14 DAY TRIAL // Google seems to have become rather bland recently. In fact, many are questioning whether the company has what it takes to counter the threat of Facebook and a myriad of startups attacking it from all sides, let alone come up with something truly impressive.
All the while, Google is working on space elevators, internet-connected refrigerators, house and office robots and tens of other, similarly futuristic projects, all of it in almost complete secrecy.
One of the things that made Google stand out, at least in the early days, was its tendency to experiment and its big, wild projects that seemed to come out of nowhere.
No one was expecting Google to create Gmail, a webmail client at a time when the market was already dominated by big players like Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, especially since there didn't seem to be much money in it.
No one was expecting Google to pay a huge sum for YouTube, a video site that may still not be profitable.
And clearly no one was expecting Google to unveil that it's working on driverless cars and that it's already got several of them roaming the streets of California.
Yet, especially in the past year, people began to wonder whether Google still had it.
New CEO Larry Page began to shut down experimental projects, things have been consolidating and most of the energy seemed to be focused towards Google+, an interesting project but hardly world-changing or even original.
But just because it isn't showing it, doesn't mean that the innovative spirit is dead at Google. In fact, it may be more alive than ever in its Google X division, a highly secretive part of Google tasked with 'shoot-for-the-Moon' projects that may never end up becoming a business or even a real product.
The New York Times uncovered the project and some of the things it's working on, but the details are still scarce. This part of Google is headed by cofounder Sergey Brin, something that falls in line with what we've been hearing about his role at the company starting earlier this year.
He claimed to be working on advanced projects and research. Now we know he is deeply involved with Google X. The project is so secretive that everything is housed at a separate and unknown location apart from the Googleplex, the Google headquarters.
There, engineers work on all manner of futuristic projects, many of which are very early stages. In fact, few will even see the light of day in the coming years, perhaps never.
Still, there is one project coming out of Google X that will launch by the end of the year. Good luck guessing what it is, only a few people at Google know about it.
While this brings back the argument that Google is burning money, the fact is, it can afford to burn money. And these projects may not pay off in the near future, some never will. But if only one or two of these become a reality, say driverless cars, or a space elevator that can haul stuff into orbit at a fraction of the price it costs to do it today, they'll be big and the world will notice.