Alphabet

The COVID-19 pandemic has infected many vulnerable emerging markets with reduced revenue and increased uncertainty. As recession looms, crucial investment channels are drying up, seemingly creating a divide between those projects that are already underway and those that now face an uphill battle to secure the funding they require to get off the ground. This […]

“This is a tale of two cities — Toronto and Barcelona — that may hold important lessons for others around the world. Both have big ambitions to change the way they operate but reflect very different visions of how smart cities should be run,” writes John Thornhill, Innovation Editor at the Financial Times, in an […]

When Google’s sister company, Sidewalk Labs, “released” its leaked master plan for the Toronto quayside development it was met with mixed reviews. For those staunchly against increased corporate involvement in public spaces and urban planning, and for those who adore anything Google does, minds were already made up before the plans emerged. However, most people […]

Since Alphabet gave birth to Google’s smart city sister company, Sidewalk Labs, we have been wondering what a “city built by Google” would look like, how it would function, and what innovative features it might include. Over the past year or so, since the announcement that Toronto has been chosen as the location for its […]

It was almost exactly one year ago that X, Alphabet’s secretive “moonshot” development division, released the details of its energy storage concept code named Project Malta. Led by Nobel Prize–winning Stanford physics professor Robert Laughlin, the technology is said to offer vast cost and functionality improvements on lithium ion batteries and pumped hydroelectric for grid-scale […]