Google launches Sidewalk Labs, an incubator to foster tech to make city life less miserable

Google today introduced a new company called Sidewalk Labs. The company will focus on improving city life in various ways.

Sidewalk Labs will “incubate” technologies but also build products and form partnerships, according to a statement on the homepage for the new company.

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Dan Doctoroff, Bloomberg’s former chief executive, is going to be in charge of the company, which will be based in New York, Google chief executive Larry Page wrote in a Google+ post on the news.

“Sidewalk will focus on improving city life for everyone by developing and incubating urban technologies to address issues like cost of living, efficient transportation and energy usage,” Page wrote.

Google is providing an undisclosed amount of funding for the startup, which falls outside Google’s main scope. In that sense, it’s like unusual Google projects that have come out of the tech giant’s Google X lab, which has previously worked on a driverless car, Google Glass, and sensor-laden contact lenses.

Page certainly sounds optimistic about this investment:

Making long-term, 10X bets like this is hard for most companies to do, but Sergey [Brin] and I have always believed that it’s important. And as more and more people around the world live, work and settle in cities, the opportunities for improving our urban environments are endless.

Page did not make it clear how exactly the company will generate revenue.