Area 120

Last updated

Area 120
Named after100% of time on 20% Projects
Key people
 Bradley Horowitz, Alex Gawley, Michelle Gonzalez, Balir Connolly, Gabor Cselle, Jackie Bernhelm, Elias Roman, Don Harrison
Parent organization
 Google
Website area120.google.com

Area 120 is Google's in-house incubator in which employees work on 20% Project product ideas. It has helped develop Gmail, AdSense, Google News, Call Center AI, and Aloud, YouTube's translation and dubbing tool. [1]

Contents

The Area 120 division was created by Sundar Pichai in March 2016 and has since spawned over 200 projects. [1] [2] The objective for the Area 120 program is to incubate products that "graduate" back to Google. [1]

In November 2021, the division was reorganized under a new division called Google Labs (unrelated to the defunct service of the same name). [3]

Area 120 was significantly reduced as part of Google's January 2023 layoffs. [4]

Notable products

The program has funded more than 200 different ideas from Google employees. Notable product experiments which have emerged from Area 120 include:

Byteboard spinout

The Byteboard project was spun out from Google into a separate company in Oct 2021, [21] due to Byteboard using Google employees as human evaluators of candidates for Google competitors, which raised ethical issues.

References

  1. 1 2 3 McCracken, Harry (December 3, 2018). "An exclusive look inside Google's in-house incubator Area 120". Fast Company . Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  2. ↑ "Google Unveils Advr, An Experimental Area 120 Project for Advertising in VR". Customer Experience Magazine. June 30, 2017. Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  3. ↑ Perez, Sarah (November 11, 2021). "Google reorg moves AR, VR, Starline and Area 120 into new 'Labs' team". TechCrunch . Archived from the original on November 11, 2021. Retrieved November 14, 2021.
  4. ↑ Wiggers, Kyle (January 21, 2023). "Area 120, Google's in-house incubator, severely impacted by Alphabet mass layoffs". TechCrunch . Archived from the original on January 23, 2023. Retrieved January 23, 2023.
  5. ↑ Perez, Sarah (June 14, 2021). "Google's AirTable rival, Tables, graduates from beta test to become a Google Cloud product". TechCrunch . Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  6. ↑ Garun, Natt (February 22, 2018). "Google's Reply app is woefully bland — exactly the way it should be". The Verge . Retrieved September 29, 2022.
  7. ↑ Perez, Sarah (March 30, 2021). "Google's Area 120 launches Stack, an app that digitizes personal docs and extracts key information". TechCrunch . Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  8. ↑ Singh, Manish; Kene-Okafor, Tage (February 23, 2021). "Area 120 is beginning to use Google's massive reach to scale HTML5 GameSnacks platform". TechCrunch . Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  9. ↑ Vincent, James (June 19, 2020). "Google quietly launches an AI-powered Pinterest rival named Keen". The Verge. Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  10. ↑ Lardinois, Frederic (July 17, 2019). "Google's Area 120 launches Byteboard to improve technical interviews". TechCrunch . Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  11. ↑ Perez, Sarah (October 5, 2021). "Technical interview platform Byteboard spins out of Google's Area 120, takes on new funding". TechCrunch . Retrieved October 5, 2021.
  12. ↑ Heater, Brian (March 18, 2021). "Google Area 120's ThreadIt is bite-size video for team collaborations". TechCrunch . Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  13. ↑ Hetting, Claus (September 8, 2021). "Google's new 'Orion WiFi' empowers public venues to make money on Wi-Fi offload". WiFi Now. Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  14. ↑ Perez, Sarah (July 16, 2020). "Google's latest R&D project is Shoploop, a mobile video shopping platform". TechCrunch . Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  15. ↑ Plautz, Jessica (September 6, 2018). "Easily Find the Best Activities in Top Destinations With This New Tool Out of Google". Travel + Leisure . Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  16. ↑ Poojary, Lax (October 22, 2019). "Touring Bird lands with Google to plan your perfect trip". The Keyword. Google. Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  17. ↑ Perez, Sarah (January 29, 2020). "Google's Area 120 launches Tangi, a short-form video app focused on creativity and DIY". TechCrunch . Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  18. ↑ Perez, Sarah (June 28, 2017). "Google unveils Advr, an experimental Area 120 project for advertising in VR". TechCrunch . Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  19. ↑ Perez, Sarah (November 16, 2017). "Google's chatbot analytics platform Chatbase launches to public". TechCrunch . Retrieved February 9, 2023.
  20. ↑ Ha, Anthony (October 16, 2018). "Google-incubated AdLingo uses chatbot integration to create conversational ads". TechCrunch . Retrieved September 28, 2023.
  21. ↑ Perez, Sarah (October 5, 2021). "Technical interview platform Byteboard spins out of Google's Area 120, takes on new funding". TechCrunch . Retrieved October 5, 2021.
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