In 2013, the company started an ambitious, flashy effort to create robots. Starting in 2013, the internet company spent tens of millions of dollars buying six robotics start-ups in the United States and Japan. In a nod to Google’s grand ambitions, Andy Rubin, the vice president of engineering who ran the effort, called it Replicant . Over the next few years, Google either sold off the companies it had acquired or shut them down. Mr. Rubin left Google in 2014 after the harassment allegations.

Source: New York Times March 26, 2019 17:25 UTC