{"id":232263,"date":"2016-03-17T22:19:42","date_gmt":"2016-03-17T22:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/google-selling-its-boston-dynamics-robot-division-%e2%80%92-reports\/"},"modified":"2016-03-17T22:19:42","modified_gmt":"2016-03-17T22:19:42","slug":"google-selling-its-boston-dynamics-robot-division-%e2%80%92-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/google-selling-its-boston-dynamics-robot-division-%e2%80%92-reports\/","title":{"rendered":"Google selling its Boston Dynamics robot division \u2012 reports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.com\/files\/2016.03\/thumbnail\/56eb1bfdc36188c1418b45e8.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>        The robot uprising may have to wait awhile: Reports say that Google\u2019s parent company, Alphabet, is selling off Boston Dynamics, makers of the canine and humanoid robots that have recently captivated the headlines.<\/p>\n<div readability=\"56.647933884298\">\n<p>Boston Dynamics is behind Atlas \u2013 an extraordinarily agile humanoid robot capable of walking upright and navigating a range of obstacles \u2013 as well as Spot, a four-legged mechanized hound.<\/p>\n<p>The company was bought up in 2013 by Google\u2019s robotics division (dubbed <em>\u201cReplicant\u201d<\/em> after the synthetic humans from the cult classic \u2018Blade Runner\u2019). Following the 2014 departure of division chief Andy Rubin, however, Replicant has struggled to integrate operations that are scattered around the country, according to a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2016-03-17\/google-is-said-to-put-boston-dynamics-robotics-unit-up-for-sale\" target=\"_blank\">new report<\/a> by Bloomberg Business.<strong\/><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"854\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GUEN2GQ923E\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>At a November 2015 meeting, Alphabet executive Jonathan Rosenberg said a startup of their size <em>\u201ccannot spend 30-plus percent of our resources on things that take ten years,&#8221;<\/em> according to documents obtained by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n<p>Replicant was folded into Google\u2019s research division, named Google X, in December 2015. According to a source present at a meeting around that time, Google X chief Astro Teller told employees that they may be reassigned to other projects if the company decided robotics were not the <em>\u201cpractical solution\u201d<\/em> to problems it was trying to solve, Bloomberg noted.<\/p>\n<p>According to Bloomberg\u2019s source, automobile giant Toyota and Amazon.com are considered as possible buyers for Boston Dynamics. Google and Toyota declined Bloomberg\u2019s requests for comment, while Amazon did not respond.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/336032-google-boston-dynamics-robots\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The robot uprising may have to wait awhile: Reports say that Google\u2019s parent company, Alphabet, is selling off Boston Dynamics, makers of the canine and humanoid robots that have recently captivated the headlines. Boston Dynamics is behind Atlas \u2013 an extraordinarily agile humanoid robot capable of walking upright and navigating a range of obstacles \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":232264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-232263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}