

Google X Spinoff Raises $8 Million to Simplify Sustainable Design - byoogle
http://recode.net/2014/05/06/google-x-spinoff-raises-8-million-to-simplify-sustainable-design/

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hojoff79
Is anyone else slightly disappointed about this coming out of Google X? Don't
get me wrong, it's a good business idea, bringing together otherwise disparate
data sources, capturing tailwinds of sustainable building trends, seems like a
differentiated product etc. etc. but it's not really the "moonshot" or game
changer that Google X purports itself to be developing (potentially why they
spun it out?).

I read this article recently which I thought was very good, but it paints a
very different picture of the types of things that should be coming out of
Google X. This type of Company is something I would have expected out of an
incubator.

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/meet-astro-teller-head-
of-m...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/meet-astro-teller-head-of-moonshots-
at-googles-project-x-lab/)

Anyone else feel this way?

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Jormundir
Have you heard of marketing?

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hojoff79
Your condescending sarcasm aside, there is no reason for them to over market
themselves or pursue pedestrian projects here (again, I agree this is a good
business, but just relatively pedestrian for the Google X mission statement).
Here are the reasons that would make no sense:

1) This is a pure cost center for Google (and a small one by their standards)
and it doesn't report separately, so there is no reason for them to take lower
risk projects to try and make it look like they are generating success (like
there would be at a VC or incubator who is concerned with profitability). And
for the Google X mission statement, I wouldn't even consider this a success
(this would be like a VC fund backing a small business that was profitable but
never had a chance of generating exponential growth, it's just not in the
investment / research profile)

2) They have Google Ventures to fund something like this if it was an idea
they want to pursue (and as I said up top and was seconded below, that may be
why they are spinning it out). But that raises the question of why this was
ever something they undertook at Google X in the first place? Another
possibility here is they took a shot at something much bigger and found that
wasn't viable, and fell back on this portion of it which was viable, then
decided to spin it out. That would actually make a lot of sense (just thinking
as I'm typing here)

3) If for some reason they are just over marketing Google X and it's just
really a pedestrian incubator for some projects... well, going back to the
original question I posed, i would find that very disappointing!

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Jormundir
Well the way I see it (speculatively from the outside), the "moonshot" (
_throws up in mouth_ ) is just the thing you write at the top of the
whiteboard. But what you're really up to is solving the 50 relatively smaller,
domain specific problems that need to be solved in order for the "moon--hghhh"
to be achievable.

This green architecture software is likely a solution to one of those smaller
problems. The team was probably so happy with their work they decided they
wanted to pursue it as a standalone company. Google let them spin it out and
invested seed money as well.

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zavi
I'm surprised you are allowed to take your work from within Google and turn it
into a personal startup.

~~~
louhike
Google Ventures has invested in the company so I suppose they made a deal.

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wahsd
The whole premise for the purpose always bothers me; the argument that with
population projections what we have to do is accommodate unsustainable growth
with "sustainable" buildings.

There is something really weird about humanity's inability to even bring up
the fact that we are reproducing at rates that are inherently unsustainable
and could even lead to become a catalyst for extinction. There is no
sustainable building method or process that will do anything more than prolong
the inevitable. It's a rather odd perspective in, at least the USA, that
"green", environmentally friendly, and "sustainable" are nothing of the sort.
"Green" means using images of leaves on high gloss unnecessary packaging;
"environmentally friendly" means using some wood with abandon as to where it's
from; and "sustainable" means simply continuation of anything, whether good or
bad.

The sustainable design issue has actually already been solved in many ways;
it's just that the solutions don't fit in with people's unwillingness to give
up anything.

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7952
Fertility rates are actually dropping and have for a few decades [1]. It takes
time for that to actually translate into stabilising population. Its like
throttling down the engine on a spacecraft, your total altitude (population)
will continue to rise even though the acceleration (fertility rate) has
dropped.

So we have to equip the world to provide for the great grand children of the
fertile people from forty years ago. That growth is unavoidable, even with
lower levels of fertility. Sustainable design is just the optimal most
efficient way of dealing with that growth.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate)

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wahsd
We are already at unsustainable population levels and the majority of
populations are still growing and countries with negative population growth
are constantly urged to promote population growth. I realize that fertility
rates are dropping and I realize there is inertia, but decreasing acceleration
is still not negative acceleration.

~~~
7952
But my point is that there is very little you can do to alter a growth that is
already baked into the system. A country with a large youth population will
continue to increase in size even if they only have two children per family.

I agree that humanity has a very negative ecological impact. But that is a
basic facet of human society, not population growth. All industrial economies
devastate the native ecosystem in which they exist. Forcing people to abandon
the chance of children does not change that. Your argument is trite and does
not offer any real insight.

