In what will be the strangest story you read about Google this week, Google is getting into the medical science field. Specifically, Google is going to try and put a stop to this “aging” thing.
Google has founded a company called Calico to “focus on health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases.” And they’re not screwing around on this one, either; they’re bringing in some major talent to try and stop all this aging nonsense, or at least make it less torturous.
But why? Is Larry Page feeling his own mortality? Did Sergey Brin make a bet with some biotech guy for a dollar that he absolutely will not lose? That’s really the thing; we have no idea.
Google’s Lab X is rarely talked about on tech blogs, except when it turns around and coughs up something highly visible, like Google’s driverless cars, or something seemingly outre, like big Internet-signal broadcasting balloons or a neural network of computers capable of spotting a cat in a video. It’s basically Google’s weird R&D arm, with what are supposedly one hundred projects of future technologies that Google wants to make happen.
Google calls these “moonshots”, and presumably it’s the same concept that drives them to build goofy Internet glasses that makes them want to turn aging into something less annoying and/or humiliating. After all, Google is run by nerds who want the future to happen now. Either that or Larry Page is feeling old. But we’re betting on the former.