Alphabet

Alphabet subsidiary Wing, a company that developed a drone system capable of delivering small packages, has announced an upcoming pilot program that will conduct some deliveries for Walgreens and FedEx. The pilot program will start next month in Christiansburg, Virginia, where Wing says it will use this opportunity to 'explore' things like offering better access to health care products, opening new doors for local businesses, and presenting a last-mile delivery option.

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Waymo is aiming to make its autonomous taxis even more appealing by adding WiFi connectivity in them, according to a new report. The WiFi option would enable passengers to use their gadgets without relying on their own mobile service, potentially appealing to customers who want to spend their commuting time getting work done.

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Google buried the lede with their newest Google Glass press release, focusing on the newest device rather than the group's biggest move to date. The group responsible for Google Glass will, for the first time since inception, move from Alphabet's "X" to Google proper. This move was made, according to Google, to "meet the demands of the growing market for wearables in the workplace and to better scale our enterprise efforts."

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In an announcement on Friday, Alphabet's Wing revealed that it will start delivering items by drone in Helsinki later this summer. The deliveries will be made in the city's Vuosaari district to residents who place orders through Herkku Food Market and Cafe Monami. The company will deliver a number of food items, including meatballs, pastries, and snacks.

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Google's Pixel smartphones may have received rave reviews but that hasn't translated into great sales, the company admitted today, confirming new hardware is on the schedule for Google I/O 2019. Revealing $6.6 billion in net income for Q1 2019, based on $36.33 billions in revenue, Alphabet disappointed investors by missing its estimates.

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Self-driving car company Waymo is planning to open an 85,000-square-foot "technical service center" in Mesa, Arizona, the company announced on Tuesday. According to Waymo, this new service will more than double its current capacity for servicing, maintaining, and growing its Waymo One fleet. As well, the company says it will hire "up to" hundreds of new employees in the city.

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Google may be cutting down on its work with hardware products in the very near future, per an announcement made to some employees at the business this week. It's been suggested by several people familiar with the matter that Google's informed "dozens" of engineers and program managers that they should seek employment elsewhere within Alphabet. That doesn't bode well for any sort of major expansion of products in the near future.

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The Internet is something of an equal opportunity tool that empowers both the good and the bad. The anonymity it provides has encouraged frightened voices to speak up in opposition to oppressive powers but it has also emboldened less conscientious actors to say things they would never say face-to-face. That's why Alphabet's Jigsaw is working on an experimental Tune Chrome extension that lets users tune out those toxic comments for some temporary peace of mind.

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Nest has responded to recent reports of a security breach, contacting owners of devices like the Nest Cam IQ and Nest Secure to insist that there has been no grand hack of the company. The outreach comes after claims that a US family found their Nest security system had been remotely accessed, and the speaker used to taunt the home's occupants with racist obscenities.

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Verily, the health focused division of Alphabet which span out of the Google X moonshot lab, is looking to smart shoes for its next big advance. The company - which is attempting to coax healthcare breakthroughs by applying big data principles and cutting-edge technology to the human body - has already experimented with smart contact lenses and heart-monitoring watches.

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Alphabet unveiled Verily Study Watch in 2017, describing it as a smartwatch designed specifically for capturing health data from clinical study participants. The watch has been put to good use in the months since its launch, including in studies involving Parkinson's disease. The wearable features an on-demand ECG device and has just earned FDA approval as a Class II medical device.

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An ambitious project to make contact lenses that could track glucose levels for people with diabetes has been shelved, with Alphabet's Verily admitting the technology just wasn't up to scratch yet. The health-centric lenses were one of the company's first public projects to break cover back in 2014, and a headline example of how it would work with the pharmaceutical industry.

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