Alphabet's smart city project is winding down and Google will take over its products. Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff announced the news in a letter, in which he noted he is stepping down for health-related reasons. A spokesperson confirmed to Engadget that Sidewalk Labs will no longer continue as a standalone unit after the transition, though Alphabet plans to spin out Canopy Buildings as a separate company. "Starting next year, Sidewalk products Pebble, Mesa, Delve, and Affordable Electrification will join Google, becoming core to Google's urban sustainability product efforts," Doctoroff wrote. "These products will continue to be led by Sidewalk Labs President of Urban Products Prem Ramaswami and Chief Technology Officer Craig Nevill-Manning, both Google alumni, and the teams will continue to execute on their vision and serve customers."

Portland's 2016 entry for a $50 million federal contest called the Smart City Challenge described a Pacific Northwest tech-topia. It promised autonomous shuttles, trucks, and cars on city streets, through partnerships with Daimler and Lyft. Sensors from Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs would monitor people walking and biking around the city to analyze traffic patterns. The Rose City didn't win, and four years later there are no self-driving Lyfts on its streets. One thing that has changed: Portland's conception of what makes a city smart. This month, Portland adopted the nation's most restrictive laws on face recognition, banning private as well as government use of the technology.

From car insurance quotes to which posts you see on social media, our online lives are guided by invisible, inscrutable algorithms. They help private companies and governments make decisions -- or automate them altogether -- using massive amounts of data. But despite how crucial they are to everyday life, most people don't understand how algorithms use their data to make decisions, which means serious problems can go undetected. The New Zealand government has a plan to address this problem with what officials are calling the world's first algorithm charter: a set of rules and principles for government agencies to follow when implementing algorithms that allow people to peek under the hood. By leading the way with responsible algorithm oversight, New Zealand hopes to set a model for other countries by demonstrating the value of transparency about how algorithms affect daily life.

The state of Michigan wants to build the autonomous roadway of the future. Normally that in itself would be interesting enough, but there's also the company it's partnering with to make the project a reality. The state will work with a firm called Cavnue. Cavnue's parent company is Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP), which itself is a spinoff of Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs. If you've followed Engadget's coverage of the recently canceled Toronto Smart City project, you'll know all about Sidewalk Labs.

Toronto and the corridor that stretches west to Kitchener and Waterloo is already Canada's capital of finance and technology--and naturally, the region's leaders want to set an example for the rest of the world. That's part of the reason why in 2017, municipal organizations in Toronto tapped Google's sister company Sidewalk Labs to redevelop a disused waterfront industrial district as a high-tech prototype for the "smarter, greener, more inclusive cities" of tomorrow. But within three years the deal had collapsed, a victim of conflicting visions, public concerns over privacy and surveillance, and (to hear Sidewalk Labs tell it) pandemic-era economic change. Journalist Brian Barth, who trained in urban planning and spent seven years living and working in Toronto before returning to the US this summer, says the Sidewalk fiasco also symbolizes a larger difference: the contrast between Silicon Valley's hard-charging, individualist, libertarian ethos and a Canadian business style that emphasizes collaboration, respect, and social responsibility. In this edition of Deep Tech, Barth talks about the tensions that led to Sidewalk Labs' departure and the strategies Canadian CEOs are following to build a more open and inclusive tech sector. Toronto would like to be seen as the nice person's Silicon Valley, if that's not too much trouble, June 17, 2020 Wade Roush: Is Toronto like Silicon Valley for nice people?

TierPoint, a leading provider of secure, connected cloud and data center solutions at the edge of the internet, announced it will host the third annual BraveIT conference as a virtual event, the morning of September 16 and afternoon of September 17, with title sponsor support from Dell Technologies, Nutanix, and VMware. The opening keynote will be delivered by Tom Gruber, who led the design team responsible for Siri, the intelligent assistant. The closing keynote will be delivered by Dan Doctoroff, formerly the Deputy Mayor of New York City and now CEO of Sidewalk Labs, a leader in the development of smart cities. And, back by popular demand from last year's conference, Major General Brett Williams, USAF (Ret.) will help enterprise teams assess their Cyber IQ. Tom Gruber was cofounder, CTO, and head of design for the team that created Siri in 2011, bringing AI to the mainstream user experience.

Our zombie solar cells could power indoor devices without sunlight by Marina Freitag, Newcastle University Internet connected devices need power. That either means connecting them to the grid, which limits what we can use them for, or using batteries. To avoid this, my colleagues and I are helping develop a new type of smart solar cell that can adapt to the amount of available light. Last week, that all died. Sidewalk Labs canceled the Quayside project on May 7. More Unknown Devices on Corporate Networks A report published this week by Sepio Systems suggests the number of devices being attached to corporate networks since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic began has increased sharply.

Alphabet is using its dominance in the search and advertising spaces -- and its massive size -- to find its next billion-dollar business. From healthcare to smart cities to banking, here are 10 industries the tech giant is targeting. With growing threats from its big tech peers Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon, Alphabet's drive to disrupt has become more urgent than ever before. The conglomerate is leveraging the power of its first moats -- search and advertising -- and its massive scale to find its next billion-dollar businesses. To protect its current profits and grow more broadly, Alphabet is edging its way into industries adjacent to the ones where it has already found success and entering new spaces entirely to find opportunities for disruption. Evidence of Alphabet's efforts is showing up in several major industries. For example, the company is using artificial intelligence to understand the causes of diseases like diabetes and cancer and how to treat them. Those learnings feed into community health projects that serve the public, and also help Alphabet's effort to build smart cities. Elsewhere, Alphabet is using its scale to build a better virtual assistant and own the consumer electronics software layer. It's also leveraging that scale to build a new kind of Google Pay-operated checking account. In this report, we examine how Alphabet and its subsidiaries are currently working to disrupt 10 major industries -- from electronics to healthcare to transportation to banking -- and what else might be on the horizon. Within the world of consumer electronics, Alphabet has already found dominance with one product: Android. Mobile operating system market share globally is controlled by the Linux-based OS that Google acquired in 2005 to fend off Microsoft and Windows Mobile. Today, however, Alphabet's consumer electronics strategy is being driven by its work in artificial intelligence. Google is building some of its own hardware under the Made by Google line -- including the Pixel smartphone, the Chromebook, and the Google Home -- but the company is doing more important work on hardware-agnostic software products like Google Assistant (which is even available on iOS).

Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, has been put in charge of its parent company Alphabet, after co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced they were stepping down. The 47-year-old said the pair had set up a "strong foundation" on which he would "continue to build". Pichai's life story is remarkable, and his rise to the top of Google is an endorsement of India's standing in the global technology industry - and equally, a reassuring reminder of the so-called "American Dream". Pichai was born and schooled in Chennai, India. He captained his school's cricket team, leading it to win regional competitions.

Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, has been put in charge of its parent company Alphabet, after co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced they were stepping down. The 47-year-old said the pair had set up a "strong foundation" on which he would "continue to build". Pichai's life story is remarkable, and his rise to the top of Google is an endorsement of India's standing in the global technology industry - and equally, a reassuring reminder of the so-called "American Dream". Pichai was born and schooled in Chennai, India. He captained his school's cricket team, leading it to win regional competitions.