In my last post, I talked about how Google is essentially spreading its arms and legs almost everywhere as far as human progress is concerned. They are now heavily invested in human health, computer and mobile software, AI, transportation, internet services, search engine, urban development and a lot more.

A lot of you guys agreed with me that one single corporation (Alphabet) who is doing so much important work and trying to find solutions to some of the biggest problems that we have today, might result in it dictating the very future of our race and yes, I also agree that to a point, it is kind of scary.

Regardless, let me talk about some more subsidiaries of Alphabet and the cutting edge technology that they are working upon that might change the world as we know it.

Waymo

Image Credits: Waymo

Transportation will go through a major shift in the coming decade and beyond that as we start seeing autonomous vehicles replace the conventional ones more and more. There is a major race going on right now among various companies to be the major player in this entirely new market.

Alphabet’s Waymo is among them and it has been developing the technology for a fully autonomous car for quite a while now. Founded in 2009, it was perhaps one of the first companies to undertake the development of self-driving cars.

As of last year, Waymo had test driven their self driving cars for a total of 1.7 million miles and that number must have only multiplied now at the end of 2017. What is commendable about their project is that as of 2016, there was only 1 instance where the self driving car was involved in a crash due to a software issue.

There are still some issues that are left for the company to solve which it promises to do by 2020 when it plans to launch fully autonomous cars without steering wheels or gas pedals for which it has partnered with a slew of car manufacturers.

X

Google X is a really interesting subsidiary of Alphabet as it is a semi-secret research and development facility that Google had founded in 2010 as Google X. Now, under Alphabet, it is only named as X.

X has been founded for developing moonshot technologies which are highly ambitious and have no guarantee of being successful but if realised, could change humanity for the better in so many different ways.

It has some really cutting edge projects under development like Project Loon, which aims to bring internet access to the entire world with the help of flying balloons, Project Wing, which aims to allow corporations to deliver products through drones, Project Glass which is an augmented reality headset.

There are several other projects that X is keeping under wraps which only makes you think what more they could be working on. Some of the projects that they have given up include Space Elevators, hoverboards, jetpacks and even teleportation, as these are just infeasible with current technology. Yeah, they really are working on some high level stuff!!

Nest Labs

One of the major changes that we are going to see in the coming decades is the home itself. If you didn’t notice by now, we are moving towards a world where everything has to be ‘smart’ and hour homes are no exception.

There are already a ton of devices available in the market for home automation that brings the control of the entire house on a single screen be it your phone or your tablet.

When Google acquired Nest Labs in 2014, it automatically became a major player in the smart home future as the company has shown great promise with its high tech, self-learning, smart home products.

Some of the products that they offer include Thermostat, smoke detector, security cameras, home security system and even a smart video doorbell. If you thought Google already had a major presence in our lives, it is only going to get even more pervasive in the coming future.