Report: Google’s ‘X’ lab renewing focus with project evaluation team & a buttery smooth logo

Google’s secretive Google X division is getting a new focus at the company that includes rebranding and a new logo, Recode reports.

Among the changes for Google X, according to the report, is a rebranding to simply “X” and the new butter-like yellow logo pictured above. But perhaps more importantly, behind the scenes there will also be a renewed focus including a team put in place specifically to “steer moonshots through the life-or-death throes.”

After the Alphabet reorg, Google X will not stop backing moonshots, but it is sharpening its focus to quell some of this anxiety. It is framing itself as Alphabet’s incubator, taking ambitious projects, taming them into viable businesses, then “graduating” them into standalone operations. It has also created tighter criteria for deciding when these projects should be put to rest, assembling a new group — called the Foundry

We already knew there were some changes in store for the X lab division as part of Google forming Alphabet and the overall restructuring that happened as part of the initiative. We heard previously that Google X was absorbing the company’s robotics division and Titan drone project, and Google itself noted at the time of the Alphabet announcement that its life sciences team would be moving out of X and into its own company under Alphabet.

The report from Recode has a bit more on what’s happening inside X. Google co-founder Sergey Brin is no longer involved since the Alphabet announcement, for example, while other employees share their thoughts on the transition.