Google is not really a search company

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It’s a machine-learning company.

Many big decisions in one shot, Introducing Google’s new parent company, Alphabet. Sundar Pichai is new CEO of Google(all Internet focused products). Larry Page is CEO of Alphabet & it owns multiple companies, one of which is Google. All moonshot style companies(Google X, Google Fiber, Calico, Nest, Sidewalk) will be working under the umbrella of Alphabet.

This piece from his letter, struck the chord with me instantly,

We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes. But in the technology industry, where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth areas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant.

This is so deep and important to understand, not just for companies but also individuals entering or already working in IT. I’ve always believed, Google is not a conventional company, and doesn’t function like one. Google as a company has been always more ambitious than any other company I’ve ever followed in Silicon valley. From Robotic cars to Windfarms & from ISP to mobile carrier, Google keeps pushing boundaries to explore the unexplored.

Google Search’s next big step: understanding the real world to make a huge leap in accurately giving users the answers to their questions, as well as spontaneously surfacing information to satisfy their needs.

With Google Brain, an army of software engineers is trying to apply cutting-edge machine-learning algorithms to a growing array of problems. For e.g. Google can now transcribe all the addresses that Street View has captured in France in less than an hour.

The more Google understands, the better it understands you.

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Neural nets are modeled on the way biological brains learn. When you attempt a new task, a certain set of neurons will fire. You observe the results, and in subsequent trials, your brain uses feedback to adjust which neurons get activated. Over time, the connections between some pairs of neurons grow stronger and other links weaken, laying the foundation of a memory. A neural net essentially replicates this process in code.

With Deep Learning, computer scientists built software models that simulate—to a certain extent—the learning model of the human brain. The entire system could be trained, or even train itself, to divine coherence from random inputs, much in a way that a newborn learns to organize the data pouring into his or her virgin senses. Google is imbuing it with the ability to learn for itself from experience just like a human would do, and therefore it can master things that maybe we don’t know how to program. These models can then be trained on a mountain of new data, tweaked and eventually applied to brand new types of jobs.

Google X is devoted to finding unusual solutions to huge global problems

Finding unusual solutions to huge global problems, think Space Elevators, Teleportation, Project Loon, and Driverless cars. Headed by Astro Teller, a Captain of Moonshots–“moonshots” being his catchall description for audacious innovations that have a slim chance of succeeding but might revolutionize the world if they do.

Solve for X Rapid Evaluation Team, shares how they vet ideas and test out the most promising ones, primarily by doing everything humanly and technologically possible to make them fall apart. It is the start of the innovative process at X; it is a method that emphasizes rejecting ideas much more than affirming them. Failure is not precisely the goal at Google X. But in many respects it is the means.

If there’s a master plan behind X, it’s that a frictional arrangement of ragtag intellects is the best hope for creating products that can solve the world’s most intractable issues. Yet Google X, is an experiment in itself–an effort to reconfigure the process of a corporate lab, by taking incredible risks across a wide variety of technological domains, and by not hesitating to stray far from its Alphabet’s business.

There are three criteria that X projects share:

1. All must address a problem that affects millions or billions of people.
2. All must utilize a radical solution that has at least a component that resembles science fiction.
3. All must tap technologies that are now (or very nearly) obtainable.

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This brilliant move requires boldness and risk taking capacity, with statements and bonds of their past, that they’re a Search company. I see this step as an evolution into a conglomerate like GE, which runs multiple successful businesses. This is also a nice way to shred bureaucracy and retain loyal talent. The history of the company Google, hints a lot where Alphabet might be headed, and I hope this move, helps Google (and Alphabet) to become even better company, than they’re known for.

Take a look back to what mattered to us this year through Year in Search: http://google.com/2015

In case you missed the previous Google Zeitgeists:

• 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010

Let the discoveries, surprises, exploration, experimentation, begin.