Google could be planning to build a digital city. According to reports, Sidewalk Labs, one of Alphabet’s newer subsidiaries, is planning to build a high-tech city from scratch to experiment with all its hardware and infrastructure. It is rumored that this digital city could house hundreds of people.
Google taking on another ambitious project?
In a conference, Sidewalk CEO Dan Doctoroff said, “Thinking about [a city] from the Internet up is really compelling,” adding that existing “cities are hard. You have people with vested interest, politics, physical space. . . . But the technology ultimately cannot be stopped.” Referring to privacy issues, Doctoroff a former deputy mayor of New York City said, “If you could create a place, it’d be a laboratory to experiment with these problems.”
According to The Information, Sidewalk Labs is planning “a testbed for new technologies.” Google cofounder Larry Page and Doctoroff are meeting to discuss the construction of the rumored tech-based city, dubbed “Project Sidewalk,” says The Information.
No doubt this is an ambitious plan, but if Page approves, then later this year, Sidewalk Labs and Alphabet might start looking for bids from different cities. A hundred expert city planners have been brought on board by Alphabet to design the city of the future, the website says.
A rumor for now
Google is reportedly looking at parts of Denver and Detroit to decide potential locations. It is apparent that there are cities being used extensively to test self-driving cars and other futuristic tech, but this news (or a rumor) sounds much grander than others in scope. With the help of this new digital city, Google would be able to use its high-tech technology and experiment with innovation in a much better way.
Google already offers a lot of technology in our cities, from self-driving cars to ultra-fast WiFi that you can connect from anywhere in the future. Alphabet’s spin-offs and the list of enterprises under its head are really impressive. The list covers smart home tech, satellite tech, virtual reality, health, artificial intelligence, Internet access, and more.
This is just a rumor for now as nothing has been made official. But for Sidewalk and Alphabet, it does makes a lot of sense. Sidewalk Labs has been involved in bringing WiFi hotspots to New York and has improved traffic flow across several U.S. cities. As of now there has been no comment from Google on the report.