Google's robot effort is scattered. They have two good humanoid projects, Schaft, which is a spinoff of Tokyo University, and Boston Dynamics, which is a spinoff of MIT. They're still located near Tokyo and Boston; they haven't been brought together. BD probably has better control and Schaft has better actuators for human-sized robots, and I'd expected a new machine with the best of the two technologies by now. Not happening.

If they try to move those groups to Mountain View, they'll probably lose most of the people, especially on the BD side, where the team is older. Raibert, the Boston Dynamics CEO, is at retirement age. Boston Dynamics will need new leadership soon.

Google could put Anthony Levandowski in charge. He's been with the Google self-driving car effort, and he's an original thinker. He's the one who built a self-driving motorcycle in 2003.

They need an intermediate goal, a minimum viable product, if you will. Outside of industrial robots and vacuum cleaners, no autonomous robotic product makes money. Except for self-driving cars, none look likely to do so in the near future. The most promising near term applications are military, and Google doesn't want to do those.