A look inside the secret lab where Google’s ‘Moonshot’ research takes place
In a rare public speech, Google Inc. CEO Larry Page once suggested the tech industry needs "safe places where we can try out new things" without rules or interference. Some people thought he was describing a futuristic fantasy.
But Page already has the next best thing in Google X, the secretive skunk works where company scientists get plenty of resources and free rein to work on things like self-driving cars, Internet-connected balloons and flying power generators.
At a time when other tech companies have trimmed research budgets or focused tightly on their core business, Google's X division is pursuing a range of seemingly outlandish ideas. And while much of it is hush-hush, the X projects that have been announced publicly may push the envelope even further than Google's ventures into ultrafast fiber networks, industrial robotics and high-tech home thermostats.
The problem solvers
"They're doing a lot of incredibly weird stuff," said Rob Enderle, analyst at the Enderle Group, "but they're rolling in money." Google made $13 billion profit on $60 billion in sales last year, mostly from online ads. "That gives them a lot of latitude in what they invest in."
"They understand that their mission is to think really audaciously, to incubate magic," Teller said in a speech last year, adding that X's goal is to "have an impact on the world and then worry later about making money on it."
Teller describes the mandate for X this way: Identify some really big problems that Google might be able to solve by applying technology in a radically new way.
"There's this open question of what Google is going to be, a decade or more from now," Teller said in an interview. "Google X isn't the only answer to that question, but it was built as a place to do some of the exploration to find some great new problems for Google to tackle."
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