Google added new property in its portfolio: acquires Solar Drone Maker Titan Aerospace

Internet giant Google has added a major new property to its portfolio. The Menlo Park, California-based multinational company recently purchased Titan Aerospace, a two-year-old startup that makes high-altitude, solar-powered drones. It’s part of a new Silicon Valley push to find ways of expanding Internet service to currently hard-to-reach areas, particularly to regions in developing countries.

"Titan Aerospace and Google share a profound optimism about the potential for technology to improve the world," Google said in a media statement. "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."

“At Titan Aerospace, we’re passionate believers in the potential for technology (and in particular, atmospheric satellites) to improve people’s lives,” Titan wrote in a similar statement on its website. “It’s still early days for the technology we’re developing, and there are a lot of ways that we think we could help people, whether it’s providing internet connections in remote areas or helping monitor environmental damage like oil spills and deforestation.”

Though Titan will continue to operate separately from Google on the continued development of its propeller-driven drones, the two companies collaborate on services and initiatives like Google Map-s and Project Loon, a balloon-based drone endeavor.

Among the top reasons for Google’s purchase of Titan likely is the fact that Titan-made drones can remain in the air for up to five years without ever touching the ground or refueling. This could have hugely positive implications for expanding Internet service to remote locations and significantly speeding up service in already-serviced locales.

Of course, it also lends to the one-upmanship going on between Google and Facebook, which earlier this year dropped a cool $20 million for the purchase of solar drone maker Ascenta. Over the past few years, the tech fight has seen Facebook pay $19 billion for the WhatsApp mobile messaging service, and $2 billion for virtual-reality firm Oculus VR; and Google spending more billions to buy Nest, which makes connected home devices like thermostats and smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, as well as wearable gadgets, driverless cars and even military robots.
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