Type Subsidiary of Alphabet Website sidewalklabs.com Headquarters New York City | Subsidiaries Intersection Founded 10 June 2015 Parent organization Alphabet Inc. | |
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Industry Urban planning, infrastructure Key people Dan Doctoroff
Rohit Aggarwala
Craig Nevill-Manning Motto "We're building a platform and a set of urban applications to accelerate innovation in cities around the world." Profiles | ||
Google s sidewalk labs could ease cities growing pains
Sidewalk Labs is Alphabet Inc.'s urban innovation organization. Its goal is to improve urban infrastructure through technological solutions, and tackle issues such as cost of living, efficient transportation and energy usage.
Contents
- Google s sidewalk labs could ease cities growing pains
- Sidewalk labs reimagining the city as a digital platform
- Intersection and Link
- Flow
- Project Sidewalk
- References
It is headed by Daniel L. Doctoroff, former deputy mayor of New York City for economic development and former chief executive of Bloomberg L.P. Other members include West Coast-based former Andreessen Horowitz junior partner Sam Gerstenzang; Anand Babu, ex-Google manager of Google Now software; and Craig Nevill-Manning, co-founder of Google's New York office and inventor of Froogle.
Sidewalk labs reimagining the city as a digital platform
Intersection and Link
Sidewalk Labs led the acquisition of Control Group and Titan forming a subsidiary called Intersection. As the largest municipal media company in the U.S., Intersection cooperates with city governments to design media platforms that create public assets and serve the needs of advertising clients.
Intersection's first product is LinkNYC, which is turning 7,500 old public pay phones into kiosks delivering free gigabit Wi-Fi, video and voice calling, and access to emergency and other city services across New York City. Intersection is exploring bringing Link to other cities. In October 2016, Intersection collaborated with British internet provider BT and advertising agency Primesight to install links in London.
Flow
Sidewalk is also working with the U.S. Department of Transportation to assess road data gathered from smartphones to analyze congestion and other traffic conditions, and develop a transportation coordination platform to improve the efficiency of road, parking, and transit use.
Project Sidewalk
In April 2016, The Information reported that Sidewalk plans to create a new city in the United States to test design ideas prior to real world implementation. Sidewalk has not confirmed that report but has said it's engaged in thought experiments about what it could be like to develop a community "from the internet up."