Alphabet is reportedly planning to get rid of Boston Dynamics

Good news for people who hate robots: Alphabet Inc., which you may remember as Google, is reportedly selling Boston Dynamics, the company it acquired in 2013 as part of a push into robotics research. At the time, The New York Times noted that Boston Dynamics was “the eighth robotics company that Google has acquired in the last half-year;” now it has the distinction of being the first one sold off. Boston Dynamics is best known by the public for putting out videos of their eerie-looking dog and cheetah robots in action. The robots are usually running very fast, climbing things, or being cruelly kicked by their human masters. After the most recent video of a humanoid robot was released in February, a Google spokesperson remarked in an internal email (that was accidentally made public within the company) that Google’s research lab X should distance itself from the video, writing, “There’s excitement from the tech press, but we’re also starting to see some negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take humans’ jobs. According to Bloomberg, which broke the news, Google’s robot group, which Google has dubbed Replicant, has been “plagued by leadership changes, failures to collaborate between companies and an unsuccessful effort to recruit a new leader” following the acquisition of many companies and the departure of its original head, Andy Rubin. According to emails and a meeting memo accidentally shared with many of Google’s employees, an adviser to Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Larry Page expressed concern that Boston Dynamics would take a decade to generate significant revenue.