Google makes everything from email to a pair of cyborg-like glasses, now they're introducing a mysterious health-related company called Calico.
"Illness and aging affect all our families. With some longer term, moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives," Google's CEO Larry Page said in a news release.
The company will "focus on health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases." Arthur D. Levinson (Art), former Genentech CEO and Chairman of Apple will be the principle investor as well as the Chief Executive Officer of the elusive company.
"For too many of our friends and family, life has been cut short or the quality of their life is too often lacking. Art is one of the crazy ones who thinks it doesn't have to be this way. There is no one better suited to lead this mission and I am excited to see the results," Tim Cook, Chief Executive Officer of Apple, said.
Time uncovered some more details on Calico in an interview with Page. The company will be based in California's bay area, and will work to solve pressing healthcare problems.
"In some industries, it takes ten or 20 years to go from an idea to something being real. Healthcare is certainly one of those [areas]," Page told Time. "Maybe we should shoot for the things that are really, really important so ten or 20 years from now we have those things done."
It is rumored that the project will start off small, with only a few employees. They will kick off the effort by "researching new technology."
"Are people really focused on the right things? One of the things I thought was amazing is that if you solve cancer, you'd add about three years to people's average life expectancy," Page told Time. "We think of solving cancer as this huge thing that'll totally change the world. But when you really take a step back and look at it, yeah, there are many, many tragic cases of cancer, and it's very, very sad, but in the aggregate, it's not as big an advance as you might think."
Google is taking a big step by creating an entire new company with a specific goal in mind.
"For me, it was always unsatisfying if you look at companies that get very big, and they're just doing one thing," Page said. "Ideally, if you have more people and more resources, you can do more things, get more things solved. We've kind of always had that philosophy.
