Report: Smart contact lens and other ambitious projects at Verily are floundering

>Conrad rolled out the Tricorder to tech reporters in 2014, describing its scientific basis as proven. He predicted that high-risk patients would begin wearing the device within a few years, followed by widespread adoption.

What to take huge risks? Fine, but don't promise results are around the corner when they're not. Headlines with the words "arrogance" are completely appropriate here.

Should we positively reinforce people who jump of cliffs convinced they have a novel scientific theory of gravity that will allow them to fly? Presumably not. Then presumably we should take a similar view of those who attempt things that are similarly scientifically impossible, even if said impossibility is less obvious to a lay observer.

I've spent about 15 years in research on colloidal nanoparticles, much of that for biological applications of magnetic and fluorescent nanoparticles. There are countless barriers to creating the proposed "tricorder", each significant enough that overcoming even a single one would make one a "made man" in academia, e.g., "solving" RES uptake.

Look at this statement from the article, for one example of what I see as hubris,

    "The particles were so safe, [Conrad] said, that animal testing could be skipped."

Also, your statement that we should "positively reinforce the fact that they had the fucking balls to try" reads to me as if you are unaware that there are many of us in the biomedical world trying, very hard, fighting over scraps of funding and trying to move the ball down the field. We just aren't in the public eye or consciousness. It hurts to see a group like Verily get celebrated for trying when the rest of us get ignored (or worse, dismissed) when we're working on some pretty challenging stuff under some lousy conditions.

I mean I know that there are doubters for good ideas too but what's the line to draw in terms of skepticism?

They are tremendously successful in areas beyond search ads, but it's easier to remember the failures.

Also, reducing their successes down to their monetisation strategy isn't exactly fair. Search is the product, ads are the business plan.

I'd say that what Google aren't good at, is anything that can't be easily quantified. Anything where they can't just examine reams of data and A/B test to success. If it involves some sort of intuition or informed design, that is where Google fails.

EDIT: I might also add that future speculative profits are also something that can't be easily quantified. Hence all the myriad project cancellations.

That is a real problem. Organizations (not exclusive to Google) seem to quickly jump out and announce something before anything real is in their hands. Anytime you announce something a countdown starts in the minds of people. I learned this the hard way, of course.

The whole attitude that goes with software-as-a-service development does not go well with developing hardware. Many companies have tried, IBM, as you quote went the other way and made plenty of mistakes. Google (sorry, alphabet) is still seeing this as diversifying but that doesn't change much, I don't see how they will pull this off if they can't do a thing like 'glass' without damaging their reputation.

chromebooks seem to be gaining in popularity (though that may be driven by shortsighted education purchases like the early iPad)

their broadband services seem to be incredibly popular in the areas they are servicing. (this is just anecdotal, i havent seen any hard numbers)

But i agree, they have had some high-profile failures in recent history, and its possible thats a sign of the organization growing to large/complex/whatever to be successful at exploring new product categories.

I'm not sure how one would quantify the effect that the Google Glass' faceplant has on Joe Blo's decision to choose between ios or Android, but I'm guessing it's negligible.

With Alphabet's space camp subsidiaries there does seem to be some dissonance. While pursuing far-sighted pie-in-the sky projects is laudable, the expectation that these projects be monetized within visible horizons is a bit naive. Lately Alphabet has been dealing with a reckoning of sorts. They kind of have to decide whether or not they're committed to throwing money at these projects indefinitely.

Larry and Segei have allowed themselves to get swept away by their grand visions for the future.

While they may not "work" (read: they may not have the outcome that was expected from the beginning), they still "work" in that they help Google (and others) learn how to improve other things later.

It may not be the most fiscally responsible thing to do, but learning isn't cheap when you're trying to solve the problems they're trying to solve.

I don't actually know any IT people who think the brain works like a computer, or that it's "binary based". I know people who think that neural nets attempt to approximate the neural activity of the brain, and also that it's a pale imitation at best, with many modes of action not properly modeled. I know people who think that free will is a myth and that everything we think is just chemical and electrical reactions in the brain, which is likely correct.