Meet Taara, Google's innovative project to redefine internet connectivity
02 Mar 2025

Alphabet's innovation hub, X, is leading a project called Taara, which aims to redefine internet connectivity.

The effort came from a team that was once part of Loon, an ambitious project to provide internet through high-altitude balloons.

Though it was eventually discontinued in 2021 due to an unviable business model, the Loon team has now set its sights on laser beams for high-bandwidth data transmission.

A leap toward laser-based internet connectivity
Taara's evolution

Taara, the successor to Loon, is a laser-based tech promising high-speed internet delivery.

The project recently introduced a chip to boost its capabilities, potentially revolutionizing how we connect to the internet by using light instead of radio waves.

The team behind this groundbreaking work is led by Mahesh Krishnaswamy, a former Loon engineer who has been passionate about connectivity since his early days in Chennai.

Bridging the global connectivity gap
Connectivity challenge

Krishnaswamy admits that despite the world being more connected than ever, there are still problems.

He estimates that some three billion people are still offline and many others have slow speeds that aren't good enough for streaming.

Krishnaswamy thinks Taara can offer much more bandwidth at a lower price than existing solutions like Starlink, particularly in densely populated regions where bandwidth is shared.

Taara's light bridges: A real-world solution
Technology application

Taara's technology has already been deployed in several countries, including a prominent project that linked Brazzaville and Kinshasa on the other side of the Congo River.

The company's "light bridges," which are land-based devices, can provide data at fiber-optic cable-like speeds without the hassle of physically installing these cables.

However, conventional methods still have to be used to transfer data from the bridge to end-user devices like phones or computers.

Silicon photonic chip is a game-changer
Technological advancement

Taara's engineers have created a silicon photonic chip that could shrink the size of light bridges' components and possibly enable a single laser transmitter to connect with multiple receptors.

Astro Teller, X's "captain of moonshots," thinks this tech could revolutionize internet connectivity just like data storage went from tape drives to solid-state devices.

Krishnaswamy and Teller see Taara tech powering high-bandwidth internet access where fiber-optic connections are missing.