Sidewalk Labs

Last updated

Sidewalk Labs LLC
Type Subsidiary
Industry Urban planning, infrastructure
FoundedJune 10, 2015;8 years ago (2015-06-10)
HeadquartersNew York, NY, U.S.
Key people
Parent
Website sidewalklabs.com

Sidewalk Labs LLC [1] is an urban planning and infrastructure subsidiary of Google. Its stated goal is to improve urban infrastructure through technological solutions, and tackle issues such as cost of living, efficient transportation and energy usage. [2] [3] The company was headed by Daniel L. Doctoroff, former Deputy Mayor of New York City for economic development and former chief executive of Bloomberg L.P. [4] until 2021. Other notable employees include Craig Nevill-Manning, co-founder of Google's New York office and inventor of Froogle, and Rohit Aggarwala, who served as chief policy officer of the company and is now Commissioner of New York City Department of Environmental Protection. [5] [6] It was originally part of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, before being absorbed into Google in 2021 following Doctoroff's departure from the company due to a suspected ALS diagnosis. [7]

Contents

Projects

Sidewalk Toronto

An open house at Sidewalk Labs' Toronto office, called "307" Sidewalk Labs Toronto Open House.jpg
An open house at Sidewalk Labs' Toronto office, called "307"

In April 2016, The Information reported that Sidewalk intended to create a new city in the United States to test design ideas prior to real world implementation. [8] Sidewalk did not confirm that report, but has said it had engaged in thought experiments about what it could be like to develop a community "from the internet up." [9]

In October 2017, Sidewalk Labs announced plans to develop Quayside, a 12-acre (4.9 ha) neighborhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in response to a competition organized by Waterfront Toronto. Branded as Sidewalk Toronto, the project aims to become "a testbed for emerging technologies, materials and processes" to address issues such as sustainability, accessibility, inclusiveness and prosperity in urban communities. [10] [11] The initiative is also envisioned to be scaled up across Toronto's Port Lands, an 800-acre (320 ha) area that is one of the largest areas of underdeveloped urban land in North America. [12] The project progressed slowly with ongoing consultation from the public. [13]

In 2018, the company opened a new Toronto office and began holding weekend open houses in which visitors from the public contributed their ideas to the development of the Sidewalk Toronto project. [13] In 2019, Sidewalk Labs said it had consulted thousands of Torontonians for its development plans. However, representatives of Waterfront Toronto's Digital Strategy Advisory Panel (DSAP) said that Sidewalk Labs's projects contained too much "tech for tech's sake." [14] [15]

In May 2020, the project was abandoned due to the economic uncertainty posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. [16] [17]

Development Advisory Services

Sidewalk Labs offers advisory services for real estate developers to use technology to meet environmental, affordability, and equity goals. Sidewalk Labs has advised on the following four projects: [18] [19]

Traffic flow in the United States

In early 2016, Sidewalk Labs began working with ten cities which participated in the U.S. Department of Transportation's "Smart Cities Challenge" to help cities better understand daily street activity through the use of real-time data. The Challenge attracted dozens of medium-sized cities across the US to compete for $40 million in federal funding [20] along with an additional $10 million from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation [21] to assess road data gathered from smartphones to analyze congestion and other traffic conditions, and develop a transportation coordination platform to improve the efficiency of road, parking, and transit use. [3] [22] The winner, Columbus, Ohio, was announced in June 2016. [23] [24]

Products

Investments and portfolio companies

Sidewalk Labs invests in and incubates companies which develop tools that can support Sidewalk Labs initiatives and scale to cities around the world. [28]

In June 2015, Sidewalk Labs led a group of investors in the acquisition of Control Group and Titan forming a new company called Intersection. [29] Intersection works in cities and public spaces to offer internet connectivity, information, and content. [30]

Cityblock

Cityblock Health was spun-out of Sidewalk Labs in 2017. Its goal is to improve health care for low-income people with difficult medical needs. It employs over 500 people and has patients in three US states and Washington, DC. [31] [32]

Coord

In 2018, Sidewalk Labs introduced a spin-off Coord, a company focused on providing RESTful APIs for accessing information like routing, bike share details, toll information, and curbside details. [33] [34] In October 2018, Coord raised an additional $5 million to continue building products. [35]

Replica

Replica is an AI-powered data platform which helps cities make operational or infrastructural changes in response to changes in population behaviors. [36] It began as a project at Sidewalk Labs in 2017 and was spun out as an independent company in 2019. [37]

Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP)

Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP) was spun-off from Sidewalk Labs in 2019 to develop technologies that modernize infrastructure such as recycling, waste disposal and transportation in communities throughout the United States. [38] [39]

Ori

Sidewalk Labs invested in Boston-based robotic home interior design company Ori in 2019. [40]

Nico

The Neighborhood Investment Company (Nico) allows local residents to make small, long-term real estate investments in their own neighborhoods. Sidewalk Labs invested in Nico at the end of 2019. [41]

VoltServer

In late 2019, Sidewalk Labs invested in VoltServer, which strives to "make electricity safe" and overlays data on electricity distribution. [42]

The Yellow Book

Sidewalk Labs provides a coffee table book to employees known as The Yellow Book, which contains aspirational designs of a futurist city run on its technology. [43] In the book, the company proposes expanding its scope to include the power to levy taxes, control public services such as schools, roads, and public transportation, collect data on the current and past locations of all members of the community, and to help redesign the local criminal justice system. The book also describes a social credit system to reward "good behavior", a system which has been compared by some to the one used in China. Sidewalk's proposed system also included rewards for sharing personal data. [44]

The book also includes the potential real estate profitability of such investments, containing theoretical proposals for communities in Detroit, Denver, and Alameda, California. The company has described this book as a "wide-ranging brainstorming process", and stated that most of its ideas were never considered for the Toronto project. [44]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google</span> American multinational technology company

Google LLC is an American multinational technology company focusing on artificial intelligence, online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, and consumer electronics. It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" and as one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in the field of artificial intelligence. Alongside Amazon, Apple Inc., Meta Platforms, and Microsoft, Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. is one of the five Big Tech companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Cavoukian</span> Canadian civil servant (born 1952)

Ann Cavoukian is the former Information and Privacy Commissioner for the Canadian province of Ontario. Her concept of privacy by design, which takes privacy into account throughout the system engineering process, was expanded on, as part of a joint Canadian-Dutch team, both before and during her tenure as commissioner of Ontario.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Health</span> Division of Google

Google Health was a project by Google designed as an attempt to create a repository of health records and data in order to connect doctors, hospitals and pharmacies directly. The project was introduced in 2008 and discontinued in 2012. Google Health was restarted in 2018 but appeared to be discontinued in 2021 and was officially called an "effort" rather than a separate division as of 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel L. Doctoroff</span> American businessman

Daniel Louis Doctoroff is an American businessman and former government official. From 2015 to 2021, he served as chief executive officer of Sidewalk Labs, a startup company he helped found focused on technology for city life. Previously, he was the CEO and president of Bloomberg L.P., deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding for the New York City under Mike Bloomberg from January 2002 – December 31, 2007, led New York City's bid for the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics, and was a managing partner at Oak Hill Capital Partners, a private equity investment firm.

Jigsaw LLC is a technology incubator created by Google. As of February 2020, it is under Google management and used to operate as an independent subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Based in New York City, Jigsaw is dedicated to understanding global challenges and applying technological solutions, from "countering extremism", online censorship and cyber-attacks, to protecting access to information. Jared Cohen, formerly with the Policy Planning Committee at the US State Department, was the CEO of Jigsaw until 2022, and was formerly co-founder and director of Google Ideas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">X Development</span> American research and development company

X Development LLC, doing business as X, is an American semi-secret research and development facility and organization founded by Google in January 2010. X has its headquarters about a mile and a half from Alphabet's corporate headquarters, the Googleplex, in Mountain View, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Nest</span> Brand of smart home products by Google

Google Nest is a line of smart home products including smart speakers, smart displays, streaming devices, thermostats, smoke detectors, routers and security systems including smart doorbells, cameras and smart locks.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP), offered by Google, is a suite of cloud computing services that runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products, such as Google Search, Gmail, Google Drive, and YouTube. Alongside a set of management tools, it provides a series of modular cloud services including computing, data storage, data analytics and machine learning. Registration requires a credit card or bank account details.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DigitalOcean</span> American cloud infrastructure provider

DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational technology company and cloud service provider. The company is headquartered in New York City, New York, USA, with 15 globally distributed data centers. DigitalOcean provides developers, startups, and SMBs with cloud infrastructure-as-a-service platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Databricks</span> American enterprise software company

Databricks, Inc. is an American enterprise software company founded by the creators of Apache Spark. Databricks develops a web-based platform for working with Spark, that provides automated cluster management and IPython-style notebooks. The company develops Delta Lake, an open-source project to bring reliability to data lakes for machine learning and other data science use cases.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GitLab</span> Open-source Git software package

GitLab Inc. is an open-core company that operates GitLab, a DevOps software package which can develop, secure, and operate software. The open source software project was created by Ukrainian developer Dmytro Zaporozhets and Dutch developer Sytse Sijbrandij. In 2018, GitLab Inc. was considered to be the first partly-Ukrainian unicorn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alphabet Inc.</span> American multinational technology conglomerate

Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries. Alphabet is the world's third-largest technology company by revenue and one of the world's most valuable companies. It is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quayside, Toronto</span> Neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Quayside is a waterfront district slated for redevelopment in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Formerly dockland and industrial uses, The Waterfront Toronto government agency intends for a new housing development to be built between the East Bayfront and Port Lands neighbourhoods, a site of 4.9 hectares of land. A smart city project was in the planning stages, proposed by Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., named Sidewalk Toronto. Alphabet announced the cancellation of the project on May 7, 2020. Development of the site is now on hold.

Sidewalk Toronto is a cancelled urban development project proposed by Sidewalk Labs at Quayside, a waterfront area in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This project was first initiated by Waterfront Toronto in 2017 by issuing the request for proposal (RFP) on development of the Quayside area. Sidewalk Labs, which is a subsidiary of Google, won the bid in 2017. The Master Innovation Development Plan (MIDP) was created in 2019 through conversations with over 21,000 Torontonians and aimed to be an innovative reinvention of Toronto's neglected eastern downtown waterfront.

Saadia Muzaffar is a Canadian entrepreneur, author and founder of TechGirls Canada.

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, and Google Cardboard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rohit Aggarwala</span> American environmentalist

Rohit T. "Rit" Aggarwala is an Indian-American environmental policy adviser, transportation planner, historian, and civil servant who is New York City’s Chief Climate Officer as well as the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dream Unlimited</span> Canadian real estate company

Dream Unlimited Corporation is a Canadian real estate development company that is developing the Waterfront Toronto property on Lake Ontario. It has $15 billion of real estate assets.

References

  1. "Sidewalk Labs LLC". OpenCorporates . June 11, 2015. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  2. Rosenfield, Karissa (August 11, 2015). "Google (Alphabet) "Sidewalk Labs" Seeks to Improve City Life". ArchDaily . Archived from the original on August 15, 2015. Retrieved December 11, 2015.
  3. 1 2 Kamran, Bilal (April 6, 2016). "Alphabet Inc Subsidiary Sidewalk Labs Hints at Development Plans for a New City". BidnessEtc. Archived from the original on October 8, 2016. Retrieved May 27, 2021.
  4. Lohr, Steve (June 10, 2015). "Sidewalk Labs, a Start-Up Created by Google, Has Bold Aims to Improve City Living". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on June 11, 2015. Retrieved January 10, 2016.
  5. "Sidewalk Labs, Google's Company for Cities, Builds Its Inaugural Executive Team". Vox . February 22, 2016. Archived from the original on September 8, 2019. Retrieved April 22, 2016.
  6. "Sidewalk Labs' Rohit Aggarwala on building Toronto's first smart neighbourhood". MobileSyrup. March 20, 2018. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  7. Lyons, Kim (December 16, 2021). "Sidewalk Labs will be folded into Google as CEO steps down for health reasons". The Verge . Archived from the original on December 17, 2021. Retrieved December 17, 2021.
  8. Lessin, Jessica (April 14, 2016). "Alphabet's Sidewalk Preps Proposal for Digital District". The Information . Archived from the original on April 22, 2016. Retrieved April 16, 2016.
  9. Williams, Jake (May 4, 2017). "Google wants to build a city". Statescoop. Retrieved May 5, 2017.
  10. Rider, David (October 4, 2017). "Google firm poised to partner on Toronto high-tech neighbourhood". Toronto Star . Retrieved October 4, 2017.
  11. "Waterfront Toronto Takes First Step in Building Quayside: A New Community That Will Provide Testbed for Solutions to Pressing Urban Challenges". Waterfront Toronto . March 17, 2017. Retrieved October 4, 2017.
  12. "Sidewalk Toronto". Sidewalk Toronto . Retrieved October 18, 2017.
  13. 1 2 Keung, Nicholas (June 17, 2018). "Curious minds drawn to opening of Sidewalk Toronto workshop". Toronto Star . Archived from the original on June 17, 2018. Retrieved December 16, 2021.
  14. "Google's smart-city plans 'tech for tech's sake'". BBC News. September 12, 2019.
  15. "DSAP Preliminary Commentary and Questions on Sidewalk Labs' Draft Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP)" (PDF).
  16. Carter, Adam; Rieti, John Rieti (May 7, 2020). "Sidewalk Labs cancels plan to build high-tech neighbourhood in Toronto amid COVID-19". CBC News. Retrieved August 9, 2020.
  17. Doctoroff, Daniel L. (May 7, 2020). "Why we're no longer pursuing the Quayside project — and what's next for Sidewalk Labs". Medium. Retrieved August 9, 2020.
  18. Rodriguez, Rene (June 22, 2021). "Moishe Mana's massive, long-dormant Wynwood project shows tiny sparks of life". Miami Herald.
  19. "Alphabet's Getting Into Commercial Real Estate Consulting, But Not To Throw Google's Weight Around". Bisnow.
  20. Hawkins, Andrew J. (February 22, 2016). "Sidewalk Labs hires 'dream team' to tackle city design in the self-driving age". The Verge.
  21. "All the tech that went into turning Columbus, Ohio, into a 'Smart City'". TechCrunch .
  22. "Sidewalk Labs – Flow". Archived from the original on May 8, 2017. Retrieved May 27, 2021.
  23. Marshall, Aarian (June 28, 2021). "America's 'Smart City' Didn't Get Much Smarter". Wired. Retrieved January 26, 2022.
  24. Simonite, Tom. "Portland's Face-Recognition Ban Is a New Twist on 'Smart Cities'". Wired . ISSN   1059-1028.
  25. "Sidewalk Labs tool aims to boost building energy efficiency". Smart Cities Dive.
  26. "Sidewalk Labs Reimagines Urban Planning with New Delve Generative Design Tool". ArchDaily. October 13, 2020.
  27. "Sidewalk Labs launches Pebble, a sensor that uses real-time data to manage city parking". TechCrunch.
  28. "Incubated and Portfolio Companies". Sidewalk Labs. May 27, 2021.
  29. D'Onfro, Jillian. "Google is funding a plan to bring free Wi-Fi to NYC". Business Insider. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  30. "Intersection – About Us".
  31. Tozzi, John (December 10, 2020). "Health Startup for Low-Income Patients Hits $1 Billion Valuation". Bloomberg L.P.
  32. "Public health startup Cityblock raises $65M Series B". TechCrunch .
  33. "Coord will get you there one way or another with its new APIs". TechCrunch . Retrieved December 2, 2018.
  34. Marshall, Aarian. "Sidewalk Labs Is Building a Platform for Making the City of Tomorrow". Wired . Retrieved December 2, 2018.
  35. "Coord, a Sidewalk Labs spin-out, raises $5 million to help mobility services better integrate into cities". TechCrunch . Retrieved December 2, 2018.
  36. Wolpow, Nina. "Sidewalk Labs Spinout Replica Raises $41 Million Series B". Forbes .
  37. "Sidewalk Labs spinout Replica plans expansion to Europe and Asia". Cities Today. April 27, 2021.
  38. "Sidewalk Labs launches advanced infrastructure partnership". Smart Cities World.
  39. "Exclusive: Alphabet vets raise $400 million to remake America's infrastructure". Fortune .
  40. "Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs leads $20 million round into Ori's robotic furniture for small spaces". VentureBeat . September 5, 2019.
  41. "The Brief: Neighborhood investment companies, inclusive fintech in Indonesia and Nigeria, solar financing in India, tele-health training, letter from Santiago". ImpactAlpha. December 4, 2019.
  42. "VoltServer adds a data layer to electricity distribution in a move that could help smart grid rollout". TechCrunch .
  43. Farr, Christina; D'Onfro, Jillian (June 27, 2018). "Google sister-company Sidewalk has a secret 'yellow book' with its plans to reinvent cities, plus possible sites beyond Toronto". CNBC . Retrieved November 1, 2019.
  44. 1 2 Cardoso, Tom; O'Kane, Josh (October 30, 2019). "Sidewalk Labs document reveals company's early vision for data collection, tax powers, criminal justice". The Globe and Mail . Retrieved November 1, 2019.