In doing so, the 4-year-old “Project Loon” says it will be able to bring remote parts of the world online more quickly with a smaller fleet of the balloons than it previously thought. Engineers involved in the eccentric project, a part of the X Lab owned by Google’s corporate parent Alphabet Inc., say they have come up with algorithms that enable the high-flying balloons to do a better job anticipating shifting wind conditions so they hover above masses of land for several months instead of orbiting the earth.