Google Wants to Use Tech to Solve All Urban City Problems
In spite of the presence of many search giants in the Internet industry, one thing that makes Google unique is its unremitting attempts to use technology for social welfare. The tech major has already touched a corner of human life with the launch of a medical wing, and now, a new spinoff introduced today will deal with improving city life. Urban innovation body Sidewalk Labs, launched by Google will focus on improving the city life of billions by developing and incubating urban technologies to address issues like cost of living, efficient transportation and energy usage, thus, enhancing the global quality of life.
The new company will be headed by the former CEO of Bloomberg LP and Deputy Mayor of New York, Dan Doctoroff. Doctoroff has given some vague clues on what the company’s approach is while keeping silent on how the execution of this approach. The company will touch the left out parts that need the utmost attention, such as efficient transportation, lower cost of living and much more. The official website of Sidewalk Labs says, while there are apps to tell people about traffic conditions, or available apartment price, the biggest challenge that cities face are reducing energy usage and helping governments operate more efficiently, among a few others. The company is said to be developing new products, platforms and partnerships to make progress in these areas.
The CEO of Sidewalk Labs stated at the launch –
We hope that Sidewalk will play a major role in developing technology products, platforms and advanced infrastructure that can be implemented at scale in cities around the world.
Google’s CEO Larry Page posted on his Google+ page, “With Sidewalk, we want to supercharge existing efforts in areas such as housing, energy, transportation and government to solve real problems that city-dwellers face every day.”
Very little is known about Google’s diverse project, but the picture laid out by the company speaks of technological installations in the present scenario rather than building up an all-new structure. No plans have been disclosed of how Google will carry out instating urban technology and what its budget for the project is. It seems like Sidewalk itself doesn’t have a strategy for its goal.
The construction of Apple’s futuristic spaceship-like headquarter is under way, and it now appears as if the new campus can be a blueprint of the massive project that it has taken on. If that’s true then, Google had the idea in mind for long, and hopefully, Sidewalk will touch the height of success just like Google[x] and Calico.
