Google as a Social Entrepreneur, Providing Immortality

Google didn’t just make news this week—it made the front cover of Time magazine with the provocative story “Can Google Solve Death?” The fact that a major news magazine can ask this question seriously—and that the initiative comes from one of the largest, most profitable, and most credible companies in the world—speaks to the speed of change.

Time interviewed Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page and provided an interesting collection of background points around its headline. The key development: Google has launched a new company, Calico, focused on health and aging. It will be led by Arthur Levinson, former CEO of Genentech and current Chairman of the Board at both Genentech and Apple. Backed by Google’s $54 billion in cash, this will be a serious attempt at life extension.

Google, under Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, and Astro Teller, is known for two things: crunching data phenomenally well and chasing data-heavy speculative ideas (its so-called "Moonshots")—projects that, even if successful, take years to pay off. The original Google search engine was the product of vision and a data-driven opportunity. Today, Google is developing Google Glass, self-driving cars, and now, Calico.

Viewed this way, medicine is just another information science—one with vast amounts of data to crunch in search of a deeper understanding of life processes. If Google’s Calico succeeds, it could cure diseases, eliminate all cancers (which would add about three years to the average lifespan), and potentially reengineer our cellular and genetic structures in ways we can only imagine. That suggests an indefinite lifespan—in a body that may no longer resemble current human norms.

Timeframe? The only hint comes from Larry Page:
"In some industries, it takes 10 to 20 years to go from an idea to something real. Health care is certainly one of those areas. We should shoot for the things that are really, really important, so 10 or 20 years from now we have those things done."

Larry Page is 40. I’m 62. Let’s get a move on, guys!

And what will it cost? Google is not a philanthropic organization. But as Astro Teller puts it:
"If you make the world a radically better place, the money is going to come find you, in a fair and elegant way."

No kidding. And isn’t that the dream of all social entrepreneurs?

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