From Meatless Meat to 3-D Printing: Alphabet's Top Interests

Alphabet Inc., the owner of Google, is using its computing prowess to branch out into a dizzying array of new areas, from medical diagnoses to "transformative" partnerships between humans and artificial intelligence, laying out its ambition at the company's annual shareholder meeting. Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt on Wednesday also disclosed that the company's Fiber fast internet service has new wireless technology that will cut the cost of hooking up homes because it won't have to dig up people's gardens to lay fiber optic cables. This may make build-outs cheaper and is probably part of the reason Fiber is expanding to 22 cities across the U.S. Schmidt's comments on the web service, in response to a shareholder question, came at an upbeat gathering at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters that was typically sparsely attended. Sundar Pichai, the Google chief executive officer, attended, along with Ruth Porat, who's been chief financial officer for just more than a year. David Drummond, chief legal officer, also turned up, but no Larry Page or Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google.