What Is Google Y?

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The Information has reported that Google's Larry Page isn't satisfied with moon-shot thinking, and wants a new internal branch called Google Y, that will work on longer term futurist business projects like building model cities and airports.

Google CEO Larry Page has reportedly been working behind the scenes to set up even bolder tasks for his company. The Information reports that Page started up a Google 2.0 project inside the company a year ago to look at the big challenges facing humanity and the ways Google can overcome them.

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Among the moon-shot initiatives discussed were Page's desire to build a more efficient airport as well as a model city (Transhumania anyone?). This may partly explain the recent $300 million dollars Google has invested into Solar City.

"A big part of my job is to get people focused on things that are not just incremental," Page told Wired last year, and he is definitely not an incremental strategist.

You may say that Apple only does a very, very small number of things, and that’s working pretty well for them. But I find that unsatisfying. I feel like there are all these opportunities in the world to use technology to make people’s lives better. At Google we’re attacking maybe 0.1 percent of that space. And all the tech companies combined are only at like 1 percent. That means there’s 99 percent virgin territory. Investors always worry, “Oh, you guys are going to spend too much money on these crazy things.” But those are now the things they’re most excited about—YouTube, Chrome, Android. If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.

To bring action to these ideas, Page has proposed a second research and development lab, called Google Y, for longer-term programs than the current Google X, headed up currently by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

"Investors always worry, 'Oh, you guys are going to spend too much money on these crazy things.' But those are now the things they’re most excited about."

Google's countless projects were recently enumerated by Steve Tobak, and the list is already incredibly vast without Google Y.

No details are available yet on the seriousness of the Google Y initiative, but with the company's vast resources the word "limitation" is probably not widely used by visionaries like Page. It's not entirely surprising to see Google thinking about the future—this is the company behind Calico and a recent slew of robotics acquisitions—but the ambition illustrated in this report sounds more like the plot of a science fiction movie than a business plan.

"We’re one of the bigger companies of the world, and I’d like to see us do more stuff—not just do what somebody else has done, but something new."


SOURCE  The Information, Wired

By 33rd Square

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