From perusing some of today’s most prominent headlines, it looks like mammoth tech company Google is poised to make a significant deal with leading private space exploration firm SpaceX.
Jordan Novet at CNBC reports Google will supply computing and network services to be delivered through SpaceX Starlink satellites.
The project will reportedly utilize Google’s private fiberoptic network, where ground stations at Google data centers will link to the Starlink units.
One interesting component of this deal is that using a fiberoptic network is unusual – also, satellites will replace cell tower technologies.
“In SpaceX’s case, there is no need for cell towers,” Novet writes. “Instead, customers’ devices will communicate to satellites, and then the satellites will link up to Google data centers. Inside those data centers, customers can run applications quickly using Google’s cloud services, or they can send the information on to other companies’ services that are geographically nearby, enabling low latency so there’s minimal lag. Data then comes right back through the Google data centers to satellites, and then down to end users.”
One of the more confusing elements of the deal with Google involves a prior arrangement with Microsoft, where SpaceX and Microsoft constructed something called Azure Space for cloud services.
Novet reports how this will work with Google setup:
“SpaceX would still rely on Google data centers in that scenario,” Novet writes. “Data would travel from the customer’s Azure modular data center through the Starlink satellite to Google’s data center and then out to other cloud services — and return in the opposite direction.”
If you have tech holdings in the FAANG group or elsewhere, you may want to keep an eye on how these firms are courting clients like SpaceX – companies that have some pretty ambitious goals and heavy communications needs in order to achieve them.
At press time, Microsoft stock sits at $244 per share.
