I have to assume the timing of this, coming so soon after the Pentagon bailed on BD, is no coincidence. Does Google figure that the division cannot turn a profit without that sweet spigot of defense dollars?
But to have bought a leading "next-gen" defense contractor, only to wind down all of their contracts, and then sell off the company... seems... wrong? Almost like a deliberate destruction of this company.
A company like Boston Dynamics? Absolutely yes.
They were working on next-gen robotics that would directly save American soldier lives - both while in combat and during rescue operations. Their technology was also being tested for domestic search-and-rescue operations where it was too dangerous to send in humans.
Stopping a genocide, inserting a military "buffer" in-between two hostile nations, general peace keeping, hostage rescue, VIP protection, bomb location/defusal, hijackings, and more come to mind.
The fact is, soldier's lives are going to be put into harms way, even in a perfectly at-peace world (which none of us live in).
Perhaps I'm biased, as I come from a military family, but I'd far rather a walking circuit board take a bullet over a human soldier.
The US military is not interventionist - the US politicians are.
The military has little-to-zero say in what military actions they participate in, rather the politicians decide what is politically advantageous for themselves, the country, or the world - and give the orders. The military must then carry out those orders - and I'd still rather they have the option to send a robot instead of humans.
> they will be even more gung-ho about sending in firepower to places where it is going to end up causing a lot of civilian "collateral damage"
Part of the goal of robotics is to reduce "collateral damage". Humans make mistakes all the time in the field, which can and does result in friendly fire, civilian casualties, and more.
There are many good reasons not to make war too easy or efficient. Too often politicians trend toward groupthink and acting en masse, like a faceless feckless mob. Making invasion as easy as sending spam would be very bad.
If politicians make bad decisions, perhaps you should try fixing that instead of sacrificing the lives of young men for a small chance of making those decisions more painful.
Consumers robotics is still waiting for its Apple II moment.
Elderly care in first world countries.
I've got a dozen great ideas too but I won't waste anyone's time. The trick is for a company to profitability make a product then parlay that into the next big thing.
The idea is for companies to find revenue from the technology as soon as possible then turn that revenue into R&D to build even better robots.
Look at the revenue the smartphone market generates. There's an arm's race to get consumers buying new devices. We need a couple $100 billion robotics companies pushing boundaries.
Also consider, for example, how Elon is bootstrapping electric cars and private rockets.
That's a great example. And I agree with you in part. Look how far Elon and Co have come in under 15 years with both Tesla and SpaceX. Bootstrapped? Indeed. But they also had to prime the pump with demand (SpaceX with gov contracts, Tesla with wealthy purchasers)
You find someone willing to pay for your product. The "build it and they will come" doesn't usually work out so well. Finding governments or wealthy people to pay for your products counts when building a business. Elon didn't invent this tactic.
It just shows much little when we trust what Google says when an acquisition happens. Eventually they are just going to do what they think will make them money, regardless of what they promised.
That said, now I'm worried that an actual defense contractor will get those robots.
Why is this worrying?
If you're afraid that the military will do something evil with the robots, you're going to be dismayed to learn that they already have automatic rifles, tanks, and atomic bombs.
Source for that?
> In fact, about 3 months after they said that, they started wanting to sell Google Glass to the military
Source for that?
It seems like Google are bailing on BD for much the same reason: Their tech works, but it doesn't actually solve any practical problem that Google have, and isn't close to producing any independent, sellable product.