Google X is a somewhat secretive part of Alphabet. It’s where all of the crazy projects that the company is working on for the future. Glass, Project Loon, Project Ara and other projects have all been part of Google X. But today, the company is making some changes. Not only are they getting a new logo, but they are also dropping the “Google”, so they are now just X. The new logo is supposed to capture the X blueprint of incubating a “radical solution” to a “really big problem in the world”. And that’s essentially what X does, at Alphabet.
In addition to the new logo, X is also said to be “more scaled back” now, as many of their projects haven’t turned out as well as they had hoped. Someone familiar with X, also stated that the outsized ambitions in the company are still there. The company will be continuing with some new projects. And also be continuing without key Googlers. Ones who built the “moonshot factor” in X.
X is full of projects that have graduated from the incubator, however there are a few that haven’t graduated. And even one dropout, which X is pretty famous for. And that’s Glass. At Google I/O 2012, Sergey Brin, one of Google’s co-founders (and now Alphabet co-founders) sky dived on into the Moscone Center with Glass and showed off the wearable. We saw plenty of updates in the couple years after that. But recently, we haven’t heard much of anything about Glass. Although its said that the company is working on a successor to Glass.
This subsidiary of Alphabet isn’t all about having fun with new technology. X has a new plan to turn these moonshots into actual businesses. That way Google will make money off of them, after all it is a business and that’s what happens in business. There’s now tighter criteria for projects that might be taken on by X, as well as when these projects should be put to rest. There is also a new group in X now, that decides whether the project should continue, or if the team should cease work on it. Some interesting things coming out of X in the near future, it seems.