Google is laying the groundwork for life beyond advertising

Google is an advertising company. In spite of its dominance in mobile operating systems, productivity tools like Gmail, and forays into media with subscription services such as Google Play Music and YouTube TV, the company still makes nearly 90% of its money from advertisements and its advertising platform. Advertising is also the primary driver of revenue for its holding company, Alphabet, which has a large portfolio of other businesses including AI research lab DeepMind, autonomous driving company Waymo, life sciences company Verily, and investment groups GV and CapitalG. Many of those other companies are long-term bets that aren't expected to pay off in the near term--or maybe ever. There are grandiose objectives like DeepMind's quest to "solve intelligence," or Calico's mission to cure death.