Google wants to hack the human lifespan. Today it launched Calico, a new startup with a hazy focus on “health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases.”
Calico will be led by former Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson, who was once a research scientist at the biotech pioneer, and who will remain chairman of both Apple and Genentech (which is now a unit of the drug company Roche). Google didn’t say what, exactly, Calico will do, although Google CEO Larry Page told Time magazine that it will focus on longer-term initiatives:
“In some industries, it takes ten or 20 years to go from an idea to something being real. Healthcare is certainly one of those areas,” said Page. “Maybe we should shoot for the things that are really, really important so ten or 20 years from now we have those things done.”
