 | |
| Named after | 100% of time on 20% Projects |
|---|---|
Key people | Bradley Horowitz, Gabor Cselle |
Parent organization | |
| Website | area120 |
Area 120isGoogle's in-house incubator in which employees work on 20% Project product ideas. It has helped develop Gmail, AdSense, Google News, and Google Cardboard.[1]
The Area 120 division was created by Sundar Pichai in March 2016 and has since spawned over 50 projects.[1][2] The objective for the Area 120 program is to incubate products that "graduate" back to Google.[1]
In November 2021, the division was reorganized under a new division called Google Labs (unrelated to the defunct service of the same name).[3]
Area 120 was significantly reduced as part of Google's January 2023 layoffs.[4]
The program has funded more than 50 different ideas from Google employees. Notable product experiments which have emerged from Area 120 include:
The Byteboard project was spun out from Google into a separate company in Oct 2021,[21] due to Byteboard using Google employees as human evaluators of candidates for Google competitors, which raised ethical issues.
