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Google Puts Boston Dynamics Up For Sale In Robotics Retreat (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes from an article on Bloomberg: Executives at Google parent Alphabet Inc., absorbed with making sure all the various companies under its corporate umbrella have plans to generate real revenue, concluded that Boston Dynamics isn't likely to produce a marketable product in the next few years and have put the unit up for sale, according to two people familiar with the company's plans. Possible acquirers include the Toyota Research Institute, a division of Toyota Motor Corp., and Amazon.com Inc., which makes robots for its fulfillment centers, according to one person. Google acquired Boston Dynamics in late 2013 as part of a spree of acquisitions in the field of robotics. Over the following year, the robot initiative, dubbed Replicant, was plagued by leadership changes, failures to collaborate between companies and an unsuccessful effort to recruit a new leader. Jonathan Rosenberg, an adviser to Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Larry Page and former Google senior vice president, said, "we as a startup of our size cannot spend 30-plus percent of our resources on things that take ten years," and that "there's some time frame that we need to be generating an amount of revenue that covers expenses and (that) needs to be a few years." In December, Google announced that Replicant had been folded into Google's advanced research group, Google X. In a private all-hands meeting around that time, Astro Teller, the head of Google X, told Replicant employees that if robotics aren't the practical solution to problems that Google was trying to solve, they would be reassigned to work on other things, according to a person who was at that meeting. Boston Dynamics, though, was never folded into Google X and was instead put up for sale.
I always feel bad when the people try to kick over the dog robots. I understand the point they're trying to make, but they seem to be doing it with too much glee.
This is their opportunity to get into the game and produce manufacturing equipment. In addition, BD is ideal for the moon and mars.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yeah. I didn't get that either.
You have a division that supposedly has no revenue generation prospects.
But you're going to sell it? Who's going to buy something like that?
That's like selling someone a flat paddle of wood and calling it a hairbrush.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Google is many things, many good things, but they're NOT a startup... I heard the same thing.
Bye!
The impression I had was that Big Dog was their big product. Google bought them and killed the program cause they don't do defense work. I thought the Army saying Big Dog didn't meet noise requirements was something that allowed everyone to save face.
Maybe Google shouldn't have bought a robotics company that was primarily defense funded...
The first thing I thought when I read that was "I didn't know Google owned a sports team" - thought it was a WNBA team or something.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
"we as a startup of our size cannot spend 30-plus percent of our resources on things that take ten years," and that "there's some time frame that we need to be generating an amount of revenue that covers expenses and (that) needs to be a few years."
This is what the onset of an AI Winter looks like.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Your hairbrush idea intrigues me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
The robots they've built are really quite nice looking. If you haven't seen the video, you should check it out.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This is what happens when a company has too much money and has delusions of grandeur. All the execs start buying stuff without having a clue what they are going to do with it.
They're only 17 years old; not even adult yet.
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Google bought Motorola, took the patents that they wanted, and sold the rest to Lenovo a few years later.
It's probably the same deal with Boston Dynamics.
And here I was hoping for them to really take off under Google's tutelage to the point where they could be renamed Massive Dynamic.
When I say the latest Boston Dynamics Atlas video, I joked that the robot which picked up boxed would eventually replace warehouse workers.
Now, as soon as Google decides to put Boston Dynamics on the selling block, Amazon is already interested.
So now Amazon will have drone delivery robots, android factory workers, and i can imagine there could be deliveries via self-driving cars.
That was pretty confusing, so I went and read through the article. It sounds like Rosenberg was specifically referring to Replicant / Boston Dynamics when he said that. Although, even then, it comes across as a bit of Google/Alphabet double-speak...
- Presto, you're a startup!
- What, you're not producing short-term revenue for Google/Alphabet?
- Presto, we're selling you off!
#DeleteChrome
In other words, the shareholders have spoken.
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
That's like selling someone a flat paddle of wood and calling it a hairbrush.
"It's actually a Scandinavian-style artisan 'nullen-broosh'. This found-art sculptor/DJ I know down at the raw vegan co-op turned me onto it. It's so much better for your hair, and it never develops unsightly tangles like old-fashioned brushes."
I own only total-market index funds, so if something benefits the whole economy, it is good for me. So I think Google should keep going with the fundamental research.
If your timeline for generating revenue is "a few years", then you should not be in the business of doing advanced research. You're just going to be disappointed.
That's a field where you're spending a ton of dough, and you won't have a product for 10 years. At least, that's how long it's going to take for the adoption and legalization of autonomous vehicles -- hey google -- when a person with no driver's license can step into a taxi that has no driver, let me know.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
No company sells the big money makers, if you want to sell something buyers want reasons. This is not like eBay where "I don't need it anymore" counts as a plausible reason, well sometimes you do get the fluff about strategic realignment and such but it's a weak excuse. What you don't want to say is that the business runs poor or the technology is bad. That it's taking too long is actually not that bad, you get potential buyers who:
a) Think they can get it cheap from a company with ADD and take it to maturity. IBM for example would be a company that likes to run the long game.
b) Think that they can bring it to market faster, because they got ideas for quick wins that Google missed. Like back to the military.
c) Think their R&D can speed up the buyer's projects which may be much closer to maturity. It's not like Google is the only game in town with robotics projects.
At any rate, I'm guessing Google scooped them up mostly for the sensor/vision/navigation technology not the actual robotics. I'm sure they were primarily looking for things to speed up their autonomous car, which could become a massive industry and where the first company get a road-certified AI might get a huge lead on the competition. I'm guessing they either got what they wanted or didn't find what they wanted, so out they go again.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Friends don't let friends get bought by Google. No matter how much they offer you.
They will take your product, shit on it, market it in ways that will make people hate you, then kill / sell your product like a used condom.
EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
I cannot think of any company Google have acquired that they haven't shit on.
They are literally worse than Microsoft these days.
The reason for this selling decision is probably that Google brain felt the same way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The article hints at other reasons. The latest youtube boston dynamics video showing the robot doing human work, was not only impressive, it was frightening. Not that we don't know that it is going to happen (not only in transportation, or manufacturing but also in service, consulting, transportation, delivery, military, health care or teaching), it was scary to see a bot doing things so well, to walk around, do errands. For a company, to be associated or identified with a job eliminator, this is a PR disaster in the long term. Its more subtle in AI or other domains of automation, where we don't see it. And then the article mentions also the lack of short term profitable products and leadership problems. But its interesting to see how non-technical factors start to matter more and more. But as mentioned before, the most important asset which google probably got from the company is the know-how, the top notch engineering, the human potential which can do be used also in non-robotic things. But whoever buys the company, the technology will continue change the future. Amazon is interested. Imagine all the packing and delivery work done by such droids. Maybe they should dress them as minions to make it more acceptable ...
Yeah, but have you seen these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
In internet years (not entirely unlike dog years including the accelerated years at the start) that's a veritable ancient one - past even grandfather stage and well into empire range. There are not a whole lot of internet companies that have lasted as long as Google has. I can only think of one search company that exists now as it did when Google came out. That company is DMOZ and, aside from SEO companies, I'm not sure who even uses it anymore. I don't think I've been to DMOS in the past 10 years.
Lemme look...
Holy shit. Scratch that. LOL They're in a "partnership with Aol" which is, I guess, AOL.
Oh, I think I just broke the internet with math. Sorry. I think we can safely say that even DMOZ is dead. First, they're partnered with AOL who seems to have changed their name's capitalization. More importantly, they've got over 90k "editors" and about 4m sites. They've got about 1m categories. That puts 4 sites in the average category. Worse, each editor has seemed to add only about 43 sites to the index.
I think we can conclude that DMOZ is somehow both dead and alive but the alive is only technical and they're also technically useless. Some 303 of the DMOZ sites are from Slashdot. I have no idea how or why there are 303 as they're individually added. I should think there would only be one. That there are 303 of them makes me think that the 43 number above is mostly meaningless.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
But ... but ... robots! Google! I for one welcoming our new overlords! How can this be?
43... don't you see how close DMOZ is to being the answer to life the universe and everything?
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If you've noticed my signature and seen a number of my comments when people ask me nonsensical questions that can be answered with a number then you'd be silly to think I didn't notice. ;-) In fact, I'd almost commented about it but I couldn't think of any way to make it fitting.
Oh! Hah... Thankfully preview saves the day. I've found a fit.
"And, the number 43 is significant as well. It shows that DMOZ also missed the answer. Close, but no cigar."
That's the best I can do to fit it in there. DMOZ... Man, I remember trying so hard to get in there. I had some jackass offer to sell me something. They (gender unknown) were willing to... Not verbatim but close to: "I'm pretty busy, I've got some work to do this weekend. I kind of need the money. I'll be making ____. If you want, I can skip my weekend job and review your site quicker." It was something like that - this was way back in ca. 2000(ish) IIRC. In between 2000 and 2003. I want to guess that today was the first time I've been back since then. I wasn't going to include that in my earlier post because it has been a long time and I've not retained the proof.
But, more to the point, I can't really think of a whole lot of internet businesses that have stuck it out as long as Google. There are a few. AOL, Yahoo, Slashdot, and things like that. Only a few of those are still in their original core business. I guess AOL still offers ISP service but Yahoo doesn't have their curated listing and hasn't for a very long time. Slashdot is still Slashdot. Usenet still runs but it's not a business, it's a service.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Sadly, the market for Go-playing dogs is currently non-existent.
Ezekiel 23:20
I was super irritated when Google first bought it, and I'm hoping BD survives being dropped. Can it buy itself back? Would that work out to a sustainable company?