Google spares three Area 120 R&D projects

The company has shuttered dozens of other “moon shots” in recent years

Google has decided to spare three of its Area 120 experimental projects, despite shutting down dozens of other “moon shots” in recent years.

Area 120 is the company’s in-house incubator for employees with innovative ideas, and has been behind some of Google’s more successful products, like Google Weather and Gmail Go.

However, not all of the incubator’s projects have been successful, and Google has been increasingly ruthless in culling them. In the past two years, the company has shuttered more than 30 Area 120 projects.

The three projects that have been spared are:

• Supersonic Funnel: A team working on a “Gen Z consumer product”
• Tables: A team working on a way to “ make it easier for small businesses to manage their online presence”
• Uptime: A team working on a “social media creation tool”

The fate of the other projects incubated by Area 120 is unclear. A Google spokesperson said that the company is “constantly experimenting with new ideas” and that “not all of them go on to become fully fledged products or features.”

Google Spares Three Area 120 R&D Projects

Team Working on a ‘Gen Z Consumer Product’

Google has announced that three of its Area 120 R&D projects will be spared, including a team working on a “Gen Z consumer product.”

Area 120 is a semi-secret internal incubator at Google that allows employees to work on new startup ideas. The program has produced a number of popular products, including the live video app Uptime and the messaging app Reply.

The three Area 120 projects that will continue are pie, a social networking app; supra, a team working on a Gen Z consumer product; and tableau, a visual programming language.

Pie is a social networking app that allows users to connect with friends and family members. The app has been in beta since August and is currently available on Android and iOS.

Supra is a team working on a “Gen Z consumer product.” The team is led by Area 120 veterans Matt Merrill and Ben Kamens. Merrill was previously the head of product at Google+ and Kamens was the lead engineer on the Google+ project.

Tableau is a visual programming language that allows users to create interactive data visualizations. The language is designed for use by both programmers and non-programmers.

The three projects were spared after a review by Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The fate of the remaining Area 120 projects is still up in the air.

Google spares three Area 120 R&D projects

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Google has announced that it will be shuttering three of its in-house experimental projects, known as Area 120.

The projects in question are Supersonic, an app that turned your phone into a walkie-talkie; Uptime, an app that let you watch YouTube videos with friends; and Byte fulfilled, a social media service for Gen Z.

While it’s sad to see these projects go, it’s not entirely surprising. Google has a history of shutting down projects that don’t scale or that don’t fit into its core business.

What is surprising, however, is that Google is shuttering a project that is specifically geared towards Gen Z, a demographic that is notoriously difficult to reach.

It’s not clear what will happen to the team working on the Gen Z project. It’s possible that they will be reassigned to other Area 120 projects or that they will be let go entirely.

Either way, it’s a reminder that even Google, with all of its resources, can’t always make a hit with every demographic.