Why Google Must Now Also Rule the Physical World

05-22-2014 • http://www.wired.com, By Marcus Wohlsen

These projects may seem like a stretch for a web company that cut its teeth with search and email. But as Teller explained today at an event in San Francisco, Google sees this work as crucial to its future. “Google is already overflowing with incredibly creative bright groups already working on lots of the software problems of the world,” Teller told hundreds of tech nerds at the O’Reilly Solid Conference in San Francisco, a conference dedicate to the merging of software and hardware. “If we want to help Google become something meaningfully different in the future, then that’s more likely to happen if we focus on the physical world instead.” But as Teller sees it, Google won’t be as relevant unless it looks to solve problems that mere web services can’t. Clean water won’t happen purely through a new piece of software, he said. Nor will the new ways of storing energy needed to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. “If software’s the only thing in your bag of tools, I’m not going to give you great odds,” he said.