Google Is Developing Technology to Deliver Internet Via Light Bridges

Google just had a lightbulb moment, and it might move internet access out of the (literal) dark ages. Over at the company’s moonshot factory X, researchers have developed a chip that they believe should enable us to deliver high-speed internet access via beams of light, opening up the possibility of making all those underground cables we currently rely on a thing of the past. The project that Google has been working on is code-named Taara, and the team working on it announced on Friday a new, next-generation chip that it believes can make light-based, high-speed internet a reality. The new Taara chip is a “silicon photonic chip,” per the company, that can steer, track, and correct beams of light used to transmit data through the air without the use of cables. Oh, and this chip is about the size of a fingernail, compared to earlier generations that measured in about as big as a traffic light. According to Google, the way Taara works isn’t entirely dissimilar from how fiber optic cable ... Read full article.