Alphabet

Google is notorious for retiring apps and services, whether those were in wide use or not. That doesn't apply to just software either and the company has sunset more than a handful of unsuccessful hardware projects that would have caused smaller companies to fold. Not Google, of course, for whom experiments, big or small, are a fact of life. The latest to join the dreaded Google Graveyard is Loon, the moonshot turned "Other Bet" that would have brought the Internet to places where towers and cables dare not go.

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Waymo is drawing a line in the sand for driverless terminology, announcing today that it will no longer refer to its vehicles as "self-driving" and arguing that the industry needs more consistency in how it refers to cars that can operate themselves. Though the language change may seem slight, the Alphabet-owned company concedes, it's actually key to making sure human drivers know just what is and isn't required from them in future vehicles.

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Alphabet's DeepMind has used its AI system to figure out a five decade old mystery in biology, the company has announced today, using AlphaFold to help understand protein behaviors. The company came to notoriety for its neural network developments, which demonstrated their human-besting capabilities in playing chess, go, and shogi.

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Waymo's driverless taxi service is opening up to the public, exiting beta in Phoenix, AZ and allowing Waymo One members to book the autonomous minivans. The Waymo Driver, as the Alphabet company describes its self-driving tech, has until now been providing rides for a small subset of Waymo One users, and Waymo has been careful to prevent those riders from talking about the experience.

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Alphabet's Verily has announced plans to launch Coefficient, a health insurance subsidiary that will eventually leverage Verily's various technologies and health-related devices. The insurance subsidiary will be backed by Swiss Re Group's Swiss Re Corporate Solutions commercial insurance unit. According to Verily, its Coefficient will, among other things, offer 'novel insurance and payment models.'

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AR-powered smart glasses are one of those technologies that sound and look great on Tony Stark but are a far cry from being an actual profitable product, be it in retail or even in industrial applications. Smart glasses are hard to get right, both in actual implementation but also in marketing. Even Google practically gave up on its Google Glass but now parent company Alphabet may be trying to take another stab at it by buying North, maker of wearables including the Focals smart glasses.

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Just over two years ago, Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs announced they'd be attempting to develop a smart future neighborhood in the area known as Quayside, on Toronto's waterfront. Today it was announced that Sidewalk Labs will no longer be moving forward with the project. The Waterfront Toronto board chair Stephen Diamond released a statement on the subject this afternoon. "Waterfront Toronto has been informed that Sidewalk Labs is withdrawing from our planned redevelopment of Quayside on Toronto's waterfront."

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Waymo has thrown open its latest self-driving car data set, inviting autonomous vehicle researchers to take part in a set of competitions based on the plentiful data gathered by its driverless fleet. The Waymo Open Dataset Challenges comes as the Google spin-off adds 800 new segments to its multi-sensor dataset, and it could come as a good distraction if you're stuck at home because of coronavirus self-isolation.

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Staying at home and social distancing are good measures to prevent further spreading the COVID-19 coronavirus but it is only a stopgap measure. One important weapon against the disease is actually knowing who is infected to be able to give them proper care and stop the virus from contaminating others. Resources for testing, both kits and healthcare workers carrying out the procedures, are spread thin. To help at least whittle down potential candidates to eligible recipients, Alphabet's Verily subsidiary is launching an online tool to help screen for high-risk individuals in San Francisco.

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Exactly what Google is doing during the coronavirus pandemic - and what, contrary to the announcements made by US President Trump on Friday, it isn't - has been detailed by CEO Sundar Pichai. Late last week, alongside Vice President Mike Pence, Trump insisted that Google had tasked 1,700 engineers with building a triaging website for America's response to COVID-19, which would assess individual cases and then direct them to tests and screening.

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Waymo has announced the fruits of its first external investment funding round, revealing that it raised $2.25 billion from investors that include AutoNation and Andreessen Horowitz. The company says this investment follows a number of big milestones, including driving its vehicles on more than 20 million miles of public roads on top of another 10 billion miles in simulation.

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Google, and now parent company Alphabet, is often known for a place where dreams are made. The flip side of that coin is that it is also sometimes a place where those dreams are buried. Notorious for axing even expensive projects, Google and Alphabet regularly shut down things that no longer seem viable, especially from a commercial perspective. The latest to be given that treatment is wind power company Makani but, fortunately, the story doesn't end on a completely sad note.

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