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Alphabet ‘graduates’ Loon and Wing from moonshots to full, independent businesses

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Alphabet has announced that Loon and Wing — two of its X moonshot projects — are “graduating” today to become full companies underneath the Alphabet corporate umbrella. The two companies will be classified as “Other Bets” within Alphabet, alongside former X projects like Waymo, Chronicle, and Verily.

While the official designation of the companies has changed, their work remains largely the same. Loon will continue to work on using balloons to bring internet to people around the world, and Wing will keep building delivery drones. Neither company had updates on those projects to go along with the announcement, but obviously Alphabet is happy with the pace of the work, given the promotions within.

Now, these two projects will be expected to function as real companies with an eye toward becoming successful businesses down the road, instead of merely incubating within X.

Both projects also announced new management: Alastair Westgarth has been appointed the new CEO of Loon, while James Ryan Burgess is Wing’s new CEO.

Now that Wing and Loon are on their way, X’s blog post is already teasing where it could turn its attention to next: robotics, free-space optics, and Google’s augmented reality specter from the past, Glass.



from The Verge - Teches https://ift.tt/2L9nZJx

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