Google X Spinoff Raises $8 Million to Simplify Sustainable Design

Re:Google X Spinoff Raises $8 Million to Simplify Sustainabl... by hojoff79 on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @10:33AM (#7704680)

Is anyone else slightly disappointed about this coming out of Google X? Don't get me wrong, it's a good business idea, bringing together otherwise disparate data sources, capturing tailwinds of sustainable building trends, seems like a differentiated product etc. etc. but it's not really the "moonshot" or game changer that Google X purports itself to be developing (potentially why they spun it out?).

I read this article recently which I thought was very good, but it paints a very different picture of the types of things that should be coming out of Google X. This type of Company is something I would have expected out of an incubator.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/meet-astro-teller-head-of-m...

Anyone else feel this way?

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Re:Google X Spinoff Raises $8 Million to Simplify Sustainabl... by JackC on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @02:11PM (#7706135)

It's funny that you mention moonshots. Check out this list of products that spun off from NASA research:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

The list includes stuff like invisible braces, longer-lasting radial tires, foam mattresses, cordless vacuum cleaners, and remote control ovens. Maybe useful-but-not-game-changing projects are an expected byproduct of moonshots.

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Re:Google X Spinoff Raises $8 Million to Simplify Sustainabl... by saraid216 on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @10:45AM (#7704753)

Maybe that's why it's no longer part of Google X.

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Re:Google X Spinoff Raises $8 Million to Simplify Sustainabl... by learfz on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @05:15PM (#7707122)

Making sustainable design the norm may well be a moonshot. I guess it's not glamorous, but it is the sort of thing that badly needs to be done.

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Re:Google X Spinoff Raises $8 Million to Simplify Sustainabl... by Jormundir on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @11:16AM (#7704961)

Have you heard of marketing?

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Re:Google X Spinoff Raises $8 Million to Simplify Sustainabl... by hojoff79 on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @11:38AM (#7705099)

Your condescending sarcasm aside, there is no reason for them to over market themselves or pursue pedestrian projects here (again, I agree this is a good business, but just relatively pedestrian for the Google X mission statement). Here are the reasons that would make no sense:

1) This is a pure cost center for Google (and a small one by their standards) and it doesn't report separately, so there is no reason for them to take lower risk projects to try and make it look like they are generating success (like there would be at a VC or incubator who is concerned with profitability). And for the Google X mission statement, I wouldn't even consider this a success (this would be like a VC fund backing a small business that was profitable but never had a chance of generating exponential growth, it's just not in the investment / research profile)

2) They have Google Ventures to fund something like this if it was an idea they want to pursue (and as I said up top and was seconded below, that may be why they are spinning it out). But that raises the question of why this was ever something they undertook at Google X in the first place? Another possibility here is they took a shot at something much bigger and found that wasn't viable, and fell back on this portion of it which was viable, then decided to spin it out. That would actually make a lot of sense (just thinking as I'm typing here)

3) If for some reason they are just over marketing Google X and it's just really a pedestrian incubator for some projects... well, going back to the original question I posed, i would find that very disappointing!

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Re:Google X Spinoff Raises $8 Million to Simplify Sustainabl... by Jormundir on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @11:10PM (#7708417)

Well the way I see it (speculatively from the outside), the "moonshot" (throws up in mouth) is just the thing you write at the top of the whiteboard. But what you're really up to is solving the 50 relatively smaller, domain specific problems that need to be solved in order for the "moon--hghhh" to be achievable.

This green architecture software is likely a solution to one of those smaller problems. The team was probably so happy with their work they decided they wanted to pursue it as a standalone company. Google let them spin it out and invested seed money as well.

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