Google spares three Area 120 R&D projects, including team working on a ‘Gen Z consumer product’
Google spares three Area 120 R&D projects, including team working on a ‘Gen Z consumer product’
By Stephen Hall, on April 1, 2020
The company’s in-house incubator for experimental products is shutting down three more projects, Area 120. According to an internal document obtained by 9to5Google, the teams behind the “Gen Z consumer product” and the two other Area 120 projects were told on March 31st that their products would be shut down. That three-month timeline matches up with a similar communication The Information received about other Google products last week.
The teams working on the Gen Z consumer product and the two other Area 120 projects will have three months to find new positions within Google, according to the document. It’s not clear what the product was, but 9to5Google speculates that it could have been related to Bolo, an educational chatbot for children in India.
The teams working on the Gen Z consumer product and the two other Area 120 projects will have three months to find new positions within Google, according to the document. It’s not clear what the product was, but 9to5Google speculates that it could have been related to Bolo, an educational chatbot for children in India.
This is the latest in a string of Area 120 project shutdowns. In January, Google killed Kahlo, a project that would have let people create and share short-form videos. And last November, the team behind Yumpu, a PDF reader and magazine app, was told to find new positions within Google.
It’s not all bad news for Area 120 — the incubator is still working on several projects, including Talkspace, an app that pairs people with therapists, and Grapple, an AR puzzle game. But the latest project shutdowns suggest that Google is reassessing its experimental products in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.