Did Google/Alphabet ever try to build a Starlink?

Yes, they essentially did. Project Loon used balloons rather than satellites, but is otherwise surprisingly similar to Starlink, technically.

And as far as I've heard, a lot of Project Loon personnel ended up at SpaceX.

Also, the synergy may be a good part of the reason why Google was a large early investor in SpaceX.

https://x.company/projects/loon/

The original effort was all the way back in 1997 by a company called Teledesic. But it was essentially abandoned after other satcom constellations like Iridium when bankrupt.

Loon was an interesting attempt. I'm surprised we don't see any one trying to make HAPS (high altitude solar powered drones, essentially) work for communications. In principle they can do the same as satellites but more effectively and at better latency. A good HAPS network over the US could probably offer better than Starlink service for cheaper.

The bottleneck was always getting satellites up in space. SpaceX has an effective monopoly on launches at this point, so it isn't a surprise that they were the first ones to establish themselves in the satellite internet market.

Rockets are just really expensive. It's hard to get stuff into orbit cheaply, and even now I wouldn't be surprised if Starlink is a net-loss product for SpaceX still.

Google's business strategy for the longest time has revolved around selling software services. AdSense, YouTube, Google Drive - all of these are services they can scale up by turning a knob and waiting for servers to spin up. Rocket science is a whole different ball game, and one that most businesses simply can't justify regardless of the scale they're at.

Yes. The project was “global bit” or “gBit” and it was also looking at a satellite constellation. It got cancelled in 2014ish. This was unrelated to Loon

Source: got approval to transfer to work on it the very day it was cancelled.

Starlink is a futurist project which is really what Elon Musk wants to be. For something like Google they wouldn't do this typically because as a company and their leadership they aren't futurists.

Google has typically invested in existing viable technologies and forced them into a lower price point to make them more available. Google fiber was introduced 14 years ago when that kind of speed was unheard of. At the time most ISPs wanted to have bandwidth caps and rate limits because they were afraid of people abusing the network. Google came in and showed that it was viable to do at a price point for the residential consumer. This forced the market to adapt. Google also had a similar program with cellular service as well.

We shouldn't be filling low or it with all this junk that's going to be obsolete in 10 years.

What a huge waste of energy, orbital space and pollution of the upper atmosphere when these eventually come back down, Elon needs to stop.

No. They could not even get fiber rolled out to the US. They started well but it requires immense power in local and federal level that takes decades (yes, decades) to accommodate.

Starlink would have then their focus out of search and AI which they clearly understand better and dominate.

Also, there is nothing innovative from Musk itself as far as starlink goes. More than half of research and implementation is funded by USG and Tax Payer funded rebates and concessions.

Rockets are expensive Google should team with Blue Horizons or SpaceX to use their rockets to launch their version of Starlink or rent Starlink's satellites for cheaper to establish their Internet in space.