Category: X
Alphabet takes the wind out of its Makani energy kites
Google today announced that it is calling it quits on its efforts to build and monetize its Makani wind energy kites. Makani, which was founded in 2006, came into Google/Alphabet seven years ago as a Google X project. Last year, the company spun it out of X and made it…
Read More
The engineers behind Google’s Bookbot have launched a delivery robot startup
The engineers behind Google’s short-lived Bookbot — a robot created within the company’s Area 120 incubator for experimental products — have launched their own startup to bring the sidewalk delivery bot back to life. The secretive startup called Cartken was formed in fall 2019 after Google shuttered an internal program…
Read More
Alphabet’s Loon and SoftBank’s HAPSMobile turn solar-powered drones into flying cell towers
Alphabet-owned Loon, the company that had been focused on delivering internet communications to remote areas via stratospheric balloons, has completed development work on a new payload for partner HAPSMobile, a subsidiary of SoftBank that’s building high-altitude solar-powered uncrewed aircraft. The two companies jointly adapted the communications technology that enables Loon’s…
Read More
Self-driving company Waymo teams up with UPS for package delivery
Waymo will start delivering parcels for UPS using its self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans in Phoenix as part of a broader partnership with the shipping and logistics company. The companies said Wednesday that Waymo will pilot autonomous vehicle package pickup in metro Phoenix — the same area where its self-driving vehicles…
Read More
Sundance: In Miss Americana, Taylor Swift demotes the Internet
In nearly a decade of attending Sundance, I’ve never seen a scene like the premiere of the documentary Miss Americana, detailing the last year and a half or so of Taylor Swift’s life. The crowd before letting into the theater was huge, blistering with rumors about whether or not there…
Read More
Waymo’s self-driving trucks and minivans are headed to New Mexico and Texas
Waymo said Thursday it will begin mapping and eventually testing its autonomous long-haul trucks in Texas and parts of New Mexico, the latest sign that the Alphabet company is expanding beyond its core focus of launching a robotaxi business. Waymo said in a tweet posted early Thursday it had picked…
Read More