More Google cost cutting cancels half of the Area 120 projects
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Google CEO Sundar Pichai seems to be on a cost-cutting mission. After he said that the company's productivity was "not where it needs to be" in July, Google axed the Google Hardware laptop division and spun off what was left of Project Loon to try to survive as an independent company. The latest move is aimed at Google Area 120 "idea incubator" group, which Bloomberg reports is being cut by half.
Area 120 launched in 2016. The motto on the group's website says, "At Area 120, we work on 20% projects 100% of the time." Google gives employees 20 percent free time to work on interesting projects, and it sounds like if they land on a good idea, Area 120 spins up a group project around it.
We've mentioned the group a few times here at Ars, mostly for the "Google Reply" experiment that brought AI-generated quick replies to any instant messaging service. Reply was openly called an "experiment" and was a real hack job of an app, but today, the feature is a standard part of Android, which counts as a big success. A project management app called "Tables" was successful enough that Google is working on a full Google Workspace app based on the idea. GameSnacks, an Area 120 HTML5 game platform for users in developing countries with low bandwidth, has over 35 million users.