Luke McKend on Google ‘Loon’ and driverless cars in Africa

The concept of floating balloons two to three times higher than a commercial jetliner in the stratosphere to provide connectivity to the next billion users may sound a little unreal to some. But this is the brainchild of Google and Alec Hogg gets the inside story with the company’s head of South Africa Luke McKend, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum for Africa in Cape Town.

Luke McKend is the South African Head of Google. Luke, the World Economic Forum, is it a regular place for you to come?

Well it’s actually the third time that I’ve been to the African version, so it’s quite a useful exercise, in terms of meeting lots of different people all in the same place. That would usually be quite difficult to reach, so yes, we’re enjoying it.

It’s more networking. You’re not really spreading a Google message here. Certainly, not like Davos, where you guys are very evident.

I think for us here, it’s more about making connections with some of the people that, as I say, perhaps are more difficult to get to, you know. As we tell our colleagues overseas, Africa is a big place and there are a lot of different countries to reach. It’s very rare that you can reach so many people from so many different countries, in one convention centre, so for us I think it makes a lot of sense to come and speak to a few folks down here.

So what kind of meetings have you been having?

Well I think, very often, what we’re doing is trying to figure out who are the companies that are best placed to either partner with in Africa, to make sure that we achieve our objectives of helping more people get access to the internet. I think that’s incredibly important, and of course, the other is there are a lot of companies that are trying to make use of the internet to help build their businesses and very often, reaching those most senior executives, is quite a difficult task. This is a fantastic opportunity to speak to those people about how transformative the internet can be, even in Africa, especially in Africa.

I was hoping… Yes, especially Africa, because it’s an opportunity to leapfrog, and I was hoping we’d see Google talking about the ‘Loon’, is it called ‘Loon or Balloon’?

‘Loon’.

Google_Loon_-_Launch_Event
A project Loon research balloon

They way that you’re bringing broadband to the Continent, just take us through that.

Well, Loon is one of the projects, and I have to emphasise it’s only one of a few projects that we’re engaged in at the moment. That are looking at how we provide access to the next billion users, whether they’re in Africa, or whether they’re in Asia or in other, relatively inaccessible places.

They’re mostly here, on this Continent.

Look, many of them are here, and I think the reason for why we’re so interested in what the impact that could happen in Africa is that most of the internet connectivity, at the moment, is focused on laying fibre and really deep, infrastructure kind of developments. That is often very expensive to deliver and probably not appropriate in very rural or far-flung areas.

Loon offers an opportunity to use technology to reach people where laying a cable is just not going to happen. We’ve tried and tested it in a few different inhospitable regions, and if you think about the African Continent, there are many places that are fairly far away from urban conglomerations. Loon provides us with an opportunity to float balloons at a height of two to three times the commercial jet airliner. Beneath each balloon we’re able to distribute an internet signal, which can be usually accessed either by some form of Wi-Fi or LTE, so you can imagine. Given that, people may well have a mobile device in their hands, and that’s the primary way that people are going to access the internet in Africa, in any event. Loon could reach those people without having to lay that kind of infrastructure.

Luke, it just rolled off your tongue but you’re talking about balloons, way up in the stratosphere. How does the signal get there in the first place, and then how does it get down to people on the ground?

Well, I’m far less technical than I need to be, in order to answer this question. However, effectively what happens is when the balloons go over a landmass you need to have an uplink to the balloons. They, effectively, run in sequence, so there’ll be a number of balloons, who share that internet connection.

Each of them is then capable of distributing that through a Wi-Fi signal. I think the radius was around about 40 kilometres or so, and so beneath each balloon, you have a slightly overlapping area but you’re able to have a fairly consistent signal as those balloons cover a particular landmass, so that’s, in effect, how it works.

Is the Wi-Fi free?

Well, the way we want to operate, at the moment, is that Google is not particularly interested in owning the end customer. I think the real intent for us is to provide a technology that could be accessible to existing mobile operators, who have existing systems that enable them to reach millions and millions of customers. We make the technology available in ways that it wouldn’t be viable for them to do, and potentially, they lease it off us, but I think the commercial considerations at this stage are probably still under discussion.

So you would then negotiate will cellphone operators, on the Continent, who at the moment are battling to get broadband.

They’ll be able to pull it down from the balloons or the Loon.

And sell it or give it to their subscribers.

Possibly, yes. Yes, I think that’s the kind of model we’re looking at. Look, Google works really well when we partner with others. I think a number of the initiatives that we have, where we go it alone, aren’t’ always our most successful, so I think we’re very keen to make sure that we have the right partners, in each of the different locations for this sort of project.

Have you tied up anyone yet?

I wouldn’t be able to discuss that at this stage.  Well, I suppose it’s still early days.

How early are the early days?

Well, when did we announce it? It must be at least two years old, in terms of actually trialing the technology, but it’s such a new way of distributing the internet. I think when we announced it people were incredulous, so moving from a point where you have incredulity, to credibility. It takes quite a long time. You need to make sure that your technology is absolutely rock solid, in order to do that, so yes, I think a two year period to incubate this sort of technology, is not so long. There is still some time to come.

What is it about Africa that the Google guys are so keen on? I’ve spoken with your Chairman, and with the two founders, have often said that there is something about Africa. They want to get involved here. They want to help. Why?

Look, Google has always been the kind of company that, from the very start, it has been imbued with this sense of something other than the sheer commercial imperative. Whenever you meet people at Google, at senior levels, they seem to share a genuine commitment to using technology to empower people, wherever they are. I think that’s really, where it comes from and it’s not just about the internet, but I think it’s, you know, as Google has evolved. You’ll see that we’re involved in, for instance, driverless cars, a range of medical technologies that could help everybody from diabetics to cancer patients, so there’s a whole range of different technologies that we’re looking at. That are designed to improve the way people live their lives.

There’s a real commitment to making sure that everybody participates in this journey. I think there’s a concern that so much of this development happens in mature internet economies or mature technology economies. That it is possible that you could completely leave out huge sways of the world’s population, and Google is simply not going to let that happen. We want to make sure that everybody participates.

Driverless cars are potentially a massive, massive opportunity for Africa, given the high road accident rate that we have here. Have you got any insight on how far away we are from that, because you kind of don’t have any accidents when you’re with these driverless cars, and if you brought them onto our roads, imagine all the deaths and the lives you could save?

I’m very excited about driverless cars. However, they tend to work really well when most road users tend to behave in a fairly predictable manner, and even in those environments, it’s a relatively complex exercise to make sure that everything runs smoothly.

So are you saying when the guys go through red robots in Johannesburg, the taxis, a driverless car is not going to save you?

I’m just suggesting that perhaps some predictability would be a useful tool to help us introduce these things in different areas of the world.

How far off are they though, because you’ve done, last I saw 1.7million kilometres of driverless cars on Californian roads?

Well we’ve recently just been awarded a license to use the cars in our HQ city, in Mountain View, so you’ll start to see those cars actually on the roads, and I think that’s the kind of real world environment. We need to make sure that they work with them, so you’ll see that starting to happen very soon.

Hopefully coming to Africa not too long after it. How are you doing in South Africa? You haven’t been running the place for that long. Are you making progress?

I’d like to believe so. I think we’re a relatively small operation but there are so many different things that you can do in South Africa and in the rest of Africa. That our job is not being choosing which things, well not being selecting a long list of different opportunities. It’s actually pruning the opportunities that we have. There are so many things, from the commercial to helping businesses transform, digitally. Through to helping users access the internet in ways that make sense, for their everyday lives, and I think you just have to look at the adoption of the internet, by both business and by consumers, over the course of the last four years. Whether it’s Google products or not. That the internet is here to stay. Google is an enormous part of that, and we’d like to make sure that we continue to be relevant to business and users for the time being.

Luke McKend is the country Head for South Africa of Google.   

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