This article contains promotional content .(August 2024) |
X | |
Formerly | Google X (2010–2015) |
Company type | Division |
Industry | Research and development |
Founded | January 2010 |
Founders | |
Headquarters | , United States |
Key people | Astro Teller (CEO) |
Products | |
Parent | |
Subsidiaries | Subsidiaries
|
Website | x |
X Development LLC, [2] [3] [4] doing business as X (formerly Google X), [1] is an American semi-secret research and development facility and organization founded by Google in January 2010. [5] [6] X has its headquarters about a mile and a half from Alphabet's corporate headquarters, the Googleplex, in Mountain View, California. [7] [8]
X's mission is to invent and launch "moonshot" technologies that aim to make the world a radically better place. [9] A moonshot is defined by X as the intersection of a big problem, a radical solution, and breakthrough technology. [10] Work at X is overseen by entrepreneur scientist Astro Teller, as CEO and "Captain of Moonshots". [11] [12] [13] The lab started with the development of Google's self-driving car. [13]
The purpose of Taara is to expand global access to quick, affordable internet connections with beams of light. After a successful use of free-space optical communication (FSOC) as a part of Project Loon, [14] X decided to conduct more tests called Taara [15] in rural areas of India. [16] The technology uses light beams that are developed by X's office in Visakhapatnam. [17] As of December 2017, X had set up 2,000 units in India, through a partnership with Andhra Pradesh State FiberNet Limited. [18]
Chorus is a project that aims to improve the supply chain through sensors, software, and machine learning tools. The team had been working on the project for 3.5 years before it was revealed in March 2022. [19]
Project Glass is a research and development program by Google to develop an augmented reality head-mounted display (HMD). [20] The intended purpose of Project Glass products is hands-free display of information currently available to most smartphone users, [21] and interaction with the Internet via natural language voice commands. [22] Google Glass has ended production as of March 15, 2023. [23]
Waymo was a Google project that involved developing technology for driverless cars. In December 2016, Google transitioned the project into a new company called Waymo, housed under Google's parent company, Alphabet. The project was led by Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google Street View. Thrun's team at Stanford created the robotic vehicle Stanley, which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and a US$2 million prize from the United States Department of Defense.[24] The team developing the system consisted of 15 engineers working for Google, including Chris Urmson, Mike Montemerlo, and Anthony Levandowski, who had worked on the DARPA Grand and Urban Challenges. [24]
Project Loon was a project of X that aimed to bring internet access to everyone by creating an internet network of balloons flying through the stratosphere. It uses wireless routers in balloons that are above the weather and plans to give access to the internet to those who can't reach it or are in need of help. [25] In July 2018, Loon graduated from X and was made a subsidiary of Alphabet. [26] In January 2021, it was announced that the company would be shut down. [27] [28] [29]
Project Wing was a project of X that aimed to rapidly deliver products across a city by using flying vehicles, similar to the Amazon Prime Air concept. [30] It began development in secret around 2012, with full-scale testing being carried out in Australia. In 2014, the project was publicly announced, at the same time that it was spun off to a separate company, Wing.
The flying vehicle takes off vertically, then rotates to a horizontal position for flying around. For delivery, it hovers and winches packages down to the ground. At the end of the tether is a small bundle of electronics which detects that the package has hit the ground, detaches from the delivery, and is pulled back up into the body of the vehicle. Dropping the cargo or landing were found to be unfeasible, as users compromised the safety. [31]
Malta was started in July 2017 to develop renewable energy storage systems by utilizing tanks of molten salt. [32] The system works by transforming electrical energy to heat energy for storage, based on research by Robert B. Laughlin. [33] Malta Inc. graduated from X in December 2018 with plans to develop a large-scale test of the technology for future commercial applications. [34]
Dandelion was spun out as a company not under the Alphabet umbrella, aiming to sell geothermal energy systems to consumers. [35]
Makani was a project that was acquired by X in May 2013 designed to produce wind energy using kites. [36] The T-shaped planes are 85 feet wide and contain 8 turbines tethered to the ground. [37] Compared to wind turbines, Makani's kites require 90% less material. [38] In December 2016, Makani's kite became the first energy kite in the world to generate electricity. [39] In February 2019, Makani was separated from X and became a subsidiary of Alphabet. [40]
In February 2020, Alphabet shut down Makani. The company said "Despite strong technical progress, the road to commercialization is longer and riskier than hoped." [41] In September 2020, Makani released the Energy Kite Collection — a three-part report and accompanying collection of open source code repositories, flight logs and technical videos from the project. It also released Pulling Power from the Sky: The Story of Makani, a documentary on the project, and made a non-assertion pledge on its patent portfolio, allowing anyone to use its patents without fear of legal reprisal. [42] [43]
In July 2021, it was announced that a new company called Intrinsic would be spun out of X. [44] The team had been developing software for industrial robots at X for more than five years. The new company is led by Wendy Tan White as CEO. [45]
In January 2023, it was announced that a new company called Mineral has been spun out of X. The team had been working on sensors, data, and machine learning to scale sustainable agriculture globally for more than 5 years. The new company is led by Elliott Grant as CEO.
Projects that X has considered and rejected include a space elevator, which was deemed to be currently infeasible; [58] a hoverboard, which was determined to be too costly relative to the societal benefits; [59] a user-safe jetpack, which was thought to be too loud and energy-wasting; [60] and teleportation, which was found to violate the laws of physics. [60]
In February 2016, Astro Teller, the X "Captain of Moonshots", gave a TED talk [61] in which he described the X approach to projects. Unusual characteristics of the approach included constantly trying to find reasons to kill off projects by tackling the hardest parts first, and both celebrating and rewarding staff when projects were killed off due to failure.
On May 17, 2018, an internal video entitled The Selfish Ledger was leaked by The Verge , regarding reshaping society through total data collection. A spokesperson stated that, "This is a thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a technique known as ‘speculative design’ to explore uncomfortable ideas and concepts in order to provoke discussion and debate. It's not related to any current or future products." [62]
A number of companies have been acquired and merged into X, covering a diverse range of skills including wind turbines, robotics, artificial intelligence, humanoid robots, robotic arms, and computer vision. In 2013, X acquired Makani Power, a US company which developed tethered wings/kites with mounted wind turbines for low cost renewable energy generation. [63] In 2014, it acquired product design and mechanical engineering firm Gecko Design, whose previous products included the Fitbit activity tracker and low-cost computers. [64] As of 2015, X has acquired 14 companies, including Redwood Robotics, Meka Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Bot & Dolly, and Jetpac. [64] In June 2017, X sold Boston Dynamics to SoftBank Group, [65] which sold it to Hyundai Motor Company in December 2020.
A reporter from Bloomberg Businessweek visited the site in 2013 and described it as "ordinary two-story red-brick buildings about a half-mile from Google's main campus. There's a burbling fountain out front and rows of company-issued bikes, which employees use to shuttle to the main campus." [7]
On 25 October 2018, The New York Times published an exposé entitled "How Google Protected Andy Rubin, the 'Father of Android'". The company subsequently announced that "48 employees have been fired over the last two years" for sexual misconduct. [66] A week after the article appeared, Google X executive Rich DeVaul resigned pursuant to a complaint of sexual harassment. [67]
Lawrence Edward Page is an American businessman, computer engineer & computer scientist best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin.
Google LLC is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" and is one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in the field of AI. Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., is one of the five Big Tech companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
An airborne wind turbine is a design concept for a wind turbine with a rotor supported in the air without a tower, thus benefiting from the higher velocity and persistence of wind at high altitudes, while avoiding the expense of tower construction, or the need for slip rings or yaw mechanism. An electrical generator may be on the ground or airborne. Challenges include safely suspending and maintaining turbines hundreds of meters off the ground in high winds and storms, transferring the harvested and/or generated power back to earth, and interference with aviation.
Boston Dynamics, Inc., is an American engineering and robotics design company founded in 1992 as a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, Boston Dynamics has been owned by the Hyundai Motor Group since December 2020, but having only completed the acquisition in June 2021.
Saul Griffith is an Australian–American inventor and renewable electricity advocate. He is the founder or co-founder of multiple companies, including Otherlab, Makani Power, and Instructables.
Eric "Astro" Teller is an American entrepreneur, computer scientist, and author, with expertise in the field of intelligent technology.
Squid Labs was an American independent research and development company founded by a group of four MIT graduates. In 2004, Colin Bulthaup, Dan Goldwater, Saul Griffith, and Eric Wilhelm moved from the East Coast to California to found the company known as Squid Labs. During its years of existence from 2004 to 2007, Squid Labs added three more members to its team: Geo Homsy, Corwin Hardham and Ryan McKinley. Working out of a warehouse in Emeryville, the group adopted the slogan "We're not a think tank, we're a do tank." and created a handful of patents and inventions including an electronically sensed rope, portable pull-cord generators, and a machine that could manufacture eyeglasses of any prescriptions at extremely low cost. Squid Labs was also the birthplace for many companies still running today, such as Makani Power and Howtoons. Although the company no longer exists, Squid Lab's co-founder, Saul Griffith created a similar company in San Francisco named Otherlab.
Makani Technologies LLC was an Alameda, California-based company that developed airborne wind turbines. Founded in 2006, Makani was acquired by Google in May 2013. In February 2020, Makani was shut down by Alphabet, Google's parent company.
Jigsaw LLC is a technology incubator created by Google. It formerly operated as an independent subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., but came under Google management in February 2020. 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. The current CEO is Yasmin Green.
Solve for X was a community solution engagement project and think tank-like event launched by Google to encourage collaboration, solve global issues and support innovators. The "X" in the title represents a remedy that someone or a team is already pursuing which ran from 2012 to 2014.
Loon LLC was an Alphabet Inc. subsidiary working on providing Internet access to rural and remote areas. The company used high-altitude balloons in the stratosphere at an altitude of 18 km (11 mi) to 25 km (16 mi) to create an aerial wireless network with up to 1 Mbit/s speeds. A reference to the balloons used, Project Loon began as a research and development project by X in 2011, but later spun out into a separate company in July 2018. In January 2021, it was announced that the company would be shut down due to lack of profitability.
Google Brain was a deep learning artificial intelligence research team that served as the sole AI branch of Google before being incorporated under the newer umbrella of Google AI, a research division at Google dedicated to artificial intelligence. Formed in 2011, it combined open-ended machine learning research with information systems and large-scale computing resources. It created tools such as TensorFlow, which allow neural networks to be used by the public, and multiple internal AI research projects, and aimed to create research opportunities in machine learning and natural language processing. It was merged into former Google sister company DeepMind to form Google DeepMind in April 2023.
Internet.org is a partnership between social networking services company Meta Platforms and six companies that plans to bring affordable access to selected Internet services to less developed countries by increasing efficiency, and facilitating the development of new business models around the provision of Internet access. The app delivering these services was renamed Free Basics in September 2015. As of April 2018, 100 million people were using internet.org.
Verily Life Sciences LLC, also known as Verily, is Alphabet Inc.'s research organization devoted to the study of life sciences. The organization was formerly a division of Google X, until August 10, 2015, when Sergey Brin announced that the organization would become an independent subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. with restructuring completed on October 2, 2015. On December 7, 2015, Google Life Sciences was renamed Verily.
Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. Alphabet is the world's second-largest technology company by revenue, after Apple, and one of the world's most valuable companies. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent holding company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries. It is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
Donald Lewis Montague is a Canadian-American watersport athlete and designer. He is President of Kai Concepts, co-founder of Makani Power, and the head of the Kiteboat Project in Alameda, California.
Sidewalk Labs LLC 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. 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. 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. It was originally part of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, before being absorbed into Google in 2022 following Doctoroff's departure from the company.
Dandelion is an American geothermal heating supplier in the Northeast United States. Prior to 2017, the company was part of Google X, before turning into an independent company. Dandelion targets providing geothermal heating and cooling (HVAC).
Hans Peter Brøndmo is an American-Norwegian computer scientist and technology entrepreneur. In 2016 he became vice president at X and general manager of the Everyday Robots project. He previously worked at Apple Computer on Hypercard development, founded startups in online marketing and social media and held executive positions at Nokia Corporation and Google.
A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology…