Startup incubator within Google

In its bid to stop Google employees from leaving the company and begin their own ventures, Indian-born top executive Sundar Pichai has announced the company plans to set up a startup incubator within Google.

The Area 120’incubator, dubbed ‘Area 120’, is a new approach - part incubator and part new take on the spirit of the 20 percent time programme, according to Forbes. While we have been talking about Apple's approach of setting up accelarator for startups in Bengaluru, this one comes in as a surprise.

The new idea is basically a mid-way approach for retaining its existing talent and also letting them do what they wish to do otherwise. The report explains, “google has allowed its engineers and other employees to spend a day a week (or 20 percent time) on side projects.”

The incubator will be supervised by Google executives Don Harrison and Bradley Horowitz as reported by a Techonology blog, The Information.

As part of Area 120, Google would also lend its computing resources to incubate some projects. Pichai said teams accepted to this program may spend about six months on the idea, instead of 20% of their time.

Pichai told Forbes that, “We’ve always had a strong interest from within Google for people to go work on new things and have developed many of our products internally that way.” Word has it that, Google may invest in some of the projects that are born out of Area 120 into independent companies.