drone project.

Google did not reveal exactly how much it paid for Titan Aerospace.Google has bought Titan Aerospace. Yes, you heard that correctly.  The very same Titan Aerospace that Facebook wanted to acquire.  Google have snatched the firm right from under Zuckerberg’s nose.  Last month Facebook  was allegedly in talks to buy Titan Aerospace for approximately $60 million.  The disclosure of the amount that Google has paid is not public. The WSJ has allegedly claimed Google want to boost their aerial technology, the company has consequently acquired Titan Aerospace, though the final purchase price has not been disclosed. This report further claimed that Titan Aerospace and its staff of 20 employees will stay in New Mexico, and Vern Raburn, chief executive officer, will continue to oversee the day to day running of the business. We reported in early March about Facebook wanting to acquire Titan Aerospace for their latest purchase and TechCrunch reported that Facebook has planned to build 11,000 Solara 60 drones to offer Internet access in Africa.

These drones would be classed as “atmospheric satellites” for monitoring weather, assisting in disaster recovery and offering communication capabilities.drone machine buy If Facebook purchased Titan, it would see the social network rival Google’s Project Loon, which is aiming to offer Internet connectivity via air balloons. ar drone 2 control ipaIn addition to this, Facebook most probably wanted to further connect Africa, because of the newly acquired WhatsApp service.ar drone 2 acheter Google however has seized Titan Aerospace first. ar drone 3 uscitaThe Wall Street Journal has said the Titan team would now work directly with Google’s Project Loon, thereby helping to build large, high-altitude balloons that send Internet signals to the offline world.google to buy drones

Titan’s drones are capable of collecting real-time, high-resolution images of the Earth. ar drone 2 ldlcThe technology also features atmospheric sensors and supports voice and data services. This also means Google could use them with Google Maps.  The Titan team may also work with Google’s Makani project, developing airborne wind turbines for energy efficiency.  I can see a future acquirement of Altaeros Energies may be in the pipeline, although the Makani project is similar, so who knows? As always, if you would like to leave a sensible comment, then please do so in the comments section below.Google X has shut down its internet-drone project Titan, pinning all its hopes on balloons in the sky, a divergent path from rival Facebook. Three years after it bought Titan Aerospace, a maker of high-altitude solar-powered drones attracting serious interest from Facebook, Google has now washed its hands of it.

In early 2016, after two years of significant testing, the company decided that drones were not the best way to deliver internet capabilities to every corner of the globe, breaking up Titan and spreading its 50-strong workforce throughout the rest of Alphabet. “The team from Titan was brought into X in late 2015. We ended our exploration of high-altitude UAVs for internet access shortly after,” an X spokesperson said. That means there is one less project looking to fill our skies with internet providers, though Google remains at the forefront with Project Loon, which is attempting to fill the skies with drone balloons providing internet throughout the globe. The project is already powering ahead with testing. “At this stage, the economics and technical feasibility of Project Loon present a much more promising way to connect rural and remote parts of the world,” said the X spokesperson. “Many people from the Titan team are now using their expertise as part of other high-flying projects at X, including Loon and Project Wing.”

Google also owns a stake in SpaceX, which is looking to use a series of small, low-cost satellites to achieve the same thing. Samsung is looking to get in on the action, with 4,600 low-orbit satellites thought to be the way forward for the South Korean company. Richard Branson is backing OneWeb’s project, which is quite similar to Samsung’s plans. Back on the drone planes side of things, Facebook, which tried buying Titan before Google, is working on its own version. It successfully tested out a variation in the UK last year. Called the Aquila project, Facebook’s 130ft-long aircraft will, should it work, circle in the upper atmosphere, using lasers to broadcast data down to base stations on the ground.When Google bought Titan Aerospace two years ago, the industry was curious over what Google’s plan for the drone startup was. Titan Aerospace was a company that developed solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles that could function like near-earth satellites.

Facebook was originally planning to acquire the startup and use it to provide internet service around the world.  Now, it seems that Google has the same plans for the company.It would later emerge that Google has folded Titan Aerospace, now named Google Titan, into its access company (the company under Google’s reorganization that handles internet access). The Guardian then published a report revealing that Google was experimenting with drones providing internet access.More recently, The Guardian published a story on Google which reveals that it has been testing the drones to deliver high-speed internet in New Mexico.The project, codenamed SkyBender, could potentially deliver the next generation 5G wireless internet service using millimeter-wave radio transmissions to deliver gigabits of data every second, more than 40 times that of 4G LTE systems.The company was building transceivers to receive this signal at a spaceport it rented from Virgin Galactic. The tech giant is temporarily using the Gateway to Space terminal to house its drones and has installed a dedicated flight control center.

Ultimately, Google is paying Virgin Galactic $1,000 a day for the use of a hangar in the Gateway to Space building and the associated facilities. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has previously demonstrated the feasibility of using millimeter wave transmissions to provide internet access from drones. Millimeter-wave transmissions however have a shorter range compared to that of mobile signals. A comparison of the range between transmissions using millimeter-wave  and 4G would reveal that, within a tenth of the distance covered by 4G, the signal from the drone would have faded out.To circumvent this problem, Google experimented with focusing transmissions using a phased array. A phased array allows the company to focus the transmissions to travel much farther, but it requires a lot of technical expertise and is very complex to develop. Outside studies using such an instrument were able to sustain a signal of 2 Gbps across 200 meters, a very impressive feat that reflects the challenges of using millimeter waves.

A recent startup, Starry, is promising to deliver gigabit internet using phased arrays; however, industry experts are skeptical over the technical challenges that it needs to overcome.Google faces similar hurdles for Project SkyBender with the added complication of drones. Millimeter-waves can be scattered by things like fog, snow, and other bad weather, hampering their performance as a means for reliably transmitting data.If successful, Google could undercut broadband providers like AT&T and Verizon similar to what it has accomplished with Google Fiber. Its drone could also help provide broadband to rural areas and out of service areas at a cheaper price, as Google does not need to install any fiber connections.A recent study by the US Federal Commission for Communication has revealed problems with deploying broadband across the United States.But if there’s anything the Silicon Valley company has showed us, it is not afraid to toy with ideas and go out and accomplish it. After all, this is the same company that is experimenting whether they could provide internet access from balloons.