As I’m certain many of you are already aware, Google recently acquired Deepmind, an artificial intelligence firm with a focus on machine learning. You’d be forgiven for thinking the corporation is looking to augment its new army of robots with better intelligence (all the better to kick off the machine uprising with?). After all, this purchase came directly on the tail end of a flurry of robotics acquisitions, of which Boston Dynamics was the capstone. And while smart robots could certainly be in Google’s future, that isn’t the reason Google bought the startup.
See, what a lot of people appear to have forgotten in light of Google’s recent innovations and inventions is that it is, at its core, about search. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first founded the company back in 1986, they set out to build a better search engine. Although their success has allowed the organization to branch out into pretty much any technological field it sees fit, the goal of building a better web remains the bread and butter of Google. Continue reading