Shane Cole
It was announced on Wednesday that Apple chairman Art Levinson has joined with Google in an initiative to combat aging and age-related health issues.
Google announced that it will be backing a new health-focused company called Calico, to be lead by former Google board member and current Apple chairman Arthur D. Levinson.
The latest 'moonshot' from the Mountain View company, Calico will focus on age-related health issues. Levinson, a biochemist who became CEO and then chairman of biotechnology giant Genentech, will make a founding investment in the company and act as its CEO.
Levinson will continue his role at Apple, according to the announcement, and Apple chief Tim Cook voiced his excitement about the project.
"For too many of our friends and family, life has been cut short or the quality of their life is too often lacking," Cook said. "Art is one of the crazy ones who thinks it doesn’t have to be this way. There is no one better suited to lead this mission and I am excited to see the results."
Though the relationship between Apple and Google has seemingly turned adversarial in recent years as they lock horns in the consumer tech marketplace, the two competitors have been known to come down on the same side of social issues, most notably in 2008 when both companies openly opposed California's Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in the state.
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61 Comments
regardless of tim's excitement, i hope levinson leaves the apple board; i sincerely believes this is a conflict of interest with his role there. (i'm an AAPL stockholder).
Now Google can have access to personal health information of people and sell it to advertisers. Yay!
Whatever Apple comes up with in the healthcare market, Google would have already started it and it just happens to look like Apple's solution.
I'm giving Levinson the benefit of the doubt here. He seems to be particularly interested in this issue (age related health) and surely won't be sucked in by the likes of Schmidt. This venture seems to require (or will promote) research at a level above practical implementation of software or hardware on mobile devices currently. I'm of an age where I hope that they work miracles lol.
regardless of tim's excitement, i hope levinson leaves the apple board; i sincerely believes this is a conflict of interest with his role there. (i'm an AAPL stockholder).
I am a stockholder, also, and I don't agree that there is a conflict of interest. Just because Apple board chairman Levinson is an investor and CEO of a company co-founded with an Apple (arch)rival, I can't imagine how Calico will conflict with Apple, a device/software technology company.