Sidewalk Labs is just like Calico for urban technology

Jun 11, 2015 07:57 GMT  ·  By

Google has some wild ideas once in a while, and it's that time of year again. In a Google+ post, CEO Larry Page announced that Google would be helping fund a new company called Sidewalk Labs, whose main role is to help develop and finance technologies for improving urban life.

Sidewalk Labs will be managed by Daniel L. Doctoroff, former Bloomberg CEO, and New York City deputy mayor.

The company will function outside Google, being its own self-standing entity, just like Calico, a research and development biotech company established in 2013 by Google and Arthur D. Levinson.

"Sidewalk will focus on improving city life for everyone by developing and incubating urban technologies to address issues like cost of living, efficient transportation and energy usage," said Larry Page.

It is yet unknown how much money Google put in or what projects and ideas Sidewalk will be investing its efforts in, but if everything goes as well as it did with Calico, then Mr. Doctoroff will probably be a happy man.

Google is definitely trying to break out of the "Web company" label

Looking at the big picture, we see Calico's recently announced research center in San Francisco, the Project Loon Internet-relaying balloons, the driver-less cars project that's reaching its final stages, Project Wing for delivering products using flying drones, and the Google Glass technology that's shaping up as a (unexpected) success in various niche business fields.

All in all, we see Google trying to establish itself as a general tech research and development company, striving to break out of the population's consciousness as only being a Web company.

This only makes the company and its CEO more endearing, being willing to invest the money it earns in projects aimed at a better human life, instead of just sitting on them like most other CEOs tend to do.

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