- Google Labs is back, but this time it’s not a consumer-centric brand that offers a range of experimental products.
- While Google’s new plan isn’t about making Labs a public brand – individuals are being put on project teams themselves.
- Google has not publicly announced its reorganization efforts.
Google Labs is back, but this time it’s not a company that caters to consumers and sells a variety of experimental items. Instead, it’s the internal name of a new Google team formed as part of a reorganisation with the goal of bringing the company’s many innovative projects and long-term investments under one roof as reported by Hitechglitz.
Project Starline
Clay Bavor, a Google VP who most recently headed the company’s pioneering work in virtual and augmented reality, including its cutting-edge holographic video conferencing project known as Project Starline, will lead the new organisation.
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, will be his immediate report.
Area 120 was founded in 2016 with the goal of better connecting entrepreneurial talent with Google and allowing teams to explore new ideas while using Google’s data, products, and resources.
The ThreadIt workplace video platform, the Orion spectrum marketplace, the Stack document scanner, and other technologies are actively incubating at Area 120.
Approximately 20 projects are actively underway, however not all of them are public.
Reorganizing efforts
Area 120, on the other hand, was three levels deep in terms of reporting to Google CEO Sundar Pichai under the previous organisational structure, even though Pichai himself had to sign off on every exit.
The group was also part of a jumble of organisations that reported to Don Harrison, President of Global Partnerships and Corporate Development.
Personalized Web Search, Google Web Alerts, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Reader, Google Shopper (now Google Shopping), Aardvark (a Quora-like Q&A site), Gesture Search for Android, iGoogle, Google Maps, Google Transit, Google Video, Google Talk, Google Trends, Google Scholar, Google Code Search, Google Suggest, Google Groups, and other products were developed by Google Labs between 2002 and 2011.
While Google’s new strategy does not include making Labs a public brand (individuals are being assigned to project teams such as Starline), the reorganisation may shift the spotlight to some of the company’s larger deployments.
“At the centre of this company is a new team called Labs,” it states, “which is focused on extrapolating technology trends and incubating a few of long-term, high-potential projects.”
Google has not made its reorganisation plans public.
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Source: Hitechglitz
