Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/Lh8SKC6sED1

by spankalee • 13 years ago

579 385 13 years ago

plus.google.com

MAGZine• 13 years ago

Wonder if this company is part of the reason for deciding to shutter Google Health? People might've been mighty upset if Google took their health records and then opened a website like this. Not saying that they still didn't benefit from the information dump

psbp4• 13 years ago

I don't think this is a site. It seems like a research arm. They probably did use Google health to gather the prerequisite data.

cbhl3• 13 years ago

I'm sceptical, since Google Health never quite caught on. There's room for improvement, certainly, but the regulatory requirements for mixing health and tech, and the externalities of dealing with vendors' proprietary formats will make this challenging at best.

psbp4• 13 years ago

This doesn't seem like a Google Health type service.

cbhl3• 13 years ago

Even if it's more like Thalmic Labs or 23andMe, I'm worried about whether fundamental infrastructure (or a leap-frogging equivalent, like cell phones) will be widespread enough for this sort of research/work to be useful to the people who need it most.

Like, there are feel-good stories like Dean Kamen's Slingshot (IIRC, he partnered with Coca-Cola to distribute the things) but I have absolutely no idea how well such things work in the field and the papers written about things like the Roundabout PlayPump are pretty damning.

jhardcastle• 13 years ago

Interesting is that Art Levinson will remain Chairman at Apple. Apparently the two giants are working together here.

Tim Cook, Chief Executive Officer of Apple, said: “For too many of our friends and family, life has been cut short or the quality of their life is too often lacking. Art is one of the crazy ones who thinks it doesn’t have to be this way. There is no one better suited to lead this mission and I am excited to see the results.”

grinich• 13 years ago

I think there's a pretty big misconception about Silicon Valley executives hating each other. (My guess is this comes from our media-driven obsession with the good vs. evil narrative.) In reality, a lot of these companies aren't that different, and the skills+personalities+struggles of CEOs are actually remarkably similar.

They might have different opinions or frustration with the competition, but most of what they focus on is not letting the company die from the inside. i.e: AOL/Palm/HP/Netscape couldn't innovate and imploded.

Eric Schmidt was on Apple's board up until the day shareholders (implicitly) deemed it to be a conflict of interest. I'm sure he was a great asset for Apple learning the importance of internet services. It's a shame that short-sighted investors are too captivated by competition to realize how cooperative Silicon Valley really is. There are only a handful of situations in tech where crushing your competition is actually a positive strategic move.

The rising tide floats all boats.

nostromo• 13 years ago

More evidence of this is the Breakthrough Prize: http://breakthroughprizeinlifesciences.org/sponsors

Sponsored by Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg (and Yuri Milner).

dchichkov• 13 years ago

... one of the sensible ones ...

api• 13 years ago

I'd love to see some of these want-to-live-forever transhumanist moneybags actually put some money behind some of these things and move them past the pipe dream phase. I hope this is somehow a step in that direction.

BTW: Calico... what a non-ValleyHipster name...

bitwize• 13 years ago

BTW: Calico... what a non-ValleyHipster name...

Yeah... they should have gone with Doctr.

ianstallings9• 13 years ago

.io

o0-0o• 13 years ago

I can't see the page, it says...

This post could not be found. Your URL may be incorrect, the post may have been deleted, or this account may not have access to the post.

This is the URL it takes me to: https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/Lh8SKC6sED1

cbhl3• 13 years ago

It's a public Google+ by Larry Page:

-----

I’m excited to announce Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases. Art Levinson, Chairman and former CEO of Genentech and Chairman of Apple, will be Chief Executive Officer.

OK … so you’re probably thinking wow! That’s a lot different from what Google does today. And you’re right. But as we explained in our first letter to shareholders, there’s tremendous potential for technology more generally to improve people’s lives. So don’t be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange or speculative compared with our existing Internet businesses. And please remember that new investments like this are very small by comparison to our core business.

Art and I are excited about tackling aging and illness. These issues affect us all—from the decreased mobility and mental agility that comes with age, to life-threatening diseases that exact a terrible physical and emotional toll on individuals and families. And while this is clearly a longer-term bet, we believe we can make good progress within reasonable timescales with the right goals and the right people.

Our press release has a few more details though it’s still very early days so there’s not much more to share yet. Of course when Art has something more substantial to communicate (and that will likely take time), he’ll provide an update. Finally, thanks to Bill Maris for helping bring this idea to life and getting Art involved, and to Sergey Brin for consistently supporting 10X thinking like this. It’s hard for many companies to make long term investments. So I’m tremendously excited about the innovative new way we’re funding this project. Now for the hard work!

http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2013/09/calico-announcement....

FD3SA• 13 years ago

Absolutely brilliant. Finally, Aubrey De Grey's unapologetically straightforward logic [1] regarding aging has gained traction with the crowd who has the means to tackle this grand challenge. I am sincerely proud of Page and Brin for their vision and commitment.

This is one of those rare times that powerful people make bold choices that catalyze a shift in the world's thought paradigm. Aging will now be seen for what it is: the root of all chronic illness.

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMAwnA5WvLc

MikeCapone2• 13 years ago

This is great if they do take the engineering approach of SENS and Aubrey de Grey. Ideally they would partner with SENS.org since they already have a lot of the infrastructure set up.

epicureanideal• 13 years ago

Agreed. I love that mainstream companies with lots of money are getting involved though. It's nice to be ahead of the curve but it's even better when the curve catches up.

brd• 13 years ago

Ever since coming across Aubrey De Grey I've been waiting for a more mainstream adoption of his ideas. I can only hope you're right and that this announcement will incite real change in the public's opinion on age.

300bps• 13 years ago

catalyze a shift in the world's thought paradigm

Absolutely. The goal should be to enact a vector of a new paradigm, as proactive team players synergize an out-of-the-box strategy of functionality and infotainment, re-engineering the learning curve framework of your dotted-line relationship.

JamesArgo• 13 years ago

In case you run out of ideas:http://www.1728.org/buzzword.htm

vbl• 13 years ago

...responsively.

ArbitraryLimits• 13 years ago

Let's take that offline.

toyg• 13 years ago

You're not leveraging your competitive advantages, there. I bet you don't even brainstorm blue-sky thinking for an innovation agenda. Tsk tsk.

bsullivan018• 13 years ago

Personally I hope that Google is humble enough to morph cross-platform mindshare in addition to growing killer channels and facilitating bleeding-edge infrastructures.

This approach will surely recontextualize best-of-breed vortals, implement world-class research and innovate value-added technologies by embracing impactful infomediaries.

Imagine how much longer we'd live if we leveraged sticky e-services, brand user-centric channels, iterated seamless deliverables and matrix impactful architectures?

huherto• 13 years ago

It took me a while to understand the sarcasm. I have probably been in the corporate environment too long :(

benihana2• 13 years ago

This is one of those rare times that powerful people make bold choices that catalyze a shift in the world's thought paradigm.

Let's just go ahead and pump the brakes here before we start clapping each other on the back and talking about shifted paradigms. I'll gladly join in the happy-clappy fest once some actual results come through. But saying we've catalyzed a shift in the world's thought paradigm (that is a really pretentious way of saying "this might make people think differently", by the way) at the announcement of a new product might be just a wee bit premature.

sp332• 13 years ago

Changing the way people around the world think about death is pretty significant, though. It's going to rewrite important aspects of many cultures. Edit: I mean "make people think differently" is underselling it.

PeterisP5• 13 years ago

An interesting point from one of Calico's announcements is a statement that curing all cancer would only add ~3 years to the expected lifespan.

This is thought provoking - if even a perfect solution to such a problem won't give us what we want, then we do need to "make people think differently" and try to focus on a different, bigger problem than the current approach of trying to strike out separate illnesses.

By the way, allowing medicine to think about not only "how to bring a broken-person to average" but "how to bring an average person to above-average" would also require a major change in the way of thinking for the whole area. Some homo sapiens are extremely resistant for diseases, some are smarter than average, some have much lower aging damage. Instead of thinking how to fix a genetic disease by replacing a broken gene with the "average" one; we should think about what is the best that we, as a species, could be.

prlambert• 13 years ago

Perhaps I missed something... where is Aubrey de Grey linked with Calico? I didn't see any mention of him in Larry's post, the press release, or the time article. Where is this coming from?

grannyg00se• 13 years ago

Aubrey has been talking about tackling aging as a disease for a long time now. Some of us have been waiting for some real serious investment in that direction because historically it seems he has been the lone voice in the field willing to challenge aging in this way.

This announcement could be interpreted as strong support for the general concepts that Aubrey talks about.

SkyMarshal• 13 years ago

He's not, he's just well known as having put together the first clear roadmap for life extension and ultimately "curing" death. If anyone could be considered the "father" of the field, it's him. Hence the comparisons people are making.

Techowl3• 13 years ago

Aubrey's reaction piece is listed on the front page of Time's website, and can be seen here: http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/18/finally-the-war-on-aging-ha...

_ns5x3• 13 years ago

Actually the root of all chronic illness is being born. You can't age without that happening first.

devx• 13 years ago

He just wrote an article as a response to this:

http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/18/finally-the-war-on-aging-ha...

ams6110• 13 years ago

Honestly, this just smells like trying to get positioned favorably for the coming geriatric population bubble as the boomers finally reach the point where they aren't able to screw everything up anymore.

kamakazizuru• 13 years ago

"Aging will now be seen for what it is: the root of all chronic illness." .. That´s simply not true. There are people suffering chronic illnesses at very young ages - ones that are completely unrelated to aging. Aging is a natural process that all biological species undergo - humans are no different. There are plenty of people who have lived healthy and normal lives, aged, and then died naturally. Chronic illnesses are caused by genetic factors and / or personal habits.

throwaway1722• 13 years ago

To what extent is this guided by the self-interest of aging tech darling CEOs (Larry Page must be in his 40s by now)? As a young person I tend to think "some of these health issues ought to be solved problems by the time I'm older." But I don't have the kind of capital to spend on it that companies like Google, or persons like Larry Page, do.

Regardless of motivation, I'm happy to see investment in this domain.

mattlutze• 13 years ago

It's self-interest to the extent that needs be to get some traction in quality of life issues.

The capital us youngins have is time and ability if not money. This is a great example of moguls and companies willing to put that resource in given an availability of the talent and ability.

turing• 13 years ago

Both Page and Brin turned 40 this year. There's also Brin's heightened risk of Parkinson's. His mother has it, and according to Wikipedia "both he and his mother possess a mutation of the LRRK2 gene (G2019S) that puts the likelihood of his developing Parkinson's in later years between 20 and 80%". He's donated to Parkinson's research in the past, and this investment is certainly along the same lines.

alina242• 13 years ago

Original - http://too.blogspot.com/2008/09/lrrk2.html

melling3• 13 years ago

How many diseases have we cured in the past 20 years? The past 40 years? Medical advances are really, really slow. As for the "self-interest" question (that's why you created a throw away account?), I'm sure as you get a little older, and you notice people dying who are close to your age, you might be wish that people took an interest in being self-serving a couple decades earlier.

Steve Jobs, for example, had billions of dollars, had his genome sequenced, and probably tried very hard not to die so young. I bet if he had known 10 years earlier that he was going to die from pancreatic cancer, some of that money would have gone into searching for a cure.

Larry Page might live a perfectly healthy life, die in his sleep at 101, out living most of us. However, if you've got that kind of money and influence, why not buy some real insurance.

throwaway1722• 13 years ago

For example, polio was cured less than 60 years ago. We know much more about the effects of radiation (sunscreen, anyone?) than we did 40 years ago. Genome sequencing is becoming slightly more affordable (than even 10 years ago) due to tech advances; we can predict hereditary disease in some instances (BRCA mutations, etc).

Steve Jobs is actually a terrible example. To quote wikipedia, "Despite his diagnosis, Jobs resisted his doctors' recommendations for medical intervention for nine months,[170] instead consuming a psuedo-medicine diet in an attempt to thwart the disease." Pseudo is Greek for "false." And if you want cancer solved by the time you get it, you probably have to pony up the money before your diagnosis.

I'm not disagreeing that medical advances are relatively slow, but on the scale of human life, Page has probably at least another 40 years of advances left to see. And that's a lot.

hoilogoi• 13 years ago

How many diseases have we cured in the past 20 years? The past 40 years? Medical advances are really, really slow.

It would be really interesting if we began noticing a medical analogue to Moore's Law in the next few decades (though I don't know how you'd measure it). Supposing conservatively that medicine is 100x better in 2013 than in 1900, one might expect medical knowledge to double between now and 2030. The size of the advances in computing from 1900-40 and 1940-80 differ by several orders of magnitude.

Of course I don't think we have the data to assign a model right now so this might be BS.

topynate• 13 years ago

Sounds good to me if it is. After all, it'll be in everyone's self-interest soon enough.

alina242• 13 years ago

Brin's blog post on his higher genetic predisposition to Parkinson's - http://too.blogspot.com/2008/09/lrrk2.html

hglaser• 13 years ago

Why is Google announcing this company? Will Google own it? Invest in it?

gvr• 13 years ago

This sounds super interesting. I couldn't find a site for the company; do they have one?

Calico.com is registered to Oracle and there's nothing there.

ianstallings9• 13 years ago

I for one welcome my immortal transhumanist cyborg overlords.

But seriously, the fact that the first thing they do is start a corporation to control the science is not exactly comforting to me. Genentech is known for selling Avastin, their drug that fights cancer for $55k after they received harsh criticism for the proposed cost of $100k+/year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevacizumab#Costs

I fear a future where "all men are created equal", but only some can afford to become immortal and others cannot. We already see some of that now. Tons of ethical questions around this topic.

netrus• 13 years ago

I for one fear a future where anyone can become immortal. This would result in unimaginable struggles for our ecosystem.

I always feel modern medicine should focus on raising life quality for as long as we are alive, rather than extending life itself. But of course this view is painted by the large number of old people living in inhuman conditions we currently have.

moistgorilla• 13 years ago

Being immortal and having a high quality of life for as long as we are alive are not mutually exclusive. In fact, don't we have longer lives and better quality of life than our ancestors already? This would just be taking it one step further. Also, having a population that never dies has many more benefits than consequences. The amount of knowledge and experience that will not be wasted because of death is extremely valuable. Also, who says people will be giving birth to children as often as they are currently doing when they don't fear dying. Already in most developed nations the rate of population growth is plateauing. Also, don't forget we have an entire universe at our fingertips. I'm sure when we have 200 year old aerospace engineers and physicists we will be able to get to colonize other planets much faster.

ianstallings9• 13 years ago

I think that as people live longer they will have less children as a result, simply because the inner need to procreate and keep humanity alive will die down. We see this in the differences between the first world and third world countries where mortality rates have a significant delta. For instance, In Africa they tend to have more children on average than they do in Europe.

UnFleshedOne2• 13 years ago

Living longer might naturally force people to take a more long-term outlook on the environment.

Also slowing down growth is much more palatable on a basic level if you have that much more time to enjoy what you have and get what you don't have yet.

jerf4• 13 years ago

Like with anything else, the question isn't whether the rich will be able to afford it, the question is how much progress can we make in making it cheap, how quickly, to get it to how many people?

It is a moral imperative to make sure that short-sighted class warfare does not cut off the nose to spite the face by destroying this work under the guise of egalitarianism, because we can not turn on a dime and immediately grant it to everyone on day one. Yes, the rich will get it first. We need to ensure that market mechanisms remain functional and that they end up subsidizing the research the rest of us need. If we build gates and walls, they'll just end up captured in a heartbeat. Don't let them be built.

(Once the market has chewed on it and made it as cheap as possible, consider subsidizing it or something, but for the love of Life itself, don't break the market and destroy the research before it even happens. Seemingly suboptimal situations may need to be relatively briefly tolerated to make sure this happens at all.)

ginko• 13 years ago

But what about generation warfare?

Imagine having to live in a world where all the positions of power are permanently occupied by people from the generation of your great-grandparents.

ianstallings9• 13 years ago

I have no problem with free market capitalism, if it's fair. But some think that companies like Genetech exploit the rules around patents and intellectual property at the expense of people's lives and receive preferential status.

There's a difference between making your money back to cover the cost of research and development while making a profit, and plain old greed. A 20 year lifetime on a patent with a 3-7 year window of exclusivity means you might be dead before you can afford treatment. That's one of the ethical issues that we will hopefully address in a sane and logical way as we move forward. How much money should one be able to make if they are adding days to your life?

I do agree that this type of thing may be helpful to humanity. I just cast a skeptical eye knowing how the drug industry has worked in the past.

enraged_camel5• 13 years ago

Normally I agree, but the implications of anti-aging treatment need to be considered.

Yes, the rich will get it first. But then think about what will happen: they will start living longer, and as a result, accumulate even more wealth over their lifetimes. While the poor will have 30-35 years of productive work-life, the rich will have much longer. Combined with the already large difference in their earning power, this will lead to a world where the rich not only life much higher quality lives, but also longer lives.

rhizome4• 13 years ago

Once the market has chewed on it and made it as cheap as possible, consider subsidizing it or something

Your argument hinges on a hoary anti-Marxist critique. As one example alternative approach, the hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars handed out to financial institutions and/or forgiven in legal penalties could have been used to reimburse companies for creating successful health technologies and treatments. It's a matter of policies and priorities, some of which are broken and some that aren't (Sturgeon's Law), and the market structures of medicine operate in the way that it does for specific reasons not necessarily aligned with benefits for those who are dying or sick.

tl;dr: TIMTOWTDI

eli_gottlieb23• 13 years ago

Sorry, but no. Transhuman-level stuff is not safe or even morally allowable for our current society. No. Just freaking no.

I was born in a world where two things in life got to everyone: death, and taxes. They've already "relieved" the elite of taxes, and now they're looking to do the same for death.

No. We are not their cattle, and they are not our shepherds.

You want immortality, robots, and post-scarcity awesomeness? Great. Make it for everyone.

Don't develop The Future just so the capitalist elite can exploit even harder.

eli_gottlieb23• 13 years ago

It's a moral imperative to destroy capitalism before we gain transhuman power over Nature!

nmeofthestate• 13 years ago

The hard-left argument that this will empower an elite is a silly and pointless one - life extension technology will be developed by China in the unlikely event that Western Luddites manage to throw a spanner in the works in their affluent countries.

jonknee• 13 years ago

But seriously, the fact that the first thing they do is start a corporation to control the science is not exactly comforting to me.

How else would they do it?

ianstallings9• 13 years ago

Well they could do a non-profit, a trust, setup labs, or just donate to existing research labs. In a business the goal of profit is not just a thing that leaders should be doing, but a legal responsibility to share holders that can't be ignored.

eli_gottlieb23• 13 years ago

A nonprofit, a national lab, a university...

netcan2• 13 years ago

The technology tidal wave we've been riding is going to take us to strange and probably unexpected places if we stay on long enough. What it is going to do to distribution of wealth, is anyone's guess.

On the labour/production side a technology seems to be creating wider income gaps. For the winners it is a lever with which to create more wealth. For others, they are competing with machines and poor countries (enabled by technology to work with rich ones) for work.

On the product consumption side, the gap is pretty small. The cheap netbook that almost anyone in Europe or the US can afford is not much different (in price or performance) from the one used by a billionaire. No matter how rich you are, you can't get a better smartphone than the models you can see in any bus. Even the low end (50-$100) smartphones are getting decent. I expect smartphones to be as ubiquitous as dumb ones soon, that means the gap between rich British & bangladeshi (measured in smartphone wealth) is plummeting.

Who knows what future waves of technology will look like, especially medical technology.

I think the appropriate response is keep an open mind and see where stuff takes us. Don't bind your thinking to past paradigms. Go read the Communist Manifesto. Realize how it is a product of its time, the industrial revolution. It takes a lot of contortion to try understanding the world by that paradigm. For Adam Smith, technological efficiency was about making pins.

apr2• 13 years ago

Are you suggesting that I'd be better if the technology is not available to anyone lest some people live longer than others? I am pretty sure that in the beginning the new technologies will be accessible only to the people who can spare some cash, but I am also pretty sure that the cost will go down, as it has for any other technology.

ianstallings9• 13 years ago

No I'm suggesting that society as a whole should be part of the conversation about not only seeking immortality but also how much one can benefit from such wonderful breakthroughs. I would love to see people I love live forever. But there are ethical issues around the industry that we all need to discuss.

lukev3• 13 years ago

I agree, but existence is so much more important than availability at this point in history.

Accelerate existence by whatever means necessary; availability will follow.

eropple4• 13 years ago

I agree, but existence is so much more important than availability at this point in history.

You assume that those in power will want to make more like them and I think that is mostly unlikely. Nothing attracts the powerful like an insurmountable advantage. Being able to outwait your potential competition at that scale is powerful and I have a hard time seeing powerful people wanting to make their potential competitors as powerful.

king_jester3• 13 years ago

Accelerate existence by whatever means necessary; availability will follow.

This is not demonstrated at all. Increasing existence and production of food hasn't tackled food insecurity and hunger, for example. That something exists, even if cheaply, does not mean it will become accessible.

loceng2• 13 years ago

Indeed, what's the cost going to be for once someone finds a "cure" for cancer? Society should offer a bounty for such a thing, and then scientists / researchers are incentivized more towards the problem, and will be rewarded - as well as their research supporters - if successful.

ianstallings9• 13 years ago

Yes I agree, and the patrons of those ventures, perhaps all of society, could reap rewards in ways that go beyond a stock portfolio. It's funny that in the press release they mention "moonshot", because that's what we need. All of society puts in and all of society benefits. With measures and controls it could work, just like the moonshot did.

Wingman4l7• 13 years ago

I fear a future where "all men are created equal", but only some can afford to become immortal and others cannot.

That future is now. We already have first-world countries with medical technology that allows its citizens to live an average lifespan much longer than those in countries where such tech is unavailable. Not to mention the everyday technologies that indirectly extend "effective" lifespan -- every hour not spent gathering cooking fuel, preparing food, washing clothes, etc. is an hour you can spend "living". Even in said first-world countries, there is a dichotomy: those who are rich & influential enough to take advantage of expensive & cutting-edge medical treatment, and those who are not.

Actual life extension therapies are just the above, writ large. I don't see any difference between this tech and any other "early adopter" tech, which is always expensive and limited in availability. We can only hope that such technology will become cheaper & more widespread and trickle down to the rest of us in time for us to make use of it.

mrschwabe3• 13 years ago

Apparently your internet browsing data is not enough, Google also wants your medical records and DNA.

Seriously though, I wouldn't trust any company connected with Google for 'health and well being'. Their total disregard for privacy would imply they are not working in my best interest for health either.

psbp4• 13 years ago

Did anyone read the article? This seems to be a biomedical company focused on engineering solutions to aging/illness. It's seemingly not Google Health 2.0.

mrschwabe3• 13 years ago

Sure, but if their plans involve bringing said solutions to the masses - this skepticism applies. Just imagine the millions of hipsters lining up for the Google, er, Calico vaccination.

VLM2• 13 years ago

Not necessarily opposite approaches. If they have all the data on everything I've ever purchased to eat (they probably do...) then they've probably got it on everyone and it would be interesting to produce the definitive statistical analysis of exactly how much corn syrup you have to drink over a lifetime to achieve a 50% chance of diabetes.

VikingCoder6• 13 years ago

"Their total disregard for privacy"

To the contrary, they have utter regard for your privacy. They advocate for governments to have more respect for your privacy, as well.

Alfred knows everything about Bruce Wayne. Google is Alfred, except he doesn't even take a salary - he wants to show you advertising that you would think is high quality, and he promises to never sell your personal information to the advertisers. Pretty damned good deal, if you ask me.

mrschwabe3• 13 years ago

Oh yeah, then why didn't they shut-down Gmail like the folks at Lavabit did? Instead of doing the right thing, Google let themselves become compromised in secret - only for us to find out after someone was willing to put their life on the line to leak this information.

dougbarrett• 13 years ago

They're just looking for customers to stick around longer. It's a morbid reality, but if death could be prolonged so they could find new ways to advertise and find new products for the elderly that have prolonged their life, then that would make sense. They could potentially be creating a whole new market.

It could take 20-30 years for their research and development to catch on, but I'd imagine some of Google's biggest followers/clients are in their 20's, 30's, 40's.

They wouldn't have launched this company if there was no "end-game" or no ultimate goal, and retaining customers indefinitely seems like the ultimate goal for any company.

cromwellian6• 13 years ago

The nutjobs who have to sully each and every Google related piece of news on HN are becoming tiresome.

brymaster3• 13 years ago

Sock puppets and people with blinders on are becoming tiresome.

Hey, remember this?

Should be titled the Banality of Google Strawmen for the often repeated conspiracy theories of Google working with the NSA.
There's simply no way Googlers would tolerate something like secretly sending user data to the NSA, it would be too hard to prevent internal employees from revolting.
As an employee, I'd rather Google lose money and stock price and have the government shut them down, than send a firehose feed to the NSA.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5807106

Well, did you lose your Google job yet?

gdulli• 13 years ago

I'd rather see a high quality of life for everyone on earth for 80 years than 150+ year life spans for the first world. Which will just further increase the footprint of the rich and divert resources from the poor.

Not to mention, it's a more attainable goal. It doesn't help much to keep the body going for 50 more years if you can't also keep the brain going. I believe these are very different problems. If you can somehow solve both, it doesn't help if you can't feed and house all these people.

abstractbill• 13 years ago

I believe these are very different problems.

Aubrey de Grey believes they are not different.

If he's right, the only way you could keep people perfectly healthy up to age 80 without them living much longer would be to execute on his plan (or a similar one), and then kill people once they got old enough.

VikingCoder6• 13 years ago

You either believe in capitalism, or you don't.

Google believes in capitalism. They will offer goods and services to people who can afford them, and they will also work to make their products more accessible to those with limited resources.

I personally believe Android will have enormous long-lasting positive impacts on the rest of the world. A $25 smartphone ... A $10 smartphone... A $5 smartphone... Giving access to instant communication, and huge amounts of information, will in the long run dramatically improve human lives. My personal opinion.

jbooth2• 13 years ago

I also disagree with the parent poster but you absolutely do not either "believe in capitalism, or you don't".

The only pure capitalist societies are anarchist hellholes. Among nice societies, capitalism is implemented all sorts of different ways with the things capitalism does poorly[1] papered over in different ways.

[1] law enforcement, basic standard of living for all, various economic regulations to address market failures, e.g. I can't legally plug in a transmitter at 100MHz and 1000 watts and black out WNBC in my neighborhood, and can't sell capitalist let-the-market-decide food out of a roach den

Florin_Andrei4• 13 years ago

You either believe in capitalism, or you don't.

I hope what you really meant was far, far better than what you made it to sound like.

zerorbit• 13 years ago

You are assuming resources are limited, but they are infinite. Making the assumption the Universe is infinite.

csallen2• 13 years ago

The vast majority of resources in the universe are unavailable to us, and will likely remain so unless we make efficient use of the resources that are available to us.

unimpressive• 13 years ago

You are assuming resources are limited, but they are infinite. Making the assumption the Universe is infinite.

Silliest thing I've read all day. There are huge costs associated with extracting resources here on earth, let alone from the stars. And even if "the universe" is infinite, no new matter is being generated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe

dragonwriter11• 13 years ago

I'd rather see a high quality of life for everyone on earth for 80 years than 150+ year life spans for the first world.

They aren't mutually exclusive goals; working on the social/political/distributional problems that prevent most people from having a high quality of life is not exclusive with working on the health technology problems that mean that no one is living 150+ years.

And I'd rather see a high quality of life for everyone on Earth for 150+ year life spans than either of your options.

joseph_cooney• 13 years ago

So you should be happy with the work the Gates Foundation is doing. It's good to see different technologists tacking a similar problem from different ends of the spectrum.

waterlesscloud• 13 years ago

"So I’m tremendously excited about the innovative new way we’re funding this project"

What does that refer to?

notatoad4• 13 years ago

from the Time article[1], although they don't say it explicitly i get the impression that they're going to run it essentially like a charity - just dump money on it, and not expect any financial return.

[1] http://business.time.com/2013/09/18/google-extend-human-life...

gesman2• 13 years ago

...or ANY return.

julespitt3• 13 years ago

Peculiar it isn't just set up as a charity then.

Although perhaps Larry Page just wants to avoid the strange vagaries of non-profit governance, if I were to guess why.

orky56• 13 years ago

Not surprised in the least that Page referenced Bill Marris for "bringing this idea to life." Marris has been pivotal in taking Google beyond its traditional role with this and Google Ventures. He has recognized and successfully utilized Google's resources to push Google to its full potential and reshape what Google stands for. Very excited to see what happens with Calico and Marris' next achievements.

siljrath• 13 years ago

yup. valid cncerns, good comments. bring on some more michael tellinger -ism, then we can have a bit more peace of mind about the aubrey de gray -ism, when it's not part of that capitalist, corporatist, monopolist-wannabe paradigm. could be great tho. (love the comment: rising tide floats all boats)

crassus• 13 years ago

This is a great first step. But realistically they can only move so fast with FDA regulation increasing your iteration cycle time on therapies to 10 years. Our biomedical regulatory regime is extremely risk averse.

If we had a regime where anyone could voluntarily place any therapy into their own body, we'd move a lot faster. Yes, a few more people would die in testing. But a lot more lives would be saved by the therapies produced.

diydsp• 13 years ago

Not only would more die in testing, but more would die in everyday use and results would be so mixed you could hardly get any information out of the experiments.

One of my biggest clients is in the medical device industry. From the surface appearance, any company could make a simulacrum of their main products with perhaps 90% cost-cutting... but life-saving devices are not like inferior iPods or graphic designs. It's not just things like a crappy user interface, poorer display quality and periodic crashes interrupting your musical flow you would have to deal with if any New Jack could make medical devices, but infection, worsened health, extraneous visits to doctors, untraceable health conditions, lack of accountability by your doctor and yes, death through everyday use, etc. After hearing conservative cheapskates bitch about wasted expenses of FDA regulation and liberals bitch about "how easy it is to walk around the FDA," I have come to fully doubt both (read: realize how much they're talking out of their ani) and respect the FDA after working in such close vicinity to them.

And anyway, yes anyone can voluntarily place any therapy in your body- you just can't get a corporation to help you with it in the U.S.

paul• 13 years ago

Medical tourism partially solves this. If someone develops an amazing treatment I need, I wouldn't mind traveling to another country to get it.

canvia• 13 years ago

The root cause is sociopathic control freaks who think they know best, and want to tell other people what to do. It's the reason why so many victimless crimes are punishable with prison time. You can't dictate morality. Preventing someone from doing whatever they please with their body is what is truly immoral, society just needs to realize that.

king_jester3• 13 years ago

If we had a regime where anyone could voluntarily place any therapy into their own body, we'd move a lot faster. Yes, a few more people would die in testing. But a lot more lives would be saved by the therapies produced.

In the age of patent medicines where you could freely use any kind of "medicine" or treatment this was not true at all. Medicine is not simple to understand or develop and asking the average person to make this evaluation is enabling a system that will take money from people in exchange for making their health worse. The kickstarter model is not appropriate for medicine.

frozenport2• 13 years ago

With all that Google knows about you, they might as well have a clone ready when you die!

VLM2• 13 years ago

Unless you're about 95 years old today, GOOG will probably shutter the service before you die.

They already went thru one iteration of electronic medical record, which is too bad because it sounded interesting but the first time I heard about it was on a READER feed as it was being shutdown. Before READER shut down of course.

devanti• 13 years ago

the google founders' quest to live forever begins

saucetenuto• 13 years ago

So now we know what Steve Yegge was talking about, when he said he was moving to some mysterious "making peoples' lives better" project.

Cool.

robomartin• 13 years ago

This is potentially great news. The funny thing is that the first thing that crossed my mind is a book I read many years ago: Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition.

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Mambo-Chicken-Transhuman-Conditi...

rottyguy• 13 years ago

A potential side-effect to this company would be googles technology expertise married to the biotech/pharma? world. We often hear that this drug cost billions to manufacture and therefore we need to recoup our costs through it's sales. Perhaps we see less expensive drugs as a result during this journey. That would be a huge win IMO.

rhizome4• 13 years ago

This is a fairly predictable feel-good initiative after being hammered on their involvement in NSA matters.

bsullivan018• 13 years ago

Great, but will wait till something cool comes out of it, or when they shut it down. Right now that's all I can say with the info given.

But yeah, Google has managed to suck the oxygen out of others with every new announcement (self-driving cars are one example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#History )

gefh• 13 years ago

Tesla, Mercedes, and others are all working _harder_ on self driving cars now.

bsullivan018• 13 years ago

Who's getting virtually all the press? That was my point

JonFish852• 13 years ago

Ok, I'll bite: what is the over/under on when this will be shut down like so many other Google projects?

(Question is only half-serious)

notatoad4• 13 years ago

it will be shut down when management decides it no longer has a chance of being successful. if it is successful, it will not be shut down.

stop getting emotionally attached to google products. they aren't your children.

JonFish852• 13 years ago

Yikes, that's a little harsh. I don't really care about any of the products they've shut down, it was just a tongue-in-cheek observation that I find curious. I use Google search, calendar & gmail. If they shut those down, I'd be sad. Otherwise I don't really care much.

bowlofpetunias2• 13 years ago

Most of the world suffers from the health problem of never even reaching a ripe old age, and much of the rest from the problem of not being able to afford it, and increasingly so.

This is not about making the world a better place. This about allowing the elite that can afford it to live forever.

astrodust• 13 years ago

Plus the one thing Google doesn't have access to at the moment is your medical records.

I guess this fixes that.

anfedorov• 13 years ago

They used to have a service for exactly that: http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/health/about/

cookingrobot2• 13 years ago

Calico is a different company, so if some day you decide to give them access to your medical records, that won't automatically give access to google.

natrius3• 13 years ago

Can you name something that was only for the elites fifty years ago that isn't available to pretty much everyone today? This is what progress always looks like.

needacig3• 13 years ago

Clean water. Physical safety. Electricity. Maybe when you thought "pretty much everyone," you had the bay area in mind or something, but actually it includes a pretty large group of very poor people.

bowlofpetunias2• 13 years ago

Clean water. Basic health care. Not dying from diseases we've already been able to cheaply cure or prevent for decades.

Oh, I'm sorry, you don't consider yourself part of the elite?

samstave• 13 years ago

Two things: Money. Power.

kyledilger• 13 years ago

I too, watched "In Time."

Techowl3• 13 years ago

Affording proper care is definitely a problem, but the diseases of aging are the greatest causes of death globally, not infectious diseases or other health problems [1]. Taking care of diseases like malaria is unquestionably a noble and important task, but if we're talking about the world as a whole, aging is actually the greatest burden on health right now. Cardiovascular problems in particular are a serious problem worldwide [2].

1 - http://who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/ 2 - http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/publications/glob... There are tons of statistics at http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.CODWORLD?lang=en for the full picture.

enraged_camel5• 13 years ago

Your logic can be dismissed as nonsense with a very easy thought experiment.

Imagine you have two groups of people: Group A and Group B. You are voting on a technology that can prevent 90% of deaths in Group A. Do you vote yes or no?

If you vote no, congratulations, you just condemned a large group of people to continue dying for the sake of egalitarianism.

(The reason this thought experiment is powerful is that it strips the scenario of value-judgments such as "elite" and "poor.")

gilrain• 13 years ago

Your logic can be dismissed as a false dichotomy.

newsign• 13 years ago

its not about whether elite is saved or not ... its about whether you're healthy or not ....

Imagine you have two groups of people: Group A and Group B. Group A is living longer but unhealthy and Group B is living shorter but extremely healthy , which one do you pick - I rather pick Group B ... dont know whether Calico will be about living longer or living healthier - its not a easy thing to crack but I hope they succeed ...

eli_gottlieb23• 13 years ago

If Group B is 99x the size of Group A, then I vote no.

tnuc• 13 years ago

Unfortunately this is most of the politics that drives health care in the USA. Most people in the US don't even get close to old age because they don't have access to adequate healthcare.

Bill Gates is saving thousands of lives by trying to wipe out diseases that generally affect poor people for very little money per life saved. While in the US millions is spent per person to provide longer lives for a few people.

olalonde3• 13 years ago

Most people in the US don't even get close to old age

What? The average life expectancy in the US is 79 years old... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expec...

adventured2• 13 years ago

What a bizarre statement.

Life expectancy is nearly 80 years in the US at this point, even with the explosion of cancer, heart disease and diabetes that has come with obesity in the last 30 years.

You'd have to be defining old age as 140 for your statement to make sense.

lbrandy• 13 years ago

This isn't a serious objection and this line of thinking is fundamentally flawed. You could say the exact same about the internet or the automobile or the MRI. It only solves the problem of "the elite".

mhartl• 13 years ago

This basic argument could be used against any new technology, ever.

adventured2• 13 years ago

If your opinion were applied in practice universally, modern medicine would have never happened to begin with, for it was first accessible and affordable by the so called elites.

That is how all products first become available. The rich fund the R&D and scaling.

We'd all still be living in primitive civilizations if your approach ruled the day.

lcedp• 13 years ago

This is not about making the world a better place. This about allowing the elite that can afford it to live forever.

You're probably right. But any advantages in medicine eventually will boost available level of tools to all. Well it worked as this so far. Elite is just able to get the best much earlier - but that doesn't mean we should stop all scientific progress and reset to the level of medicine everybody can get.

ape4• 13 years ago

Self driving cars would be good for old folks.

nova• 13 years ago

Well, deathism going out of fashion with one of the biggest technological companies of the world can only be good.

This is the greatest news I've heard in a long time and even if it ends up in nothing the attitude alone is commendable.

ilbe• 13 years ago

Fine, but, I would say that before one jumps into whatever treatments will be offered, given capable legs, they must first walk and ride a bike more.

gesman2• 13 years ago

No wonder my health and personal development related site dropped from the first page of Google to nowhere.

Replaced by bunch of Youtube links and wikipedia.

Google is getting into conflict-of-interest endeavors.

eli_gottlieb23• 13 years ago

So basically, Google are now openly admitting that they're trying to take over the world.

mcv2• 13 years ago

Not so much "taking over" as "being given in exchange for eternal life". They know how to make any deal attractive.

brownBananas• 13 years ago

Not going to lie, I read the first two lines, stopped, opened a new tab, and searched for Calico. Then came back and read the rest of the post.

vacri2• 13 years ago

I really wish tech companies would stop naming themselves after things that already exist. It just pollutes the search space, and there are plenty of nonce words out there that sound cool.

kafkaesque3• 13 years ago

Have to put on my tin foil hat for this. NSA-related, too, so you're warned.

This makes me wonder just how much Google works with the US government. I'm not saying the result of whatever Calico wants or will do (because it's all pretty vague right now) is a negative.

But Calico seems to come at a time when Obama is pushing for universal health care, which will be a huge industry. Last I heard, it was estimated at $1.1 trillion.

It just feels like the US has a tendency to take something good (universal health care), and make it into something bad ("We will use this to profile/monitor every US citizen").

StavrosK• 13 years ago

Oh wow... That's... a pretty big leap.

kafkaesque3• 13 years ago

It is. I'm still excited for the details on Calico. It was just a thought that crossed my mind.

cromwellian6• 13 years ago

Healthcare is based on science, and science requires data processing to see the correlations. We'd probably be able to spot a lot more common causes of diseases if people weren't so guarded with their medical history. This doesn't really have anything to do with government, it has to do with solving problems.

The US already has HIPAA, so I don't get the point. This just seems like a weak attempt to say something negative about Google's announcement.

kafkaesque3• 13 years ago

Medical history is a double-edged sword in the US. Why do you think people are so reluctant to share it when they are being judged, charged more, charged less, etc. depending on it?

If this weren't the case, some Americans wouldn't have a problem with 'divulging' their medical history.

Health care is based on science, you're right, but there are factors that influence what is researched and where funds go. Plus, putting it in practice or implementing it according to the right policy; this is another issue.[1]

Also, I think you're undermining the magnitude of lobbying.

But Google is a huge company, with a lot of power and capital. So, like I said in response to someone else, I am very interested in the details of Calico.

[1] http://billmoyers.com/2013/05/18/blinding-us-from-science/

PeterisP5• 13 years ago

An interesting trend is that we're now no longer relying on governments to pursue big, hairy, audacious goals. Governments and also capital markets nowadays seem unable to pursue any really long-term projects at all.

Instead, all the future-advancing progress seems to be made by independently rich individuals; and also not by the "aristocratic-rich" families, but by noveau riche upstarts such as Brin, Musk and others. What does it say about our current, traditional institutions if they seem unable to do that? Are they broken, and can they be fixed somehow?

FrojoS• 13 years ago

There might be a trend, yes, but we are still almost entirely relying on government funded research. So much that it will stay this way for a very long time. Have you compared say the US health care budget with say the funding of the Gates foundation.

eli_gottlieb23• 13 years ago

Our research institutions are not broken. They are actively defunded, disabled, and handcuffed by an elite class who would rather return to the days of aristocratic decision-making than subject themselves to democracy.

Eliezer2• 13 years ago

In the depths of the Great Stagnation, all significant technological progress occurs due to ascended post-exit Silicon Valley moguls personally funding it (with money they own or fully control) out of the goodness of their own hearts. Venture capitalists can't see how to flip it in 3 years and science bureaucrats can only give money to other bureaucrats.

joering2• 13 years ago

Disclaimer: I do not hate Google; I use their search and email daily.

I hate to be this guy, but...

OK so you’re probably thinking wow! That’s a lot different from what Google does today.

Not really. Google is in a business of selling ads. In addition, they do make money on selling/sharing/exchanging information, mostly indirectly.

But as we explained in our first letter to shareholders, there’s tremendous potential for technology more generally to improve people’s lives.

.. and shareholders did not care about that. If you own shares of a hospital chain then you may care. But when you hold shares of Subway, Coca-Cola or Google, in those particular markets you care less about people's lives. You care about bottom line.

So don’t be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange or speculative compared with our existing Internet businesses.

We are not surprised. But since you sun-setting pretty good, useful projects like Google Reader, and you taking Jobs advice of "stay focus on only couple [most profitable] projects at the time", we ask: "where is the catch and how you gonna make money _otherwise_ than selling info or exchanging it?"

Just recently I have cancelled my 23andme kit (they gave me some hardtime though and never fully recovered the fee (taking legal action is simply not worth the $)), because after doing some research I found it that 23&me owner is family with Brin. There is no chance in this world you will tell me Google will not try to make money off of my DNA this or another way)

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/23andme

cromwellian6• 13 years ago

Guilty-by-association and paranoia. Check. (23andme is not owned by Google and I'm pretty sure their T&S/privacy policy and HIPAA cover what can be done with your personal records)

Obligatory and irrelevant Google Reader reference. Check. Right, the world would be better off if Google spent more time investing in yet more social sharing web app features, and not on reducing high way fatalities or increasing health.

Missing. No mention of PRISM.

brymaster3• 13 years ago

Googler drunk on company koolaid. Check.

lkbm2• 13 years ago

I'm a shareholder. So are many of my friends.

None of my friends are homo economicus, even qua investors. As much as we love earning more money, we also care about other people. We also like when the companies we part-own aren't evil.

As for the fact that 23andme's founder and Brin are married...you do understand the marriage of two CEOs does not equal the merger of companies...especially when the CEOs don't own the companies.

taigeair• 13 years ago

is there a website for this?

ph0rque• 13 years ago

Someone should write a short story (Doctorow, perhaps?) of a supercentenarian baby-boomer who is woken from a coma to suddenly find himself unwillingly young again, and explore the moral ramifications.

Techowl3• 13 years ago

There are a lot of ethical arguments happening in this thread, and I'm concerned that most of them are missing the point. They tend to center on the idea that these technologies will help the wealthy, while leaving most of the world to suffer.

I'd love to see Google work on initiatives to give the world's poor access to clean water and basic healthcare. Those are awesome causes -- maybe the world's most awesome. But if we categorize pressing third-world health issues as the World's Most Awesome Cause, well, aren't age-related diseases the World's Second Most Awesome Cause?

We should for sure allocate more resources to the World's Most Awesome Cause. But why are people attacking funding for the World's Second Most Awesome Cause? Convince people not to buy top-tier smartphones, or expensive cars, or big houses, and donate to charity instead. But don't try to convince people to die of heart disease. Even if this new Google initiative isn't the absolutely most optimal way to spend money to serve humanity, it's pretty high up on the list.

Please remember that about two-thirds of all deaths world-wide are caused by aging [1]. It isn't just the elite who are getting heart attacks, and long-term, I'd be shocked if it were only the elite who were receiving effective treatments to prevent them.

1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate

Edit: formatting.

antirez• 13 years ago

Cool, however while waiting for their results, please eat healthy, do a lot of gym, lift heavy weight and become stronger.

tomw1808• 13 years ago

Wow, sounds like Monsanto for Nerds.

dragonwriter11• 13 years ago

Wow, sounds like Monsanto for Nerds.

Its more like Genentech (at least in focal domain) than Monsanto, but "Genentech for Nerds" would be still just be Genentech -- who, incidentally, shares its Chairman with Calico.

kaws• 13 years ago

Wow! This reminds me of a comment I saw on HN, or maybe it was a blog post about either Google's Project Loon, or Google Glass. I can't seem to find a link or the actual author, but they essentially said:

"What I care about is that Google has become a machine that turns advertising dollars into fundamentally groundbreaking new projects like Google Glass, Project Loon, and self-driving cars. They’re not just trying to make money: they’re trying to use that money on far-fetched moon-shot projects with the chance to be genuinely revolutionary. I admire that."

Now they are investing in a new realm where they are "excited about tackling aging and illness." Google's ambition, and vision is inspiring! Hopefully we see some innovation in this sector from this investment.

BrainInAJar• 13 years ago

*Google announces Calico, a new company that will harvest your private medical data in to the Google panopticon, in order to sell you to advertisers.

cookingrobot2• 13 years ago

If they wanted your health data they'd just make this a new google service. By making it a new seperate company they've gone out of their way to ensure they don't have access to that data.

Legogris• 13 years ago

Am I the only one seeing the obvious connection between this, Google's general business model and technologies and the recruitment of Ray Kurzweil as Director of Engineering? If and when we realize the singularity is a real possibility, Google will have the platform ready. For better or worse.

product50• 13 years ago

Meanwhile Microsoft gives $40B back to shareholders.

narrator• 13 years ago

The low budget open source version of this is going on over at longecity.org

kinnth• 13 years ago

What a ploy! It's so that you will search more throughout your life time! Cunning buggers! :D

znowi• 13 years ago

Fountain of youth for the rich. This is a lot more profitable than selling ads on the net :)

X4• 13 years ago

human subject a892857 identified with probability to get hit by bus -> starting assisnation drone to increase efficiency. Art Levinson, Chairman and former CEO of Genentech and Chairman of Apple, will be Chief Execution Officer.

The fact they open Calic makes me hate them. They could have gone in every sector, but not in the one that is there to actually improve our life. They will algorithmically help kill much more people efficiently. Money powers the healthchare system.

tassl2• 13 years ago

I have always been interested on life-extension with a focus on healthy life. My background is mainly engineering (computer science, mechanical engineering) with focus on machine learning and statistics.

I was thinking on taking some graduate program that would help the transition in this kind of companies; does anybody knows a university/program that would help? I have checked some graduate bioinformatics, but I am not sure what would be more helpful in the long term.

Any idea/suggestion?

Lost_BiomedE2• 13 years ago

In the current environment, if you already have an engineering undergrad, an MBA would do you best. I am not a fan of the programs, but the degree will open doors that are mostly shut for pure engineers.

In many areas and locals, not necessarily Silicon Valley, a pure engineering man is seen as a lackey. An engineer with business cred is considered valuable, just my experience.

tassl2• 13 years ago

Thanks for your answer! I guess I would have to be more precise :)

My intent is to have a technical role in the space, not a management one. I can imagine how most of the problems facing require machine learning and statistics, so I am more interested on how to complement these skills to be able to transition into an space that fascinates me.

rodly• 13 years ago

Call me crazy here guys, but what exactly will Calico produce/make/do/etc?

The top comment makes me feel like I'm missing a magical paragraph in the OP that details their cure for death, ugliness and stupidity.

dragonwriter11• 13 years ago

Call me crazy here guys, but what exactly will Calico produce/make/do/etc?

Presumably, its going to do research (probably secondary with an aim to commercialization, rather than basic research) on health problems, particularly on aging and aging-related diseases.

The top comment makes me feel like I'm missing a magical paragraph in the OP that details their cure for death, ugliness and stupidity.

Its not a startup looking for venture capital that needs to demonstrate an MVP to attract investors in the near term, its a project that's already funded by Google as a small (by comparison to Google's available resources), effort. Efforts like that don't need to have a product on day one, they need a mission.

melange• 13 years ago

I wonder why they chose today to announce this.

sachdevap• 13 years ago

Pop the Google pill and get a healthy life, with some ads on your arms and back.

nomoral• 13 years ago

people, aging is not a bug, its a feature!

pjscott3• 13 years ago

I don't want it to happen, and it sucks. Call it a bug, or call it a feature, but remember that what you call it doesn't make it any more desirable.

zmmmmm• 13 years ago

Weird thing for Page to say:

So I’m tremendously excited about the innovative new way we’re funding this project

Are they doing something other than just dumping money into it, siphoned from their core business? Or am I reading this wrong?

ghostdiver• 13 years ago

CPC in AdWords will skyrocket on Calcio pages and in SERPS overall, the price of SEO in health* niche will also be very high, because as I guess Google will use SERPs to promote their new business.

sunseb• 13 years ago

We are close to immortality, but we are also close to self-extinction.

Isn't that fascinating ?

mehuldesai• 13 years ago

Typical of the billionaires. Is the aging funding for society or there own motality. Ellison does stuff like this. I didn't read the article fully but on the surface they would be better doing as Gates is doing, funding suffering. Funding their own future to me is not very honorable and respectful.

outside12342• 13 years ago

Google sure has a short memory: http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/health/about/

_pferreir_2• 13 years ago

Why not targeting something like this instead?

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jun/13/antibiotics-c...

I think it will be much more of a problem in the long term than aging (pun not intended).

tarwatirno• 13 years ago

To the people who are saying that this will only be for the rich: I would like to point out that we already spend over $500 billion on Medicare. In other words we already spend 10 times Google's yearly revenue, half-assedly patching up the symptoms of the disease that every single human is already afflicted with, and we do it for everyone. If they actually solve this problem, it won't go only to rich people, because of the amount of money that buying it for everyone will save everyone.

(Yes, some problems might come in if they invent something that can keep you young if you start at 30, but doesn't do anything if you start at 65, however the long term benefit would still be amazing and maybe make the Republicans' dream of getting rid of Medicare finally come true...)

To the people who say death is natural: Many, many natural things are bad (high child mortality, smallpox, etc.) and many artificial things are good (antibiotics, vaccines, the computer letting you read this comment.) Naturalistic Fallacy.

To the people who say death is good: No it's not. My parents had me when they were older. Now my dad has a kind of cancer that is associated with aging (multiple myeloma.) He was diagnosed my first year of college (luckily he has been doing rather well considering for five years now.) I get to look forward to loosing him before I turn 30. I don't care why you think death is great because of its benefit to society; I don't want to loose my dad. Also, my kids will almost certainly never know their grandfather, just like I never knew mine (He died of the same kind of cancer a few months before I was born,) which is sad. You are severely underestimating the value of not having to watch people you care about shrivel up before your eyes and be irrevocably destroyed, knowing that there is nothing you can do to stop it.

Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

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