[1] On June 16, 2013, Google launched about 30 balloons in New Zealand in coordination with the country's Civil Aviation Authority from the Tekapo area in the South Island.

[1] After this initial trial, Google planned on sending up 300 balloons around the world at the 40th parallel south that would provide coverage to New Zealand, Australia, Chile, and Argentina.

Alphabet felt this would greatly increase Internet usage in developing countries in regions such as Africa and Southeast Asia that can not afford to lay underground fiber cable.

[12] In May 2014, Google X laboratories director Eric "Astro" Teller announced that, rather than negotiate a section of bandwidth that was free for them worldwide, they would instead become a temporary base station that could be leased by the mobile operators of the country it was crossing over.

This was based on work done by the Access Field Development Director, Kai Wulff, who was involved in fiber and broadband roll-outs in Emerging Markets from the early 2000s.

[18] On October 6, 2017, Google filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and cleared it the same day, with authorization to start immediately to provide emergency LTE coverage to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló announced at a press conference on October 8, 2017, the launch of Google's Loon Project on the Caribbean island, following its approval by the FCC.

[20] On November 9, 2017, it was reported that Google had launched several balloons from Nevada and positioned them over Puerto Rico as part of an effort to bring 100,000 people online.

In an article on the Medium website, Loon's CTO Sal Candido explained some of the navigational techniques the autonomous balloons employed, such as tacking, loitering, and figure 8s, to deliver Internet service in the most efficient way possible.

[27] On October 28, 2020, Loon claimed a record duration flight of 312 days for a balloon (HBAL703) launched from Puerto Rico in May 2019 which landed in Baja, Mexico in March 2020.

[7] In his announcement, Teller said "Sadly, despite the team's groundbreaking technical achievements over the last 9 years […] the road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than hoped.

"[7] The system aimed to bring Internet access to remote and rural areas poorly served by existing provisions, and to improve communication during natural disasters to affected regions.

Initially, the balloons communicated using unlicensed 2.4 and 5.8 GHz ISM bands,[33] and Google claimed that the setup allowed it to deliver "speeds comparable to 3G" to users, but they then switched to LTE[34] with cellular spectrum by cooperating with local telecommunication operators.

[35] It is unclear how technologies that rely on short communications times (low latency pings), such as VoIP, might need to be modified to work in an environment similar to mobile phones where the signal may have to relay through multiple balloons before reaching the wider Internet.

[36][37] Google also experimented with laser communication technology to interconnect balloons at high altitude and achieved a data rate of 155 Mbit/s over a distance of 100 km (62 mi).

They did this by adjusting the volume and density of internal gas (which is composed of either helium, hydrogen or another lighter-than-air substance), which allowed the balloon's variable buoyancy system to control the altitude.

[45] The prototype ground stations used a Ubiquiti Networks 'Rocket M5'[42] radio and a custom patch antenna[46] to connect to the balloons at a height of 20 km (12 mi).