Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And
Speaker 1: how the tech are you? Listener Charlie Kniehouse asked if
Speaker 1: I might do an episode about Google X, which these
Speaker 1: days is just called X. So that is what we
Speaker 1: are going to do, and X focuses on moon shots. Well,
Speaker 1: was a moon shot some of you might be asking?
Speaker 1: That would be a project that's really ambitious. There's no
Speaker 1: assurance that the project is going to be successful, and
Speaker 1: even if it is successful, there's no assurance that it
Speaker 1: would be marketable or profitable, at least in the short term.
Speaker 1: And the term itself moonshot is a play off of
Speaker 1: long shot. You know, a bet has really tough odds,
Speaker 1: but if it works, it will have an enormous payout.
Speaker 1: And it references also the Apollo program in the Space race,
Speaker 1: you know, the the one that sent human beings to
Speaker 1: the Moon. The space missions are a great example of
Speaker 1: ambitious projects that had no guarantee of success and that
Speaker 1: subsequently provided tremendous benefits beyond just the program itself. Sure,
Speaker 1: the Space race likely would not have been nearly as
Speaker 1: productive had it not also been for the Cold War
Speaker 1: between the United States and the Soviet Union. But whatever
Speaker 1: the driving factors of the space race were, the truth
Speaker 1: is that the work that was done by scientists, engineers,
Speaker 1: mathematicians and others, it did more than just see people
Speaker 1: land on the moon. And I can't believe I just
Speaker 1: said just see people in on the moon, because that
Speaker 1: alone is truly monumental, But no, their work would make
Speaker 1: possible new technologies that were useful in lots of other ways.
Speaker 1: So there were a lot of other benefits they came
Speaker 1: out of the space race. Like the primary goal obviously
Speaker 1: was let's get there before the other guys do. But
Speaker 1: in order to do that, there were so many innovations
Speaker 1: made that would filter their way into other aspects of
Speaker 1: our lives that we saw an incredible benefit from that work.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of the idea here, that's the hope
Speaker 1: with a moonshot project. You identify a really tough goal
Speaker 1: that you want to achieve, so it has to be
Speaker 1: really challenging. It maybe something that is years out from
Speaker 1: even being possible, and it may eventually turn out that
Speaker 1: that goal is just not achievable, at least not with
Speaker 1: whatever current resources are available. But the hope is, even
Speaker 1: if you can't realize the end goal, you'll discover useful
Speaker 1: stuff along your journey, and it may turn out that
Speaker 1: you didn't get to the destination you had planned on,
Speaker 1: but you did create something truly remarkable. All the same,
Speaker 1: X serves that purpose for Google, but to be more accurate,
Speaker 1: it really serves that purpose for Alphabet. That's the parent
Speaker 1: company that oversees Google, as well as several other spin
Speaker 1: off companies like Waimo, which actually got its start as
Speaker 1: a Google X project. Now, to be clear, Google Slash
Speaker 1: Alphabet is not the only company to have a department
Speaker 1: like this. Over at Lockheed Martin, you've got skunk Works.
Speaker 1: That division serves a similar purpose. It is produced notable
Speaker 1: aircraft like the U Tube spy plane and the F
Speaker 1: twenty two Raptor fighter aircraft, among many others. A. T
Speaker 1: and T has Bell Labs, which is notable for being
Speaker 1: the think tank that produced transformative technologies like the solid
Speaker 1: state transistor and the laser Xerox had the Palo Alto
Speaker 1: Research Center or Park p A r C is now
Speaker 1: a standalone company, so it's no longer a Xerox division,
Speaker 1: and Park was notable for producing a lot of the
Speaker 1: innovations Steve Jobs would later lift to use in the
Speaker 1: Macintosh computer, you know, things like the graphic user interface
Speaker 1: and the computer mouse. Jobs was given a tour of Park,
Speaker 1: saw that Xerox engineers had developed this incredible technology, but
Speaker 1: that Xerox never really invested in making that a consumer product.
Speaker 1: So it was this technology that was just kind of
Speaker 1: wasting away, and so Steve Jobs made sure it didn't
Speaker 1: go to waste. However, let's focus on x and its
Speaker 1: story now. These things can be a little bit complicated
Speaker 1: to unravel, largely because Google has always been a company
Speaker 1: of engineers, and their ways can be complex and mysterious
Speaker 1: or sometimes haphazard and difficult to untangle. Engineers are great.
Speaker 1: I love engineers. I loved talking with them. However, sometimes
Speaker 1: it takes an engineer to suss out what the heck
Speaker 1: another engineer has been doing this whole time. I actually
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of Google products fall into that
Speaker 1: category where if you are an engineer, you start to
Speaker 1: grock what is going on pretty quickly, But if you
Speaker 1: are a mere mortal like myself, you might encounter a
Speaker 1: Google product and you're spending the first you know, hour
Speaker 1: or so just trying to figure out how you're supposed
Speaker 1: to use it. And once you do, and you realize
Speaker 1: why the decisions were made to make it that way,
Speaker 1: it clicks. But it's not as intuitive as say, Apple's
Speaker 1: approach to things like user interfaces. Anyway, one way to
Speaker 1: tell the story of Google X is to talk about
Speaker 1: Sebastian Throne. Uh. Sebastian Throne was born in what at
Speaker 1: that point was West Germany. Now you would just call
Speaker 1: it Germany, and this was back in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: He studied computer science, among many other subjects, and by
Speaker 1: he had become part of the computer science department at
Speaker 1: Carnegie Mellon University. In two thousand one, he took a
Speaker 1: year off from CMU and he spent a year at
Speaker 1: Stanford and that must have been quite a year, because
Speaker 1: in two thousand three he would leave CMU officially and
Speaker 1: join the teaching staff at Stanford University. He also became
Speaker 1: the head of the artificial intelligence laboratory there, and he
Speaker 1: would participate in a really important competition, actually several of them,
Speaker 1: but the one I'm specifically talking about is the DARPA
Speaker 1: Grand Challenge. So DARPA is the United States Defense Advanced
Speaker 1: Research Projects Agency. This is part of the Department of Defense,
Speaker 1: and it is instrumental and developing the next generation of
Speaker 1: technologies that the Department of Defense and by extension, the U.
Speaker 1: S Military will depend upon. So this is all about
Speaker 1: creating technologies that ultimately contribute to national defense. Now, DARPA
Speaker 1: doesn't really do research on its own. It's not like
Speaker 1: it's some secret underground government lab filled with robots and
Speaker 1: panels with flashing lights. I wish it were now. It's
Speaker 1: more filled with like administrators and budget sheets. DARPA really
Speaker 1: awards grants to organizations like universities or research facilities, sometimes
Speaker 1: private companies for specific projects. And occasionally DARTBA holds competitions
Speaker 1: in which the agency identifies a goal or a task
Speaker 1: of some sort and the various participants try to create
Speaker 1: a solution that meets the criteria and beats out all
Speaker 1: the other competitors and usually will win some sort of prize, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of billion dollars in some cases.
Speaker 1: Now I should note that Throne had previously participated in
Speaker 1: other DARPA challenges. These were not Grand challenges, but these
Speaker 1: were various robotics challenges, and so he was working on
Speaker 1: things with robotics and artificial intelligence, so he was no
Speaker 1: stranger to competing, and he had been involved in those
Speaker 1: kind of competitions even before he was part of the
Speaker 1: car Carnegie melon University. I keep wanting to say Carnegie
Speaker 1: because that's how Andrew Carnegie said it, but I've been reprimanded.
Speaker 1: It's Carnegie Mellon University. And he had been participating on
Speaker 1: teams with Carnegie Mellon. He did some a few times
Speaker 1: before he even joined Carnegie Mellon, and then he did
Speaker 1: it again with Stanford. So in two thousand four he
Speaker 1: participated in the first of several Grand challenges that would
Speaker 1: kick off the quest to create autonomous vehicles. The two
Speaker 1: thousand four DARPA Grand Challenge invited racing teams from various
Speaker 1: universities and research facilities to build an autonomous vehicle that
Speaker 1: would be capable of traveling a hundred fifty miles or
Speaker 1: two dty kilometers along a predetermined desert route. And it
Speaker 1: turned out this was a moonshot sort of project because
Speaker 1: ultimately not a single one of the vehicles that participated
Speaker 1: was able to complete the course. In fact, the vehicle
Speaker 1: that traveled the furthest only made its seven point three
Speaker 1: two miles down the road or eleven point seven eight kilometers.
Speaker 1: That one was actually from Thrones Old stomping grounds of
Speaker 1: Carnegie Mellon, undaunted. DARPA then held another Grand Challenge the
Speaker 1: following year. They changed up the course, they changed up
Speaker 1: some of the requirements, and that year would be very different.
Speaker 1: For one thing, there was now an actual community that
Speaker 1: had grown up around this quest to build autonomous vehicle technology.
Speaker 1: There were people who were developing new approaches and new
Speaker 1: you know, new technologies to make this happen, and that
Speaker 1: meant there were new opportunities to collaborate and share knowledge.
Speaker 1: And while this was a competition, there were teams that
Speaker 1: were eager to develop or learn best practices and then
Speaker 1: share them with others. It became a very community experience
Speaker 1: and and the the engineers learned through their failures, and
Speaker 1: in two thousand five, Stanford's team would take first place
Speaker 1: in the competition. Interestingly, Carnegie Melon had two teams and
Speaker 1: both of those teams took second and third place. So
Speaker 1: you know, Thrun certainly had his influence on Carnegie Mellon.
Speaker 1: I mean he had been there previously, and so presumably
Speaker 1: some of the people who are working on the team
Speaker 1: were people who either had studied directly under Throne or
Speaker 1: at least new people who had, So yeah, he was
Speaker 1: very much at the center of this work. Now, I've
Speaker 1: done episodes about the Grand Challenges before, so we're not
Speaker 1: going to go over all that there were more after
Speaker 1: the two thousand five one anyway, and that's a that's
Speaker 1: a story that's worthy of its own series of podcasts,
Speaker 1: So we'll stick with Thrun's work, and it definitely caught
Speaker 1: the attention of Google. In two thousand seventh, Round would
Speaker 1: join Google as a Google Fellow, that is, a level
Speaker 1: ten Googler or level ten Google engineer, which sounds kind
Speaker 1: of like I'm talking about a cult at that point, right.
Speaker 1: So in Google there was, and I presume still is,
Speaker 1: sort of a hierarchy for engineers. So if you're like
Speaker 1: level one, you're kind of at the entry level of
Speaker 1: engineers at Google, so you might do something like work
Speaker 1: in I T Support. By the time you hit around
Speaker 1: level five, you're talking about folks who frequently have a
Speaker 1: doctorate in their respective fields, they're they're an expert at
Speaker 1: whatever they do. But beyond level five, you've got the
Speaker 1: engineers at Google that the company views as being pivotal
Speaker 1: for a project to succeed. So these are people who
Speaker 1: not only are experts, but they are drivers for success.
Speaker 1: These are people with vision and capability, and they make
Speaker 1: the impossible possible. By the time you're hitting up to
Speaker 1: level nine, it means you are a distinguished engineer and
Speaker 1: you are highly respected generally speaking, at least for your
Speaker 1: expertise and ability. And then to become a level ten
Speaker 1: is to be a Google Fellow, which usually means you're
Speaker 1: also the leading expert in whatever your particular field is.
Speaker 1: So it's not just that you're an expert, you are
Speaker 1: the expert that other experts refer to when they need help. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there have also been a couple of Google Senior
Speaker 1: Fellows level elevens, but you know enough about that. So
Speaker 1: Thrown as a Google Fellow worked on some interesting challenges.
Speaker 1: He helped build out tech that would make turn by
Speaker 1: turn directions possible in Google Maps. And you'all, I don't
Speaker 1: know how many of you remember this, but way back
Speaker 1: in the early days of web based map solutions. You
Speaker 1: had to plot out your your route and then print
Speaker 1: it out right. I'm talking back in the old map
Speaker 1: quest days, and this was definitely a huge jump from
Speaker 1: just using a regular old map or atlas right where
Speaker 1: you just had to turn the page, find the right
Speaker 1: map and trace your route. It was better than that,
Speaker 1: but it did also mean that you typically needed to
Speaker 1: have an extra person, like an actual navigator, looking after
Speaker 1: the instruction so that you didn't miss a turn because
Speaker 1: you know it was printed, you couldn't you couldn't know
Speaker 1: how close you were to the next turn. You just
Speaker 1: had to really pay attention. And it was only later
Speaker 1: that we would get the turn by turn capabilities coupled
Speaker 1: with accurate GPS receivers that would transform navigation forever. I'm
Speaker 1: sure several of you out there have used maps to
Speaker 1: get around, either because you've been driving for a while,
Speaker 1: or maybe you drive in places where there's little to
Speaker 1: no reception, so you have to have those physical maps.
Speaker 1: But for a lot of people that has a lost art,
Speaker 1: it is something that they are not used to and
Speaker 1: it would be very challenging for them to do it today.
Speaker 1: But this term by turned approach, in part, it's one
Speaker 1: reason why people don't get lost as frequently, and in
Speaker 1: another part, it's kind of made us less capable of
Speaker 1: reading maps, so you could look at it as both
Speaker 1: a positive and a negative. Thrown had also worked on
Speaker 1: street View, which is the Google project that saw vehicles
Speaker 1: with cameras mounted on their rooftops drive slowly through various
Speaker 1: neighbors hoods and map the photographs of actual locations to
Speaker 1: their coordinates on a map. Also one that got a
Speaker 1: lot of controversy as it went into various neighborhoods around
Speaker 1: the United States and later on the world. And perhaps
Speaker 1: most importantly, Thrown brought his experience in developing autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: technology to a project that at the time was called Chauffeur.
Speaker 1: This was Google's own driverless vehicle effort. We'll talk more
Speaker 1: about how that became kind of the the seed for
Speaker 1: Google X, but first let's take a quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: before we went to break, Sebastian Thrun had started work
Speaker 1: on Chauffeur, Google's driverless car initiative way back in the days.
Speaker 1: It's around like two thousand and nine ish, and Google's
Speaker 1: co founders Larry Page and Sarah gay Brenn were really
Speaker 1: impressed by Thron's work, and they approached him and gave
Speaker 1: him the chance to spearhead an entire department dedicated to
Speaker 1: pursue challenging opportunities. Uh. They also gave him a new title,
Speaker 1: the Director of Other, which I don't know. That kind
Speaker 1: of sounds like it came out of like a Neil
Speaker 1: game In book or something. To me, it's got that
Speaker 1: kind of ring to it. But yeah, this is still
Speaker 1: early on in the phase where he was Director of Other,
Speaker 1: as this concept of Google X began to take shape. Now,
Speaker 1: at that stage, Google's whole R and D approach was
Speaker 1: super duper secret, Like the outside world had no knowledge
Speaker 1: of this developing department within Google. Later we would have
Speaker 1: a better idea of what kinds of projects were going
Speaker 1: on inside that department. But for a while, it was
Speaker 1: really hush hush, so much so that I actually remember
Speaker 1: visiting someone at Google around this time and then getting
Speaker 1: quite cross with them once word broke out about Google's
Speaker 1: self driving vehicles got into the public. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you can't trust a nice guy like me who just
Speaker 1: happens to be the host of a widely distributed tech podcast,
Speaker 1: whom can you trust? But I should be fair. Even
Speaker 1: within Google itself, the X department, as it would become known,
Speaker 1: was mysterious. To get entry to their buildings, you needed
Speaker 1: an authorized key card, and not very many people had
Speaker 1: one of those, Like they had normal key cards where
Speaker 1: they could get through most of Google campus. But once
Speaker 1: you got up to this, yeah, you had to have
Speaker 1: special authorization essentially. And while the standard googler at the
Speaker 1: time was given up to of their work week to
Speaker 1: tackle personal projects which could one day become a Google product,
Speaker 1: a lot of Google products actually began as one of
Speaker 1: those time projects. The X team was actually less structured
Speaker 1: than that. So with in the Google X division, creativity
Speaker 1: reigned supreme. The department welcomed unlikely, outlandish ideas many in fact,
Speaker 1: probably most of them wouldn't pan out, but it sounds
Speaker 1: like the early motto was something along the lines of
Speaker 1: you never know if you don't try. So. Thrown was
Speaker 1: also fiercely protective of his team. He wanted them to
Speaker 1: have all the freedom to experiment and test ideas and
Speaker 1: to collaborate across teams. So maybe one team that's working
Speaker 1: on one really big problem ends up collaborating with a
Speaker 1: team that's working on a totally different problem, and that
Speaker 1: cross pollination ends up fueling new creativity. He didn't want
Speaker 1: his team members to ever have to worry about attending
Speaker 1: meetings where they have to give status updates and budget
Speaker 1: reports and that kind of thing. He wanted them to
Speaker 1: focus completely on their projects and not worry about having
Speaker 1: to justify those brought projects to to top brass. So
Speaker 1: Google effectively funded the X division, but the individual projects
Speaker 1: inside didn't have to break down costs or anything like that,
Speaker 1: at least not to a really granular level, certainly not
Speaker 1: to a level that you would expect for most businesses.
Speaker 1: Thron led the division from twenty ten until two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: He actually got really focused on the driverless car project,
Speaker 1: ultimately kind of stepping back from overseeing the overall UH
Speaker 1: projects in Google X, and then ultimately left Google altogether
Speaker 1: in order to found a new education company called Udacity.
Speaker 1: So taking his place was Eric quote unquote astro Teller.
Speaker 1: Astro's nickname apparently that's what he goes by all the time.
Speaker 1: And boy, howney, does this guy have a pedigree. So
Speaker 1: astro Teller's grandfather is the guy who spearheaded the development
Speaker 1: of the hydrogen bomb a k A Edward Teller. One day,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to do a full episode about Edward Teller,
Speaker 1: because that was one complicated dude. Uh, A brilliant person,
Speaker 1: a vilified person for reasons that would become clear if
Speaker 1: I do a full episode. So we'll put that aside.
Speaker 1: In the future. Maybe I'll do an Edward Teller episode anyway,
Speaker 1: Astro's other grandfather had also had won Nobel prizes, So
Speaker 1: so yeah, Astro came from a family that had a
Speaker 1: reputation for big thinking, and he would be very modest
Speaker 1: when describing his own role within his family. And Astro
Speaker 1: Teller had kind of a moonshot task of his own,
Speaker 1: which was to take this creative, whirlwind, chaotic department and
Speaker 1: give it a little more structure. You know, there was
Speaker 1: still a clear need for lots of freedom, but without
Speaker 1: any structure, there was little chance of being able to
Speaker 1: actually harness whatever came out of the research, Right, Like,
Speaker 1: you want to make sure that if you do come
Speaker 1: up with things that are useful, that you have a
Speaker 1: process in place to make that come to fruition. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: if you're just creating cool stuff but nobody ever gets
Speaker 1: to see it, it would be kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: Willie Wonka's chocolate factory before he ever gave out the
Speaker 1: golden tickets. Yeah, it's an amazing place, but who gets
Speaker 1: to see it. So to that end, tell her brought
Speaker 1: in a woman named Obie Felton who had previously worked
Speaker 1: in Google's marketing department. So she was not from an
Speaker 1: engineering background, she was from a product marketing background, and
Speaker 1: she was specifically brought in because she could bring that
Speaker 1: kind of perspective to the department, and she helped design
Speaker 1: Google X so that had a little more framework to it.
Speaker 1: Her title became head of getting moon Shots ready for
Speaker 1: contact with the real world, and she would later go
Speaker 1: on to leave Google and found her own start up
Speaker 1: with a focus on mental health. So yeah, she and
Speaker 1: and many others who have worked at Google X have
Speaker 1: gone on to become sort of a who's who have
Speaker 1: startup founders and industry leaders. It's it's really fascinating. In fact,
Speaker 1: I even got to interview a a former director over
Speaker 1: at at Google X, and it's just fascinating to talk
Speaker 1: with people who have been in those positions. Now. According
Speaker 1: to an article titled The Truth about Google X by
Speaker 1: John Gartner, and Fast Company. For a project to be
Speaker 1: considered within Google X. For for this to be something
Speaker 1: that the department actually pursues, UH, it has to meet
Speaker 1: three criteria. One is that the projects should address a
Speaker 1: problem that affects millions or potentially billions of people. Two
Speaker 1: is that some part of the solution should at least
Speaker 1: resemble science fiction. It should be you know, incorporating innovation
Speaker 1: in some way. Third is that these solutions need to
Speaker 1: rely on technologies that are either currently available or kind
Speaker 1: of on the cusp of availability. Alternatively, Wired says that
Speaker 1: third criterion is really that the solution should produce is
Speaker 1: a radically positive outcome, and that the outcome should be
Speaker 1: ten times better than whatever exists today. So, whatever the
Speaker 1: the challenges, whatever the goal is, the realization of that
Speaker 1: goal should be that where we are there is ten
Speaker 1: times better than where we were before. Now this appears
Speaker 1: to be when the department also began to formalize its
Speaker 1: approach a little bit, which was trying to make a
Speaker 1: project fail right away. And and I really do mean that.
Speaker 1: I mean the team would get together and they would
Speaker 1: start to identify, you know, some sort of approach to
Speaker 1: solving a problem, and they would first try to tackle
Speaker 1: the hardest part of whatever that problem was right away,
Speaker 1: you know, identify what is going to be the most
Speaker 1: difficult thing to get beyond with that problem, and try
Speaker 1: to solve for that first. And the wisdom was that
Speaker 1: the team discovered that the hardest part of the challenge
Speaker 1: was totally beyond reach, it would be best to just
Speaker 1: admit failure at least for now, and to move on.
Speaker 1: So Google X would pursue some goals but abandon lots
Speaker 1: of others. Like they might say, you know what, this
Speaker 1: just isn't going to be a thing yet, let's put
Speaker 1: it aside now. Reasons for abandoning a project were varied
Speaker 1: and are varied to this day. So it might just
Speaker 1: be that the costs of the project are estimated to
Speaker 1: be beyond whatever the benefits are. Now. By costs, I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily just mean money, although it could be that
Speaker 1: those costs could be in stuff like effort. So if
Speaker 1: a project aims to create a new way to do something,
Speaker 1: but it turns out that this new way actually requires
Speaker 1: more work to complete than existing ways, well that's a
Speaker 1: good reason to pull the eject lever on that project.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm often left thinking about people and I'm
Speaker 1: guilty of this too, people who would spend more time
Speaker 1: and effort getting out of doing something than it would
Speaker 1: say for them to actually do the thing. That's the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that the department wants to avoid. So
Speaker 1: an example of such a project was an attempt to
Speaker 1: build a safe jet pack. If you've been asking where's
Speaker 1: my jet pack? Well, Google's answer would be we tried. So.
Speaker 1: I had a tech Crunch Disrupt conference back in fourteen.
Speaker 1: Astro Teller was a speaker there and revealed that the
Speaker 1: Google X division had been at work on a jet pack,
Speaker 1: because that was one of those projects that Astro himself
Speaker 1: was saying, I just think it would be cool to
Speaker 1: have one. But ultimately the team concluded that it would
Speaker 1: be such an inefficient device from a power perspective, that
Speaker 1: it would be so fuel inefficient that it just made
Speaker 1: no sense to pursue. You would be able to get
Speaker 1: around with other ways using way less fuel than if
Speaker 1: you were to use the jet pack. It would just
Speaker 1: be this noisy, inefficient means of transportation, and that's before
Speaker 1: you even get to the safety concerns. So they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a non starter because we can already get
Speaker 1: around using way less fuel, using you know, conventional means,
Speaker 1: so there's no point in pursuing this. Another abandoned project
Speaker 1: was a hoverboard, another thing astro Teller really wanted, and
Speaker 1: this would be kind of like what you would see
Speaker 1: in the film Back to the Future Too, and in
Speaker 1: a small bit and Back to the Future three. So
Speaker 1: way back when Back to the Future Too was in production,
Speaker 1: the production team teased the general public. They said that
Speaker 1: the hoverboard technology actually existed. They used it in the movie,
Speaker 1: but the toy companies figured out that it was too
Speaker 1: dangerous for the public, so it would never go on sale.
Speaker 1: So it's this this kind of joke that these hoverboards
Speaker 1: really existed, but it was all a prank. Of course,
Speaker 1: they didn't really exist. However, a team at Google tried
Speaker 1: to make it work. They used stuff like graphite and
Speaker 1: magnets to make a very small version of this work,
Speaker 1: and they could get it to work on a very
Speaker 1: small scale with models, but then they found it very
Speaker 1: difficult to scale that up to a hoverboard that would
Speaker 1: actually be human size and capable of holding a human up,
Speaker 1: and the problems might not have been insurmountable. Maybe with
Speaker 1: enough time and resources they could have gotten around it,
Speaker 1: But they figured that even if they did suss out
Speaker 1: all the problems and solve them, the benefits of the
Speaker 1: technology are so niche that it's not worth all that
Speaker 1: time and effort and other resources that would be necessary
Speaker 1: to make it become a reality. So the hoverboard went
Speaker 1: into the project graveyard at Google X. Now, in other cases,
Speaker 1: it might be that the actual challenge is just so
Speaker 1: ambitious as to be deemed impossible. One such idea, at
Speaker 1: least according to an article in Forbes by Eric Mack
Speaker 1: and repeated in the Fast Company epiece, was a supposed
Speaker 1: teleportation method, as in yeah, you get zapped from one
Speaker 1: physical location to appear in another. However, the Google team
Speaker 1: concluded that this particular concept violates a few basic laws
Speaker 1: of physics as we understand them, which even Scotty on
Speaker 1: Star Trek would say is a real deal breaker. You
Speaker 1: cannot break the laws of physics. Now, there are likely
Speaker 1: dozens or hundreds or maybe thousands of projects that X
Speaker 1: has tackled and abandoned since it was founded back in
Speaker 1: two that we will never really hear about. It is
Speaker 1: rare to get a glimpse at what was going on
Speaker 1: within this first division within Google and then subsidiary company
Speaker 1: of Alphabet. However, we can talk about some of the
Speaker 1: work that happened within the department that did see at
Speaker 1: least some level of mainstream visibility. And one thing that
Speaker 1: we can talk about right off the bat is the
Speaker 1: driverless car technology that kind of started the whole thing. Now,
Speaker 1: Eventually people began to spot vehicles that were operating around
Speaker 1: the Google campus in California, and some of these vehicles
Speaker 1: had these weird frames attached to the rooftops that had
Speaker 1: all this electronic equipment on it, and some folks even
Speaker 1: noticed that the people in the cars weren't necessarily touching
Speaker 1: the steering wheel while the car was in motion. Eventually,
Speaker 1: that project would evolve into the spinoff company Weymo. So
Speaker 1: Google did at one point come forward and say, yes,
Speaker 1: we're working on driverless cars. That was the point where
Speaker 1: I got really snitty at the Googler I know who
Speaker 1: didn't tell me about it because they weren't supposed to,
Speaker 1: so they were doing the right thing. I was just
Speaker 1: being kind of cranky about it. And once we began
Speaker 1: to learn about that, it became known as Project Weymo,
Speaker 1: and then eventually was spun off as a startup called Weymo,
Speaker 1: which is against still a subsidiary of Alphabet. So Alphabet
Speaker 1: being the parent company Google, exists beneath Alphabet, so does Weimo,
Speaker 1: you know, so does YouTube that kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: Weymo continues to work on bringing driverless car technology to market,
Speaker 1: and it operates some limited implementations. Uh, there is a
Speaker 1: limited self driving taxi service in the Phoenix, Arizona area
Speaker 1: that you know. It's it's very tightly controlled, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you can't go beyond a heavily defined region within which
Speaker 1: this service can operate. So if you needed a ride
Speaker 1: that was outside that region, you can't do it in
Speaker 1: Weymo because it needs that controlled environment in order to
Speaker 1: operate safely. But it's still is a platform upon which
Speaker 1: the company is learning, uh new things that are informing
Speaker 1: the future of autonomous driving. Much of the company's work
Speaker 1: also is focusing on automating the trucking industry, which would
Speaker 1: be huge. So this is one of the projects that
Speaker 1: grew out of Google X that's actually stuck around. Now
Speaker 1: when we come back, I'm going to talk about other projects,
Speaker 1: some of which also stuck around, and some of which
Speaker 1: did not. But they did get going in Google X,
Speaker 1: and they had a good amount of steam behind them
Speaker 1: at one point, but some of them just didn't pan out.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about more of those when we
Speaker 1: come back after this break. So before the break, I
Speaker 1: hinted that there are some projects that started in Google
Speaker 1: X that got really far but ultimately didn't pan out.
Speaker 1: One of those had to do with high altitude balloons.
Speaker 1: So the problem that was identified was that there are
Speaker 1: areas in the world that have limited to no connectivity
Speaker 1: to the Internet, and the Internet is such an important
Speaker 1: tool that this was seen as a massive detriment to
Speaker 1: those communities and that there should be solutions to provide
Speaker 1: the potential at least to connect to the Internet. And
Speaker 1: the concept here was to use high altitude balloons flying
Speaker 1: well above weather systems, and that these balloons would carry
Speaker 1: essentially Internet transmitters, kind of similar to what satellite Internet does,
Speaker 1: except it's not all the way out into orbit. It's
Speaker 1: being carried by these balloons, and you could use these
Speaker 1: networks of balloons to provide connectivity to remote and underserved
Speaker 1: locations like parts of Africa. This would become known as
Speaker 1: Project loon I actually wrote an article about this for
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works way back in the day, and this
Speaker 1: project started around two thousand eleven. Engineers worked on it
Speaker 1: in secret for about two years, and then Google announced
Speaker 1: the program in two thousand and thirteen. That's when it
Speaker 1: got the name Project Loon, or at least publicly it
Speaker 1: was known as Project Loon. They might have been calling
Speaker 1: it that within the department for a while, I don't know,
Speaker 1: But like Weymo, Google would eventually create a spin off
Speaker 1: company called Loon to bring this technology to market. That
Speaker 1: happened in two thousand eighteen, when Loon would become its
Speaker 1: own company as a subsidiary under Alphabet. The new company
Speaker 1: landed a deal to provide Internet connectivity over parts of Kenya,
Speaker 1: and while it seemed like Loon was on its way
Speaker 1: to success, in reality it became clear that the operational
Speaker 1: costs and the risks were too great to make Loon
Speaker 1: a viable business, so Google popped the Loon project in
Speaker 1: twenty one. But like I said earlier in this episode,
Speaker 1: sometimes the pursuit of a goal can generate benefits even
Speaker 1: if you never achieve the final goal itself. So with
Speaker 1: the case of Loon, sign antists were able to leverage
Speaker 1: high resolution data that was gathered by the project's high
Speaker 1: altitude balloons and study stuff like climate modeling or how
Speaker 1: gravity waves moved through the stratosphere. So again, without this project,
Speaker 1: that data wouldn't have been available to the scientific community.
Speaker 1: So there were benefits that emerged from this project, even
Speaker 1: though the project itself you might describe as a failure
Speaker 1: because it was unable to achieve the goal that was,
Speaker 1: you know, established from the get go. Now, another famous
Speaker 1: project to emerge from Google X was Google Glass. That's
Speaker 1: the augmented reality headset Google unveiled way back in now.
Speaker 1: For those of y'all not familiar with Google Glass, the
Speaker 1: original version looked kind of like frames for eyeglasses. No
Speaker 1: lenses in the original um and they had stems that
Speaker 1: would go over the ears, so you know, you had
Speaker 1: a little nose rest the would sit on the bridge
Speaker 1: of your nose and the stems would go over your ear,
Speaker 1: over the backs of your ears, and instead of lenses,
Speaker 1: you had this clear prism that was located a little
Speaker 1: bit above and to the right of your right eye,
Speaker 1: and a tiny projector from the stem on that side
Speaker 1: could beam in images into that prism. So when you
Speaker 1: looked up and to the right a little bit through
Speaker 1: this prism, you could see the images that were projected
Speaker 1: on there. They kind of overlaid whatever was behind it
Speaker 1: in your in your field of view, so the prism
Speaker 1: wouldn't block your forward view. So in theory it would
Speaker 1: be safe to where even if you were, you know,
Speaker 1: driving a car or something, because the idea was that
Speaker 1: it wasn't supposed to interfere with your vision. And you
Speaker 1: would pair the Google Glass with an Android smartphone, and
Speaker 1: the smartphone would provide the connectivity for the glass itself.
Speaker 1: It acted kind of like a modem for the Google Glass.
Speaker 1: The headset included small bone conduction speaker in it so
Speaker 1: that you could hear your audio through. The headset had
Speaker 1: a microphone so we could pick up voice commands. Uh.
Speaker 1: It also could pick up gesture commands both from physical
Speaker 1: touch as well as moving your head in certain ways.
Speaker 1: You could you could use that to have it do
Speaker 1: specific actions. And it had a camera incorporated and as well,
Speaker 1: so you can actually use your Google Glass to take photos.
Speaker 1: And I actually had a Google Glass headset once upon
Speaker 1: a time, and I wore it to Dragon Con that year.
Speaker 1: That's a big science fiction, fantasy, horror, and comic book
Speaker 1: convention that takes place here in Atlanta, and it's known
Speaker 1: for being incredibly popular with Cause players. In fact, sometimes
Speaker 1: it feels like Cause players out number of people in
Speaker 1: mundane clothing by a factor of two to one or
Speaker 1: maybe more. So. I wore this brand new Google Glass headset,
Speaker 1: which lots of folks had not even heard of at
Speaker 1: that point, and I went to Dragon Con. I used
Speaker 1: the headset to take photos of people after first asking
Speaker 1: or permission to do so. Always important anyone going to
Speaker 1: a convention. You see some cosplay you love, ask permission
Speaker 1: before you start taking photos. It's just polite. So that
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun for me. And partly the
Speaker 1: reason it was so much fun for me is a
Speaker 1: lot of the pictures I got, at least the initial
Speaker 1: pictures I got, were people looking at me very confused
Speaker 1: because I chose to use the voice command to take
Speaker 1: a photo using Google Glass. So I would use the
Speaker 1: activation phrase, which I'm not gonna say simply because it's
Speaker 1: the same phrase Google uses today for its smart speakers,
Speaker 1: and I have one behind me, and if I say it,
Speaker 1: I'll wake it up. But then you would say take
Speaker 1: a picture. So I would say take a picture, and
Speaker 1: the person I was looking at would say huh or
Speaker 1: you know what or something like that, and that would
Speaker 1: be the photo I would end up with as someone
Speaker 1: looking confused and saying, why are you talking to me
Speaker 1: like this? And then I would explain, oh, I just
Speaker 1: took a photo using this headset, and and they went bonkers.
Speaker 1: It was like it was like I was the future,
Speaker 1: I was science fiction at this science fiction convention. I
Speaker 1: would show them the picture that would come up on
Speaker 1: my phone that was taken by the headset and they
Speaker 1: loved it. Well. That was a fun, positive experience for
Speaker 1: me with Google Glass. However, Google Glass in general got
Speaker 1: some awful reviews. For one thing, it was really expensive
Speaker 1: and this was a pilot program, like these were not
Speaker 1: rolled out for general consumption. That also meant they were
Speaker 1: available in very limited numbers, so it was also kind
Speaker 1: of elitist. Although I will point out there was at
Speaker 1: least one other person at Dragon Con that same year
Speaker 1: wearing Google Glass because we took a picture of each
Speaker 1: other wearing them. Uh. There was also a concern for
Speaker 1: privacy because you're wearing a camera on your face, so
Speaker 1: there was this fear that someone could be taking photos
Speaker 1: or videos surreptitiously, and a midley that is creepy. Now
Speaker 1: you could you could counter that by saying everyone is
Speaker 1: carrying a camera with them all the time, it's in
Speaker 1: their pocket, it's a smartphone, that this is already happening.
Speaker 1: People are taking photos and videos surreptitiously all the time. However,
Speaker 1: there's just there's like a psychological difference when it's something
Speaker 1: that you're wearing on your face as opposed to something
Speaker 1: you're holding in your hand. And um, you know, I
Speaker 1: gotta admit, like the first time I wore my Google
Speaker 1: glass without thinking and walked right into a public restroom,
Speaker 1: I realized, woe, this is a problem. This is not
Speaker 1: something that there's got to be protocol here because this
Speaker 1: is inappropriate. I did a I did a Grandpa Simpson
Speaker 1: immediate one a turn and walked right back out of
Speaker 1: the restroom, and then handed my Google glass too to
Speaker 1: my wife, who looked after them while I went right
Speaker 1: back in. Anyway, Google glass ultimately failed to emerge as
Speaker 1: a consumer product. Google made the determination that it just
Speaker 1: wasn't going to work. It was going to be too expensive,
Speaker 1: it was going to be too niche. They're all ready
Speaker 1: was this big backlash against it. So instead they focused
Speaker 1: Google Glass for the enterprise market, enterprise customers and businesses.
Speaker 1: So businesses buy them and give them to their employees,
Speaker 1: who then use Google Glass to do stuff like keep
Speaker 1: track of checklists or instructions and that kind of thing
Speaker 1: while the employees are working on a job, which is nifty.
Speaker 1: It's just not quite as amazing as what Google was
Speaker 1: kind of hoping for, or seeming to hope for, back
Speaker 1: when they unveiled the technology nearly a decade ago. Glass
Speaker 1: does remain active. It is still under X, so that
Speaker 1: is still an ongoing project and it did not uh
Speaker 1: spin off. It did not quote unquote graduate. That's what
Speaker 1: Google says whenever one of their their projects spins off
Speaker 1: into a subsidiary company. Now, another initiative that began under
Speaker 1: Google X was a service in which flying vehicles would
Speaker 1: deliver small packages. So we're talking about drone to livery
Speaker 1: meaning a service that uses drones to deliver stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: not a service that delivers drones, though I guess a
Speaker 1: larger drone could potentially deliver a smaller n you know
Speaker 1: what I'm getting lost in the weeds. Here engineers began
Speaker 1: serious work on this project in two thousand twelve. Two
Speaker 1: years later, Google acknowledged what it had been working on,
Speaker 1: because keep in mind early on this is in the
Speaker 1: top secret phase, and Google began to test this technology
Speaker 1: in Australia. Google would spin this project off as a
Speaker 1: startup called Wing, so, like Waymo and formerly Loon, Wing
Speaker 1: has become another company under alphabet. Wing delivers packages kind
Speaker 1: of the same way that NASA used a skycrane to
Speaker 1: lower the recent Mars rovers on the Red Planet. Namely
Speaker 1: the delivery system the drone in this case hovers above
Speaker 1: the ground. It lowers the package or payload using cables
Speaker 1: and a winch, and then once it detects that the
Speaker 1: payload has touched down, it detaches the cable from the
Speaker 1: package and then the drone can fly back home, presumably
Speaker 1: to get a treat, probably a microchip. In two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: Google acquired a company called mccannie m a k A
Speaker 1: n I. That company was working on a wind energy solution,
Speaker 1: a really interesting idea, and it used kites with turbines
Speaker 1: in the kites rather than a traditional wind turbine. The
Speaker 1: big benefit here being that the kites. One they're deployable
Speaker 1: at different places. They are still tethered to ground units
Speaker 1: so that you can actually harness the electricity that's being
Speaker 1: generated and store it in batteries or transmitted to wherever
Speaker 1: you need to use it. Uh. But they used way
Speaker 1: less material than your traditional wind farm would. So Google
Speaker 1: acquires them in two thousand thirteen. The Google X division
Speaker 1: got to work on the technology, and by two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: Alphabet was ready to graduate mccannie as its own company
Speaker 1: again as a subsidiary to Alphabet. But mcconnie fell into
Speaker 1: a similar fate like Loon did. Engineers were unable to
Speaker 1: find a way to make mcconnie work so that it
Speaker 1: was both practical and reliable, and essentially the company said
Speaker 1: that the road to commercialization was too risky and thus
Speaker 1: didn't meet the threshold for support. So Alphabet ultimately shut
Speaker 1: down mccannie in twenty just a year after it had graduated.
Speaker 1: There are other projects that emerged from Google X or
Speaker 1: just X because you know, like I said, Google X
Speaker 1: itself would get spun off into its own company, so
Speaker 1: also a subsidiary to Alphabet. So there's another project that's
Speaker 1: called Malta. This is a company that is working to
Speaker 1: store energy in the form of heat using tanks of
Speaker 1: molten salt. So imagine that you've generated electrical energy in
Speaker 1: some way. You know you've created this electrical energy. You
Speaker 1: need to store that electrical energy till you actually need
Speaker 1: to use it, right, because electricity is something where you
Speaker 1: either use it or you store it, or you lose it.
Speaker 1: So in this case, Malta converts the electricity into thermal energy,
Speaker 1: which is stored in these vats of molten salts. Then
Speaker 1: when you need electricity, you essentially reverse this process. You
Speaker 1: convert the thermal energy into electricity. So this is kind
Speaker 1: of like batteries, right, it's energy storage. Now, obviously batteries
Speaker 1: are electrochemical and and this is good old heat we're
Speaker 1: talking about with molten salts, but still similar in concept
Speaker 1: and the idea like this is a way of of
Speaker 1: storing the electricity you've generated. Another graduated project is Intrinsic.
Speaker 1: This company aims to revolutionize industrial robots and make them
Speaker 1: capable of handling different tasks so that as a company's
Speaker 1: business changes, the robots can continue to be useful. Because
Speaker 1: typically your your industrial robot is something that's designed to
Speaker 1: do a very specific series of actions and that's it. Like,
Speaker 1: it's great at doing those, but you can't tell it
Speaker 1: to do anything else. Typically, So Intrinsics part in this
Speaker 1: is to develop kind of the software that would allow
Speaker 1: robots to be able to learn and adapt to changing
Speaker 1: situations rather than be tied down to one specific process. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously this also requires the robot to be capable of
Speaker 1: doing whatever the extra activities are, but it is meant
Speaker 1: to increase a robot's usefulness. And this sounds deceptively simple,
Speaker 1: but it turns out it is super complicated. It touches
Speaker 1: on tons of advanced computer science problems like perception, which
Speaker 1: is still something that's really tricky, motion planning simulation, and
Speaker 1: tons more. It also involves working on force control so
Speaker 1: that robots use the appropriate amount of force for whatever
Speaker 1: the task at hand happens to be, or task it
Speaker 1: clamp as it were. Intrinsics work is atributing to a
Speaker 1: growing wealth of knowledge and expertise when it comes to
Speaker 1: robotics and AI. While Intrinsic is focused on industrial robotics,
Speaker 1: those same advances are going to play an important role
Speaker 1: for robotics in general, which I anticipate will include robots
Speaker 1: that share spaces with human beings. Now, there are other
Speaker 1: ones that we could talk about. Their contact lenses that
Speaker 1: can detect glucose levels in tiers, which could be really
Speaker 1: useful for people who are dealing with diabetes. You know,
Speaker 1: these kind of concepts that are really really mind blowing.
Speaker 1: But I think the truly remarkable thing about X is that,
Speaker 1: unlike your traditional company, X isn't focused on producing the
Speaker 1: biggest return on investment within the shortest amount of time.
Speaker 1: This is not the type of business that is looking
Speaker 1: forward to the next quarter. It's the type that looks
Speaker 1: forward to the next ten years. And well, it's true
Speaker 1: that more ideas get shot down that move forward. It's
Speaker 1: also true that some of the ones that do move
Speaker 1: forward ultimately have to be put on the shelf, like
Speaker 1: Loon and mccannie. What the engineers learn along the way
Speaker 1: can often find its way into other products. The benefits
Speaker 1: of the research manifest in ways that the team couldn't
Speaker 1: possibly have predicted when they first started. And while we
Speaker 1: might not ever get that jet back or that hoverboard,
Speaker 1: we might discover that some elements that were uncovered during
Speaker 1: those projects get incorporated into stuff we used today. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to be clear, I still have some major
Speaker 1: issues with Alphabet the company. Like I often say Google,
Speaker 1: but really at this point you just mean Alphabet because
Speaker 1: the company as a as a whole is a data
Speaker 1: black hole. I mean, it sucks up information at a
Speaker 1: scale that is impossible for me to get my mind
Speaker 1: wrapped around. Google has benefited from our personal information, I
Speaker 1: mean because of us and our data, Google has become
Speaker 1: ridiculously profitable. And we shouldn't get Alphabet a free path
Speaker 1: us just because one of its subsidiaries is working on
Speaker 1: some truly difficult problems and coming up with novel solutions
Speaker 1: that could potentially be of enormous benefit. That is good,
Speaker 1: all props to the x UH company and Alphabet for
Speaker 1: even doing this, But we can't just you know, paying
Speaker 1: everything with a with a happy brush. We have to
Speaker 1: keep everything else in mind too. Still, it was fun
Speaker 1: to look into this, and a lot of these could
Speaker 1: be their own episodes, right. There could be a way
Speaker 1: Mo episode, There could be a Loon episode. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think I have done a Loon episode, So maybe
Speaker 1: I'll do some more episodes about specific parts of X
Speaker 1: in the future. In the meantime, if you have suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics I should tackle on tech stuff, there's some
Speaker 1: alliteration for you. You can reach out to me in
Speaker 1: a couple of ways. One way is on Twitter. We
Speaker 1: have the handle text stuff h s W there that's
Speaker 1: how we got this request for example. Another way is
Speaker 1: to who download the I Heart Radio app, navigate over
Speaker 1: to the text Stuff part of the app. There's a
Speaker 1: little microphone icon you can click on that leave a
Speaker 1: voice message up to thirty seconds in length and let
Speaker 1: me know what you would like me to cover that way.
Speaker 1: Either way, I hope you're doing well and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Y text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.