Remember Boston Dynamics, that robotics company that Google acquired back in 2013, the same one that posted that video of the creepy robot dogs last month? Well, Google’s venture into robotics was apparently short-lived, as Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Alphabet is planning to sell Boston Dynamics off to the highest bidder, and rumors has it that big names like Amazon and Toyota are very interested in acquiring the company. The reason for Alphabet’s change of heart, according to Bloomberg, is that Boston Dynamics has been struggling with a number of issues, especially when it comes to leadership within the company and collaboration with other companies, and Alphabet doesn’t want to deal with that crap anymore.
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.
