Google in talks with government over Project Loon: reports

Google has been in talks with the Indian government to introduce its Project Loon, an internet project which makes use of high-altitude balloons to beam affordable internet across the globe to people who do not have access, Wall Street Journal reported.

The report quoted Mohammad Gawdat, VP of business innovation at Google X, as saying the company planned to launch a commercial format that would allow coverage on ''every square inch'' on earth by 2016. He added that the company was working 'closely' with telcos and governments across the world to achieve this.

The project would deploy balloons that rose 20 km above the earth and using software algorithms, Loon determined where the balloons needed to go depending upon the wind. It started as a pilot project in New Zealand with the launch of 30 balloons. In November, Google announced that Project Loon had the ability to launch up to 20 balloons per day. A Google+ post said it was possible as the auto fill equipment had improved and the time to fill the balloon fallen under 5 minutes.

According to Google, the balloons could now last up to 10 times longer in the stratosphere than they did in 2013 and a lot of them had lasted over 100 days with 130 days being a record.