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Google Kills Another Mysterious “Moonshot”
In the Mountain View offices of X, Google’s factory for creating its “moonshot” projects, there’s a picture of a burning $100 bill on a poster board. “Investors think we do this,” it reads. At some point, however, the joke stopped being so funny. In 2015, Google split itself in two, in a move intended to draw a clearer line between the tech behemoth’s lucrative core businesses and its more experimental, money-losing bets—a distinction that has increased pressure on the latter to turn a profit.

There have been a number of casualties as a result of this new era of fiscal discipline, and Google announced the most recent this week. As first reported by tech news Web site Google9to5, Google has cut its Titan drone program and has reassigned those employees—many of whom came into Google after the tech giant bought drone-maker Titan Aerospace in 2014—to other projects, including Project Loon, Google’s endeavor to provide Internet access to the world via balloon, and Project Wing, a drone delivery service. Titan was later shuffled into X, the moonshot lab run by Astro Teller as part of Alphabet, in 2015. “We ended our exploration of high altitude U.A.V.s for Internet access shortly after,” a Google X spokesman said in a statement. “. . . at this stage the economics and technical feasibility of Project Loon present a much more promising way to connect rural and remote parts of the world.”

For Google, scaling back and merging some of its more ambitious projects may be a matter not of thinking smaller, but smarter. That’s its stated plan for Internet drones now, and seems to be its short-term goal for Fiber, its high-speed Internet project, which it downsized and revamped last year to focus on less capital-intensive technologies. The company has tried to sell its experimental robotics division, Boston Dynamics, and recently changed up the management atop its smart-home division, Nest, as the the financial squeeze from the C-suite continues. Full ScreenPhotos: 1/7 Photos: Tech C.E.O.s Who Have The Most to Lose in a Trump Presidency Jeff Bezos: The C.E.O. of e-commerce and delivery giant Amazon and the owner of The Washington Post has already sparred with Trump. But Trump could come after Bezos for anti-trust issues, too: Trump is on the record as saying Amazon “is controlling so much of what they are doing.” The fact that The Washington Post has been reporting on Trump, often critically, probably does not endear Bezos to Trump, either. Photo: From Rex/Shutterstock. Tim Cook: Trump has repeatedly criticized Apple for making its products overseas, and has called on the company to “start building their damn computers and things” in America. Cook must also contend with tariffs that will inevitably arise if Trump gets the U.S. into a trade war with China. And then there’s the fact that Trump denounced Apple in 2016 for refusing a court order to cooperate with an F.B.I. request to unlock an iPhone belonging to one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist attack last year. Photo: By Drew Angerer/Getty Images. Jack Dorsey: Twitter, already a tech company struggling with employee retention and a falling stock price, has been forced to contend with its role in handing Trump a megaphone to spout his opinions, whether those include attacking a union leader or merely suggesting the U.S. stock up on nuclear arms. Dorsey was also excluded by Trump from the tech summit at Trump Tower in December, reportedly as retribution for not allowing the Trump team to use an emoji-fied version of the #CrookedHillary hashtag. Sad! Photo: By Drew Angerer/Getty Images. Mark Zuckerberg: Trump’s favorite golden boy in Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel, is both an early Facebook investor and serves on Facebook’s board, which bodes well for the company’s ties to the president-elect. But Trump could also change immigration laws in a way that affects Facebook’s ability to hire highly skilled employees. Earlier this year, Zuckerberg and others in the tech community signed onto a brief submitted to the Supreme Court in favor of Obama’s executive actions, arguing that more immigration benefits the tech industry and the country. Trump appears to disagree. Photo: From Bloomberg/Getty Images. Marc Lore (Jet.com): E-commerce companies like Jet.com could become victims of a Chinese trade war. Trump has threatened to add tariffs of 45 percent of Chinese exports. “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what they're doing,” he told supporters earlier in 2016. Trump’s proposed solution could make foreign-made goods—which comprises the bulk of e-commerce products—vastly more expensive. Photo: From Rex/Shutterstock. Josh Kushner: Jared Kushner’s brother, Josh, runs a healthcare start-up in New York called Oscar Health—which just so happens to be built on the back of the Obamacare exchanges that Trump, Jared’s father-in-law, has threatened to destroy. The company, which is reportedly bleeding money, is now pivoting its business model to focus on narrow networks and roll-out plans to small and large businesses, moving away from plans connected to the Affordable Care Act. Photo: By Patrick McMullan/Getty Images. Elon Musk: Though Musk and Trump ally Peter Thiel are close—they helped co-found PayPal together, and made their respective first millions of dollars off of it—two of Musk’s companies may be in a precarious situation under a Trump administration. Shareholders in both SolarCity and Tesla Motors now must consider what Trump could do to federal clean-energy tax credits and subsidies, which both companies currently receive. Current electric-car and solar-energy subsidies will expire under Trump’s tenure, and aren’t likely to be renewed. Photo: From Rex/Shutterstock. PreviousNext

Jeff Bezos: The C.E.O. of e-commerce and delivery giant Amazon and the owner of The Washington Post has already sparred with Trump. But Trump could come after Bezos for anti-trust issues, too: Trump is on the record as saying Amazon “is controlling so much of what they are doing.” The fact that The Washington Post has been reporting on Trump, often critically, probably does not endear Bezos to Trump, either.

From Rex/Shutterstock.

Tim Cook: Trump has repeatedly criticized Apple for making its products overseas, and has called on the company to “start building their damn computers and things” in America. Cook must also contend with tariffs that will inevitably arise if Trump gets the U.S. into a trade war with China. And then there’s the fact that Trump denounced Apple in 2016 for refusing a court order to cooperate with an F.B.I. request to unlock an iPhone belonging to one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist attack last year.

By Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

Jack Dorsey: Twitter, already a tech company struggling with employee retention and a falling stock price, has been forced to contend with its role in handing Trump a megaphone to spout his opinions, whether those include attacking a union leader or merely suggesting the U.S. stock up on nuclear arms. Dorsey was also excluded by Trump from the tech summit at Trump Tower in December, reportedly as retribution for not allowing the Trump team to use an emoji-fied version of the #CrookedHillary hashtag. Sad!

By Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

Mark Zuckerberg: Trump’s favorite golden boy in Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel, is both an early Facebook investor and serves on Facebook’s board, which bodes well for the company’s ties to the president-elect. But Trump could also change immigration laws in a way that affects Facebook’s ability to hire highly skilled employees. Earlier this year, Zuckerberg and others in the tech community signed onto a brief submitted to the Supreme Court in favor of Obama’s executive actions, arguing that more immigration benefits the tech industry and the country. Trump appears to disagree.

From Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Marc Lore (Jet.com): E-commerce companies like Jet.com could become victims of a Chinese trade war. Trump has threatened to add tariffs of 45 percent of Chinese exports. “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what they're doing,” he told supporters earlier in 2016. Trump’s proposed solution could make foreign-made goods—which comprises the bulk of e-commerce products—vastly more expensive.

From Rex/Shutterstock.

Josh Kushner: Jared Kushner’s brother, Josh, runs a healthcare start-up in New York called Oscar Health—which just so happens to be built on the back of the Obamacare exchanges that Trump, Jared’s father-in-law, has threatened to destroy. The company, which is reportedly bleeding money, is now pivoting its business model to focus on narrow networks and roll-out plans to small and large businesses, moving away from plans connected to the Affordable Care Act.

By Patrick McMullan/Getty Images.

Elon Musk: Though Musk and Trump ally Peter Thiel are close—they helped co-found PayPal together, and made their respective first millions of dollars off of it—two of Musk’s companies may be in a precarious situation under a Trump administration. Shareholders in both SolarCity and Tesla Motors now must consider what Trump could do to federal clean-energy tax credits and subsidies, which both companies currently receive. Current electric-car and solar-energy subsidies will expire under Trump’s tenure, and aren’t likely to be renewed.